Which arrangements do you like the best?
Intro:Part 1 Break Part 2 Outro?
If i want to cross the 7 minute mark in my techno tracks, i mostly go for 3 part structures.
Do you have specifc rules for Down or Uptempo?
How many different Ekektron patterns you use per part?
Pure and utter nonsensical chaos till I’m fed up of it, master it (because I spend half my composing time actually sound designing, mixing, rerouting midi and modules for “optimisation”), release it, hate it, then listen again in a month and think I’m a musical genius.
But in all seriousness, I’m of the belief that giving yourself at most some loose guidelines to follow will allow you to come up with stuff you are happy with. I personally find it hard to come up with a 4 min song (let alone 7) without just bashing out various ideas and then piecing them together on a per-track basis. No set and solid structure. With techno a lot of it will be the subtle modulation keeping it interesting and I think you can only really tell if either:
a) you listen back to the raw ideas you came up with and piece them together, or say “this part needs x this part needs y”
b) you have one long jam session with all your modulation and mutes and whatnot done live and you do some slight tweaks after.
I make more industrial/midtempo stuff around 30bpm slower than what you’re asking about, but I find similar rules apply.
YMMV of course, and I’m on the maximum dose of ADHD meds so take what I say with the small print being that I couldn’t organise 2 lego bricks without overthinking and revisiting every configuration 10000x, but I have personally found that when I go too organised and structured with things it comes out bland and predictable, and a lot of other musician friends I’ve spoken to are the same way. But like I said, YMMV and someone else’s completely opposite advice may be a lot more helpful to you. 
I usually use 1 pattern per track (Robert Hood FTW)
One Pattern per Song. No specific rules for Arrangement, it really depends on the elements of the Track and the BPM. As a former DJ, I subconsciously have some structure. I always perform my Tracks Live. I always record a Stereo Track. No editing in a DAW and I rarely post process.
My focus in the last years is to have the best Live sound possible with a limited budget.
I just do one pattern that repeats for 5 minutes so everyone gets bored after 1.
Use as little as you can get away with. Focus on the small adjustments within a pattern that make things interesting.
For me, the best techno develops in ways that can go unnoticed to the casual listener, but blows the mind of those willing to feel it a bit more. Making a bunch of patterns and arranging them in a linear structure is fine, but it more often than not ends in predictable arrangements.
Much better to program an interesting pattern with decent modulation and a few little rhythmic tricks that you can “play” and improvise with in the moment than get too linear with it all.
Changing patterns in a song is for when you’ve run out of things to do with the one you’re on.
Yes - i know i did that 1 pattern thing, get the most out of it etc. But lets say you want to have a more complex arrangement, and not just the modulated loop lets say you wanted to use the song mode. What would you do ?
Panic.
Song mode scares me.
Pattern? Really? Not bank? Pattern?
I reckon with these 2nd gen Digis and their 16 tracks I could probably squeeze a couple of songs out of a pattern.
Techno innit.
I see that you added some fiber to your diet.
You’ve spelled fibber wrong.
I’ve spelled fiver as god intended.
Yes, one Pattern per Song. As @Fin25 said, when you have 46 Tracks at hands, it’s « easy » to make full Songs.
I couldn’t said it better.
whatever genre i do – i arrange it like it’s the golden era of goa trance.
I copy the pattern over and resequence/play selected parts. My downtempo compositions are most often around 9-13 patterns long but tbh with some mutes I could squeeze it to 4 or 5.
Basically, intro that morphs into verse1, verse1, bridge/chorus, verse2, chorus, outro. Main difference between the verses are the melody parts and I often change the chord progression (harmony) as well.
I do use the song mode so I can safely tinker until the pattern change (im slow like that). Helps with the mutes as well.
Do you use the DN2 this way, or Syntakt?
DN2, previously DN1.
…yeah… that came to my mind 2 min after I wrote that.
I remember you can now also “solo” / loop bars? (I couldn’t figure it out on my DN II tho…) – this would also be nice for slow advancements in a track maybe?