Copy paste patterns without stopping the sequence

if you know your patterns you can time it with no real or noticeable gap, if you don’t know your patterns too well you can watch the sequence for the longest machine scale and then hit paste upon change

I WISH they would implement properly but whatever, i can get around it

Hang on a second, I’m a new OT owner here and I’ve just come to the forum looking to see what i’m doing wrong - there’s really no way of creating a new pattern that’s a copy of the playing pattern without first playing an empty new pattern before you paste into it?

Is it just me or is this a bonkers omission in a nearly brilliant “live performance” sampling machine?

Please tell me I’ve got something wrong here!?

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Really? Isn’t the new pattern inactive until step 1 is played? usually the step with an important down-beat?

Don’t forget you can sample and loop the main outs pretty easily to get around stuff like this :slight_smile:

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OT’s relatively old school it just got a nice new suit… The newer Elektrons can do this…
I imagine you’ll find multiple ways around this and hopefully enough other stuff you like to the point you don’t even care about that anymore, that’s where I got to anyway… :smile:

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You can try this for a track at a time:

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Don’t get me wrong - I’m loving the OT, it brings back fond memories of making tracks on octamed (somehow even more than renoise ever did) and before this I’ve not come across a quirk or limitation that caused much more than a shrug, but I’m shocked by this one after the years of software updates… I naively assumed by now the big omissions would be sorted out unless there’s a memory/processor brick wall in the way

I’m not going to let it be a deal breaker and I’ll look into the whole sampling my output into a loop etc. (and I guess it’s only viable when your midi gear is passing audio through the OT…) but this is a big deal in this kind of machine.

Is everyone sure about this? What if you’re running the arrangement mode, is there no way to develop arrangements on the fly without pre-making all the patterns?

[edit] apologies for having a bit of a moan, and i’m very grateful for all the people that dedicate time to help people out on here

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Just to make it brief - if the link seemed convoluted:

Set master length to 16 but track lengths to 64, then there are three pages on each track that you can work on without affecting audio.

Paste them into page 1 when you want to hear them.

It’s one track at a time just because you can’t paste on all tracks - but ‘develop’, sure

further:
“Paste” again at any point to perform an instant undo - i.e… back to original page 1 pattern - good for fills dropped in anywhere

ie. this is also the only way to ‘instant pattern change’ on the OT afaik

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I haven’t brainstormed this, which is something I like doing because I learn the stuff at the same time…
But something to consider is that you have the option of having tracks sound through to other patterns/parts until a trig is reached. This is the default behavior and it can be modified globally and per pattern per track using the “silence” tracks and “start silent” options.

When you enter a new pattern the tracks enter the release phase of the amp settings of the previous pattern. I’m saying this because there is a multitude of ways of having sounds carry over, which could give you time to paste a pattern…

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@Open_Mike Thanks I think this is the most practical (least limiting) approach - combined with a properly timed retrig (not tried this yet, I don’t know if a retrig will be cancelled by the pattern change but worth a shot) joins should be easily covered up without tonnes of work.

@Clancy This looks like a good trick but for me it’s too limiting - I want to use the OT as my main sequencer for live performances and cutting out 3/4 of my pattern isn’t an option in most cases (i’d rather drop a few trigs than drop most of my patterns). If you were using the OT just as a drum machine that could work… I imagine you could get pretty fast at doing all the copy-pasting after some practice

Thanks for the help everyone - and I’m just curious, is this limitation the same on most elektron machines?

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The newer machines can paste directly to other patterns without leaving the active one.

On the A4MKII it works this way:

After having selected a pattern, and before releasing any key, [RECORD], [PLAY] and [STOP] can be pressed to copy, clear or paste patterns. No new chain will be built, nor any pattern enqueued. It is possible to clear, copy or paste multiple patterns at the same time.

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I prefer A4MKI’s way. :slight_smile:

After having selected a pattern, and before releasing any key, [REC], [PLAY] and [STOP] can be pressed to copy, clear or paste patterns. No new chain will be built, nor any pattern enqueued. It is possible to clear, copy or paste multiple patterns at the same time.

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thanks again - maybe we’ll get lucky and get a few more OT software updates with features like this

Hi Open Mike, and thank you for all your incredible contributions.
Could you give us some light on those multiple ways to keep the sound in the meantime you paste the pattern?
It would help me a lot to investigate these ways, although you or anyone just list them, I would already investigate them on my own.

i would check out the OT tips and tricks thread.

There’s:
the crossfader transition trick
the “plays free” loop trick
…several other options.

The plays free loop option might be one of my favorites. There are a few great tutorials on it.

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Thanks! I know the transition trick but not the loop trick.
Do you know some trick more for copy paste patterns on the go without the use of recorders?

Not really specific to that… The loop trick lets music happen while you move to a blank pattern and paste. I’d recommend always using a plays free track on the same track that allows you to have some uninterrupted movement before/after pasting.

Quite some time has passed since this topic was last discussed - and which seems to be important to a lot of people.
Since that time, OT saw a new ‘push’ as in… marketing (limited edition) new color (black), OS update/s (1.40/A) etc.
As I am sort of re-discovering the OT at the moment - I am not entirely clear: was there any development to help with this, or what is the presently preferred / state of the art solution to this problem (duplicating a pattern while it is playing)?

Nothing has changed so all suggestions from this thread still apply.

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I don’t see the dangerosity of an autocopy. At worst you switch to the same pattern…