Does anyone use Program changes across multiple Elektrons for arranging in DAWs

Elektron Gear
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So I’ve been almost exclusively hardware for the last 7+ years and I’ve used Ableton essentially as a tape deck, just straight recording into it and then all the mixing is done ‘in the box’ I’ve been pretty happy with that since I much prefer hardware for almost everything. However recently I started working in a new genre that calls for almost entirely sample based production and is primary made in DAWs so I’ve been playing around with that just sitting with my MacBook and writing stuff (on a side note it is so incredibly tedious to program drums by drawing them in as opposed to just playing them on an external drum machine it’s definitely not fun) but the arrangement part is so much easier in a DAW then using something like song mode in one of the Elektron boxes.

So it got me thinking, I’ve used program changes from a DAW to trigger specific patterns on Elektron boxes in the past (mostly for QA work in my last job) but I’m wondering if anyone writes like that primarily.

I have 5 Elektron machines and they’re midi daisy chained with Ableton as the master (unless Ableton is off then the OT becomes the master)
So with that set up, if all the Elektron machines have the correct midi settings it would be theoretically possible to use program changes to do an arrangement across all 5 boxes although I wonder about the logistics of saving patterns and working on more than one song at a time, also I think I’d have to write sequentially (the intro pattern would have to be program 1 the drop would have to be pattern 2) across all 5 machines and maybe that could get confusing or possibly restrictive.

I’m going to experiment with this next time I have a chance to sit in front of my gear but my question is does anyone write like this using multiple Elektron boxes while using program changes to arrange in a DAW? And if so what’s your method

If I could figure it out where it’s not too confusing it could make song writing phenomenally easier.

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So, in this scenario do the program changes change things in the DAW too? I don’t think I’ve ever sent program changes from hardware to a DAW. I imagine it’s pretty flexible, but never tried it.

I don’t have any tips, because I normally do all my sequencing on hardware and then record into a DAW, a lot like what you described. Unless I’m using Renoise, in which case I do all the sequencing in the tracker –but even in that case I never sync up patterns from hardware. This is making me want to try it.

I do send program changes from the Octatrack to other hardware (not a DAW though). It’s nice to let the arranger on the OT orchestrate the whole arrangement, but yeah, I end up having to match the patterns across devices, so it’s hard to do unless I already have an outline of the whole idea. I don’t think i could “write” like that, because when I’m exploring and brainstorming, the last thing on my mind is matching up patterns. I would probably be more productive if that was a priority though.