Elektron Interfaces are unnecessarily difficult

The Lounge
#210

It’s taken me three years with a Digitone (my only Elektron box) and I wouldn’t say I LOVE the interface. I do love the deep utility of the product and have learnt to do anything I want with it quite quickly ( um … except fade in/out two tracks simultaneously :expressionless: )

I think I like the Digi interface but that I find it a bit of a switch jumping between it and other equipment (largely knob-per-function gear) with fluidity. I prefer it as a groovebox, solo.

I’m starting to think I want to try a one-box project with just a Digitakt.

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#211

There is a lesson in that isn’t there?

New languages require mental elasticity and that can be hard, but the work must be done.

#212

All of this is reasonable.

But!

If you aren’t spending enough time with your gear to forget your gear, I don’t think it matters what you use, you are holding yourself back. And making everything easy at first limits what can be done to what is easy at first.

The climb was long but using my AK now is far easier than easy instruments - when measured by the total power I now have

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#213

giphy

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#214

just ordered a blond wig from Amazon, overnighting it.

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#215

Given that I may have come across a bit strong there, haha…

I think it should go without saying that you should use the instrument that feels the best to yourself. What vibes it for you? That’s the place to go. I’ve spent way too much time messing with gear that seemed like I should like it. Usually but not always you know how you feel pretty quickly. I go with that now, and the AK was my baby from the get go. But if I hadn’t felt that vibe? I would say why bother with all this when I really like synth X.

What leads to good music is the guide.

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#216

Touchscreens are unsatisfying and not well suited for musical instruments IMHO. I have a MPC One and the touchscreen is one of the worst things about it, even using it with a stylus is tedious, it would be far better with cursor keys and soft buttons IMHO. I hope they will allow a mouse to be used with it, it is that bad IMHO.

On anything other than an ipad (or similar) touchscreens are sluggish and not responsive enough, even on the ipad all the crappy multi finger gestures are a ball ache, especially the split screen mode which activates, often by accident, a feature I never want, and it can’t be disabled. etc. not to mention the greasy finger smears….

Elektron key combos are alright, you do have to commit to using them though, like when you use them on software, most people know how to zoom, cut, copy, paste, play etc on software using key combos. Not much different, and you can easily print out the key combo section from the manual and pin it on your wall.

5 Likes
#217

Yes, there’s no such thing as intuitiveness. It’s all about the specific user’s accumulated knowledge applied to the learning curve index of the task(s) at hand (the improvement rate, related to time and quality, for each completion of the task) that’s providing the perceived UX.

I’d rate Elektron as generally targeting intermediate users but swing left (Models) and right (OT) on that scale - once clearly on purpose and once by…passion :grin:.

It’s not surprising there’s not a unified view here.

Oh, and the file management DO suck but the clever devils have us mostly forgiving that by providing easy triggers of the reward system (hey there, OT fader and Analogs performance twiddling in real-time) and the overall controlled balance of the most common user journeys.

To the OP: I’d give it slightly more time but wouldn’t fight it if it bothers you - there are other products out there that MAY suit you better.

All above is just my opinion, of course.

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#218

I’m getting the squarp hapax it looks super intuitive to use to me, can’t wait to try that.
Definitely don’t think Elektron are difficult
eg hold the trigger turn the encoder nothing difficult about that

#219

You can fade multiple tracks with the Control-All feature. ie. hold the MIDI button and adjust track Level, or Volume.

#220

I can see some pain points in Elektron gear. For example, coming from the DT/DN “kit” per pattern paradigm made getting going with AK and AR a PITA and there were moments when work was lost when forgetting to save a new kit for a different pattern, etc. Even DT, which is super simple, has its annoyances. One I particularly hated but just learned to do automatically was to unload the crappy stock samples every time I loaded a new project. Things like these could be swatted aside with a couple of set and forget menu options, then everyone would be happy depending on how they wanted to use the devices. Overall, tho, as I said above somewhere back in this thread, I do think Elektron get things mostly right on balance and they’re always improving things with updates.

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#221

Cheers. Doesn’t that adjust level for all tracks though? I will have to try.

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#222

Ugh of course, you’re right! You could parameter lock volumes to prevent some tracks from changing I think, but yeah it needs a mixer huh

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#223

Thing is with using parameter locks in this way is that Ctrl-All changes the settings in-between the steps, with the p-locks snapping the value back into place on each step. Not too much of a problem with a fast enough tempo but at slower tempos, it can sometimes create a steppy glitchy sound depending on the parameter being changed. But slower Ctrl-All movements wouldn’t be that noticeable, especially volume changes maybe?

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#224

Let us know what they’ve done with the conventions!

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