Knowing the effort involved doesn’t help us. It doesn’t matter if it’s easy or hard to do. What matters is whether Elektron decide they want that on their product. Does it fit the vision? Will it be more itself if it had such a mode?
You can also get cynical. Will Song Mode change how well the device sells? Will the lack of Song Mode inspire people to buy a second (or third) Elektron?
Elektron may or may not notice your comments here. If you want to talk to them you should submit a feature request via the Elektron website.
You can sync patterns on the Analog Four and Digitone via MIDI, which gives you access to the Analog Four’s song mode. This is exactly the setup I have, and it works well.
it clearly is a marketing decision to sell more of other gear since OT (and MNM / MD?) has the most sophisticated song mode. All other Elektron devices are dumbed down in that term – and the “cheaper” devices even without one.
So chances there will ever be one …is zero.
The far bigger pain than lack of song mode is the lack of kits. Without the ability to maintain a persistent sound across patterns, you wind up painting yourself in a corner in terms of how to perform a song. If I change the LFO on one pattern, it would be nice for that setting to persist across the next pattern when I change to there
nah… I like the Digis way more because they are like that. It’s a design decision that has its adavantages. After 2 years OT I still forget that I mess up other patterns when changing something (not kits …but because of the parts obviously).
Probably an eyebrow hair or an eyelash but my DT has seen much worse already… The unspeakable horror
Roland has taken the same stance on some of their devices and it pisses me off. They want their instruments to be “played”. Well, sometimes I want the foundation to be automated while I play over top.
There are numerous ways to create something that is way beyond a four bar loop. So to call these ‘4 bar loop machines’ tells me you’re not utilizing everything.
For starters set scale mode to per track mode and use ch.len to set specific lengths for each pattern. Then chain the patterns to play your arrangement automatically. This, in combination with different track lengths, scales per track, and conditional locks means you can get way beyond loopiness.
I get the wish for song mode when people play the guitar while using DT or DN for example. Other than that… Twist those knobs live to make transitions and utilize the tools at hand.
Yeah, I think between conditional trigs and pattern chains you don’t really need a song mode. I’ve done two projects on my Digitakt that are basically short albums that run off of one pattern chain. My stuff is just pretty straightforward hip-hop beats but still. I think there’s more than enough there to work with. You might have to think through some numbers and stack a trig or two but it’s doable. I’ve done it.
That said, it would be nice to be able to save pattern chains. I’m not sure where it would fit in the UI or even how much I would wind up using it. But I would like the option. And having never used any of the Elektron machines with a song mode I’m pretty agnostic about whether or not I’d want one on my Digitakt.
It is machines like the MC-707 that I really wish had song mode, and why I bought the MV1. It has the channels and polyphony to be a good backing machine that can cover lots of parts.
Saving the last pattern chain like POs after power down would be a sufficient enough song mode IMO.
I love how someone who tried out some random programming language but seems to know nothing about softwaredevelopment, hardware development etc. estimates the work to a day to a week. Even changing the color or a rgb light on a button takes more than a day pure working time, as the pure implementation part is often just a fragment of doing something that gets released to the public.
How hard can it be to add another room to my house? I did some Lego and all you need to do is throw some stones in a row, right?
…i got no real clue about programming…
but any kind of overall pattern order organisation, especially given the fact of the superflexible and pretty complex pattern options we’re talking here about, a songmode option to keep them all in various order is quite a challenge to make that happen smoothly…
these days many software coders like to use lot’s of space to make things happen…
“easy” if u can count on constantly growing and pretty flexible capabilties…
but quite “hard” if ur dealing with the fixed defined limited cpu ressources of a certain chip processor…
takt got one…tone needed already two of those to make it happen…
coding for hardware needs way more efficiency…
and there was a time, when even elektron developers could not really figure out, what unbelieveable level of efficiency the original code for the ot had…
so, there must be some kind of checkbox problem with the inner architecture of the digis, since many people keep on whishing for a songmode, but still there’s none…
see it a bit like…do u want more filter and lfo options embedded with propabilties, or do u want a songmode…u can’t have it both kind of thing… 
and nope, even older, ot and a4 are not digis, and were created by different people…
but hey…what do i know…mayybee some day it happens…
for now, add a second hand mpc to ur ballpark and u gor the other best hardware sequencer out there… and those can work as centerpieces with all kind of other midi gear and call a super easy songmode their own since ever…
The DT and DN has a song mode. It’s called a midi cable and program changes. It’s actually way more fun than a song mode. Live a little y’all.
I buy a lot of music gear and would own both a DT and a DN if they had song mode.
I think this is mistaking the point of the original post. Some of us with gear aren’t always wanting to do live stuff and instead want an arrangement tool. I personally use a mix of both: I do some live arrangement and record that then layer on top and that’s how I get from start to finish on a track most days. I don’t play shows, so for me a song mode would actually be useful in terms of being able to just write music.
I get your point, but I don’t think it’s lazy to want an arranger. You can still play live and get a song out of it at the end.
I get your point too 
I might even be using it if it had one.
If Elektron announced that they had added song mode to the Digitone, I would order one within 5 minutes.
If Elektron announced that they had added song mode to the [Syntakt], I would order one within 5 minutes.
I think what we actually needed is just an automated pattern sequencer. That should not be too difficult.