Which pattern ? The pattern they came from, or the pattern that’s playing?
The one that’s playing.
So you’d then have an unlocked local copy (near copy actually) of the locked track in your current, playing pattern ?
Right, but I suppose the track should remain locked. The locked track(s) can be thought of like a “paintbrush” now.
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Updated the description with details about saving and reloading patterns.
I find that I butt up against the kits thing as well when I’m working with the Octatrack and the Digitakt. I would gladly sacrifice the Octatrack’s “parts” feature to have a completely new machine set up on each pattern, or be able to copy that machine state from pattern to pattern as needed. The Digitakt is great for that.
I think the answer to the kits issue would be to design your kits in individual patterns in the higher up banks. H01 through H16 can easily be 16 different kits. You can label them and create template projects with your kits premade so you can just copy them to the patterns you need.
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I have four unique and named (6 chars) patterns/parts in each bank. I get by - but I’d sure love to have 16 totally unique/named patterns in every bank. Guess the OT is full though so it’s unlikely.
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IMHO not only should Elektron implement this, but they should pay you consultancy fees for working out the entire UI.
EDIT: or maybe give you a free digi-box of your choosing. Because the problem you’re solving represents one of the major show-stoppers for me going any further with elektron boxes.
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Another thing to keep in mind is at what level does the track lock? Is it per project? Bank? Only certain patterns? If each bank is a song, would this still work?
I miss the A4 kits…
Reflecting again on how to wrangle the relation between DNDTST Song Mode and avoiding unexpected jumps in sound… a slightly different approach…
In a ‘sound locked’ track pattern - the track starts, the stored track pattern sound, FX parameters and embedded sound trigs are ignored and whatever state the sound engine and FX engines were in at the head of the running track pattern remain, so no unexpected jumps. Lovely.
Altering sound/FX parameters on the fly no problem - the parameters that are now active or appear as newly added sound trigs, still override whatever is stored. If the pattern is then saved, the previously embedded trigs and other parameters are lost forever. Tough.
(Nb in the last sketch above, tracks 9 - 16 would be midi, so they couldn’t be Seq locked or Sound Locked) I don’t have time to update the sketch but you get the drift).
How would the proposals discussed, deal with existing sound engine trig locks in a ‘seq locked’ track pattern?
If incoming sound parameter trigs are active and the sound engine responds to them on the fly, what would happen on the ST if a different machine parameter is being addressed by the stored trig? I presume the existing firmware has a means to adapt dynamically. The results might be unpredictable but that’s the Elektron way.
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Wouldn’t an approach similar to the new Global FX feature, but for track parameters, be better?
Maybe this is where Elektron are heading with this, and if they’ve done it for the FX track it might be possible to implement for the other tracks.
From the release notes…
Added a GLOBAL FX/MIX menu item in the SETTINGS menu. In the GLOBAL FX/MIX menu, you have the option to set the parameters on the INTERNAL MIXER, EXTERNAL MIXER, and the FX TRACK’s SYN, FILTER, AMP, DELAY, REVERB, LFO pages to be global (making any change to these parameters affect all patterns in the project and not only the active pattern).
Would you include track sequence in that ? I can’t see how that would work, but I think it would be necessary to match @Roger’s original idea.
The only issue I see with this is that it is tied to Song Mode. There is a simple solution to this that I posted above:
This should be easy to implement into the UI and workflow and isn’t reliant on Song Mode to work. It would work with Song Mode in that Pattern Groups are baked into the pattern itself.
There’s no way I would want to be forced to use Song Mode just to get persistent parameters in between patterns.
If I understand you correctly, you’re surmising about the effect of playing a locked sequence on a foreign track with different sound parameters. Since a sequence-locked track is also sound-locked, it would behave the same as usual - if there are sound locks, machine locks, or parameter locks in the sequence the track is playing, they play as expected. There aren’t provisions for locking just the sequence in the current proposal. Not that that wouldn’t be interesting - it’s just that that seemed a step too far, complexity-wise, when I devised it. Maybe also impractical; as you cycler through the statuses in TRACK LOCK mode, you pass “locked” to get to “sequence-locked”. By that point you’ve already locked the sound, so what happens if there was a “just-sequence-locked” status in between? And then there’s the issue of terminology. It’s just too much.
It’s per-project, badbass’s Song Mode support excluded. The intended use is for things that should be the same for long periods, like kicks, and sounds that you tweak continuously across songs, like synths. Forcing you to make a choice at a project-level and then manage one or two tracks yourself as the song or performance progresses should compel you to keep it simple to some degree. When designing your set, the simplest way is to assign tracks a specific purpose (such as kick or bass) and lock the ones you want to be independent of patterns, sound- or sequence-wise. But generally, if a track isn’t locked all the time, the assumption is that you’d lock it for a period and then unlock it either when the song progresses to a new part, or you’re done improvising, or, you’d unlock it before a new section and then re-lock it if desired. The driving force behind my proposal is to strike a balance between a static setup and something conducive to improvisation.
If your track locks are programmed with Song Mode, then it’s no longer required to manage it while performing, though the option could theoretically still be available.
Ah. I see what you’re getting at. In that case, I’d find it infuriating. I get how it may work for some people, but if you’re like me, where you have multiple songs per project that are different, this would get in the way of all of that. It would work great for someone who always used the same “kit” for their drums, for example.
Maybe, with the method you guys are suggesting, there’s an option to set it to the project or bank level.
I like the idea of each track having some sort of toggle switch or selector.
Toggle switch could be something like Keep same as bank, keep same as project, free choice sample.
Selector could allow you to assign it to pattern groups, or maybe a “use sample from pattern _____” where if you have your kick on track 1 pattern 1, you can set P1 on other patterns in the selector.
So many ideas!
Would it not work for you to work in Song Mode? Let’s say you navigate to a certain section which has some tracks locked. I think the way it should work is it loads the pattern from that row as usual and immediately automatically applies the programmed lock statuses. Could that not achieve the same effect, assuming you could adapt to thinking in terms of songs rather than bank structure? What I mean is, that way, you could keep all your patterns for a song in a bank, and achieve what you’re after by setting up the track locks in the song and operating in Song Mode. That should work even better now that on DTDNST you can set the current row in the playing song to loop, so you’re no longer forced to improvise within the programmed time windows.
Just some thoughts.
I get the idea. It could work in some cases. A lot of my stuff has different sounds per section/pattern, so it’s rare that I’m repeating or only muting/unmuting tracks in patterns. Even if I were to go that route, I’d still probably have at least 6-7 patterns per song.
This also, of course, assumes that people are using song mode all the time. I’d love to get to a point where I am skilled enough to mix and match patterns from all 3 boxes during my shows 
I just want to add that sequence-locking is a component that I consider a nice bonus if it was included. I just thought about what could happen if it was abused. You could end up with a bunch of incomplete patterns with different tracks missing and you having to remember what you locked and when. This is helped by Song Mode but now it’s sort of like, they have to add support for it to Song Mode if there’s to be sequence-locking. Or maybe not? Maybe the user will use it as a composition tool initially, filling in the gaps left behind later.
Then there is the issue that it could also be easy to ruin a performance - as it would override any fills and flourishes.
I’m leaving it in for now, as it’d be interesting to hear what Elektron thinks about it, but I think merely locking the track sound would be enough and certainly easier to implement.
For me, locked sound+sequence is far more likely to make me consider a digitakt than than locked sound only. But I may not be in the target market anyway 