NEI and PRE Trig Conditions

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

I was finding it difficult to understand these concepts so i did some testing and came up with a visual reference

PRE_NEI_ConditionalTrigs

hopefully this is helpful

8 Likes
#2

Something I’ve wondered half-assed about and never bothered to look up, but judging from this, it looks like regular “no condition” trigs do not count as “true” triggers for PRE and NEI?

#3

Its a strange choice, i feel, but yes it doesn’t react the same

#4

The way I see it is that a regular trig is never going to change, so there’s nothing to evaluate…

If it did consider a regular trig as “played” or “true”, then:

  1. Placing a pre condition following a regular trig would always play that trig.
  2. Placing a not pre condition after a regular trig would never play that trig.

For the first example, no need to lock a pre condition on a trig as an extra step if it won’t do anything, it’s always going to play anyway…

For the second example, no need to place a trig and put a condition on it, it’s never going to play…
:slight_smile:

5 Likes
#5

Considering the implications I listed above…

Not evaluating regular trigs also makes it possible to place regular trigs in between a trig with some condition, and a trig with pre or not pre…

This way you can still evaluate you pre or not pre trig based off of the condition evaluated on the last conditional trig, instead of being forced one way or another from a regular trig in between, which if evaluated would neutralize the conditional process and always lead to one outcome…

4 Likes
#6

Interesting, I accidentally found this on OT a couple of weeks back but thought it was a quirk, turns out its a feature :yum:

#7

Thanks for sharing these, nice visual quick reference. Didn’t know about the “no condition” trigs not counting as “true” triggers.
Haven’t found a use for NEI yet

#8

Yes, the PRE and NEI conditions look for and evaluate any earlier placed trig conditions. They do not evaluate trigs without trig conditions.

Also remember that the PRE and NEI conditions ignore any PRE and PRE- conditions placed earlier on the track.
Example from the manual 10.10.3:

Example 1: Trig 1, 50% = True > Trig 2, PRE- = False > Trig 3, PRE- = False > Trig 4, PRE = True
Example 2: Trig 1, 50% = False > Trig 2, PRE- = True > Trig 3, PRE- = True > Trig 4, PRE = False

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#9

Thanks for the chart!!!

I had a question that is related…
Can you do a Trig condition for Retrig/rolls???

Eg.
I want a 1/16 snare roll on step 8, but only every 3 out of 4 times. and the other times it plays a single snare hit.

#10

whatever you can do on a normal Trig can be done via a condition in the sense that a condition is turning a Trig on or off - you don’t ever turn parts of the Trig or parameters on/off only a complete Trig with it’s settings - so TRCs only apply to the playback of a Trig - play(true/false) - all the various TRCs do the same thing it’s just on/off for the whole trig

so you can’t do what you want without other workarounds, it’s not something you can do on one track with TRCs

#11

Thank you for this clarification!

I read this multiple times in the manual and totally missed this nuance. Now that it makes sense I use PRE and PRE- in many patterns.

The one that made it click for me was using 1:4 on the first trig, then PRE and PRE- on any trig I wanted to follow or inverse that condition.

Best regards,

Gino

1 Like
#12

Necro-bumped this thread vs starting a new one to ask about NEI.

I’m on 1.11 BETA6 OS on my DT.

Track 1 - 1:2 on the first trig
Track 2 - NEI on the first 4 trigs

One the first play, only the first trig on track 2 plays, and I can’t figure out why.

Best regards,

Gino

#13

If you wanted all 4 nei trigs to play when the 1/2 trig does, using nei on the first and pre on trigs 2,3 and 4 would work.

#14

Thanks, I already tried that, and it does the same thing.

#15

maybe just use retrig on the 1st note and delete the others. , with a slow retrig time ?
it might sound the same. (just a quick idea, i havent put much thought into it)…
assuming you want the same thing triggered anyway…

1 Like
#16

Yep, that definitely works, thanks!

I still want to understand why it doesn’t work as-is, because the next playthroughs work fine. So the logic is stable, but not for the first play.

#17

One thing I figured out is that I only see this problem if I hit [STOP] twice. Meaning that only the first NEI condition works, and I only hear the first snare hit.

If I hit [STOP] once, it works fine when I then press [PLAY].

Since I’ve trained myself to hit [STOP] twice without thinking about it, it’s why I kept seeing it.