Note slide/Portamento

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#1

Just before Elektronauts started up we had a thread on Elektron-Users about Note Slide and portamento on the A4, and I just wanted to port some of the comments across so we could continue the discussion and give Elektron some useful feedback

Here is my comment:

Well, it’s not so much emulating a 303 perfectly (which I don’t want it to do - or rather, I don’t want it to be restricted to those parameters). I just mention it as one the best-known examples.

It’s more the basic concept of note slide. Pitch is just one parameter that goes into making a note, if you see what I mean. When you look at the Note screen on the A4 it also includes velocity, length, envelope and LFO retrigger. When I slide a note I’m expecting all those things to be incorporated, not only the pitch and envelope retrigger. I am trying to slide two notes into each other, to make one note. It’s illogical to change the gate separately.

Right now it ignores velocity too, so if I slide two notes of different velocities into one the characteristics change in the middle of the note. This is very undesirable: suppose I am adjusting velocity using an LFO or by hand, but I want to plock some notes to play at a fixed velocity. If I am using a note slide I have to plock or unplock both note trigs. If I do not do so not only do they have different velocity but the velocity jumps instead of sliding.

Of course I can get around this to some extent by using Parameter slide, but length and velocity and fundamental characteristics of a musical note and it is strange that they are not included in the note slide operation. It’s also very bad for workflow, since it means a lot of extra plocking, and if you change your mind about the slide and want to remove it or put it somewhere else then you have to remove/change all those plocks.

I wonder if this is something to with the envelope retrigger oddities that make it hard to do portamento at the moment. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds the current behavior a little strange.

And here are some remarks from other users in the same thread.

KingJDub1978:

This thread reminds me alot of the struggles I always have with the A4 when trying to program a sequence that conatins some nice legato.

to achieve this I have to play with note Slide as well as the settings on the NOTES page ALOT… Length, Envelope retrigger, etc. It’s always a very tedious workflow for me to get a nice natural sounding legato sequence playing. Having that many parameters to mess with at once to achieve what I need can get frustrating and bring a loss of focus on knowing what each step really needs to be set to.

Darenager:
I don’t like how the slide sounds now much either, it seemed to work much better a few OS versions ago - but it wasn’t ever really that intuitive, and yes it would be better if note length was adjusted when a slide is entered, maybe an option to set the behaviour would be a good feature request.

Regardless of if you want to do acid or 303 stuff, the 303’s slide mode is much better than the A4, because it requires less button pushing and is a better implementation.

Dacava:
Yes… a more predictable slide would be most welcome. I find I could create more convincing acid riffs on the machinedrum. I would just load up a single cycle sample (saw or pulse), use an LFO on the EOG for a bit of vibrato, and parameter lock the notes with various pitch settings, and the notes would slide perfectly into the next note, everytime. It is not so easy with the A4. I can get some interesting riffs, but there not exactly what I had in mind when working though some patterns.

Sorry about the formatting. Something is badly broken with the text editor here.

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#2

By the way I should say that the big reason I have noticed this and thought about it a lot is that with some careful programming the A4 can do VERY good quality acid sounds, either copying a 303 quite closel or add its own individual sonic flavor. I LOVE the acid sounds I am getting and have one patch that I use on almost everything that I do because it sounds so great. It’s programming the pattern where things slow down, because every note slide is a multi-stage operation instead of just setting the note slide trig.

One reason I have been, ah, confused by the note slide on the A4 is that you are supposed to put it on the second note. For example:


On the A4 the slide triggers on steps 5 & 16 would cause step 4 to slide into step 5, and step 15 to slide into step 16 (actually it will slide the pitch from note 14 because step 15 is empty).

On a 303 (and most other gear I have used) you would expect a slide on step 5 to slide the note onto step 6 - in other words, it slides the note forward, instead of pulling the previous note as on the A4. When I first encountered the note slide on the A4 I thought it was weird but I didn’t have a 303 clone or emulator around to compare it to, so I thought it was just a memory mistake on my part. But after further research, my original instinct was correct.

Here are some notes about how it works on the 303 from the creator of the Devilfish mods, who probably knows as much as anyone else in the world about that machine.

http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/303-slide.html

Now, I am not suggesting Elektron must copy the 303, and in fact I didn’t yet do comparisons on my OT or with other Elektron ger, so I guess many people are used to a note slide that ‘pulls’ the previous note instead of extending the current note. But to me it seems exactly backwards from everything else in music. After all, if you are writing musical notes on paper you begin the slur on the first note. It’s logical to extend the gate time of the note with a slide, not the note which came before, which requires you to think backwards in time.

In programming terms - since the Analog Four has a Digital Mind - the note slide is behaving like a Come From statement when what most people expect is a Go To. :joy:

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Behringer TD-3 [303 clone]
#3

Yes it is a real shame that it is set up the way it is, I mean for example parameter locks, accents, swing and pretty much most of the other pattern modifiers are very simple actions, if the slide behaviour could be chosen as ‘legacy’ (303 type, slide to) or ‘standard’ (as it is, slide from) then I bet every user would choose the former. So in a nutshell - go to slide track, enter slides where wanted, notes slide from where set to the next note, maybe have the option in setup where constant rate or constant time can be set. The action of putting in a slide will override any pre-defined note length setting so that the slide does a legato pitch change just as on a stringed instrument or 303.

EDIT - Your “Come From” vs “Go To” analogy is spot on too.

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#4

Everything stated so far is spot on. Slide to next note makes more sense and the fact that there is so much more involved in making it sound “ordinary” is insane. It’s almost like running up a hill to then go back down. We all know it would be much easier to just start at the top and go. That said, I can live with the second note backward slide craziness, but the gate time is just tedious. If I want to slide a note from trig 1 to trig 16, I should be able to put tigs on each and then just hit slide on trig 16 (although it should be trig 1) and it should automatically override any previous note length settings.

I feel the a4 is still new enough to make is change and not upset anybody at has already accepted the current method.

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#5

You owners of four analog as you think it actually behaves on the lines acid?
I am undecided whether to buy this machine or 2 x0xrack 2 with distortion pedals …
On youtube I have not found much bassline like these:
http://www.acidvoice.com/
I mean … do you really think that four analog bass line is great for acid
O is for more and can not replace tb 303 and its clones?
How does the filter?
Can anyone help me in choosing?

#6

I’m gonna pitch in with my tuppence worth, I couldn’t care less if it didn’t sound or work like any other machine, no in fact that’d be a bonus, this is a new imaginative & unique machine, however, if things aren’t working well or intuitively or musically or consistently then i’m onboard too, let’s get it fixed

Sorry to go against the flow, but I gotta say that Elektron have it spot on in_my_opinion, when i lay down some grid notes and throw a few high notes in i want to slide to, I intuitively (without 303 experience/expectations) place the slide on the high note, it’s because that effect seems linked to and most evident on that step that it seems so natural to me to place it on the destination, let’s not get bogged down by metaphors from other instruments or from other gear or even notation, it feels right in this synthetic Elektron environment to me

So, in my opinion this is a good judgement, when you set off on a fresh track you generally have grid note lengths of 1/16ths and with a slide value of 36, which seems about right, it plays nicely, to my non-acid expectations of it anyway - mostly !

I like nudging the mutes, accents, slides and so on as well as the sequencer notes , you know, Fn+> or Fn+< in the respective menus, and the slide is interesting for all but those occasions where the two adjacent notes are the same - this seems odd, it’s also not consistent sounding whether you slide up/down, the filter comes into play here

I am totally against any changes which remove the possibility of nuance by forcing assumptions, let’s celebrate the fact that you can vary the slide time per trig (if you want) and velocity and length and envelope trig settings - and what happens if you remove (or nudge) a slide if the underlying parameters have been changed to fit an assumption or model?

I think the issue of expectation is key here and I think Elektron have left the door open for more potential variation and user control at the expense of restricted assumptions, it’s not a 303, it’s much more than that in different ways

I’m not suggesting that there aren’t headaches and inconsistencies or that there isn’t room for improvement, I haven’t tried previous OSs, so I don’t know if they’d implemented it differently or better, i’m not against change, but i’m against restrictions or assumptions - there are definitely issues wrt the retriggering if you want to think of it as one extended note, but I personally prefer the current retriggering from a sonic gratification perspective. I especially like sliding to, it’s also more consistent with how parameter slides work.

I see the AF as an improvising tool, so anything which limits that side is a no-go, toggling slides would be a nightmare if the underlying note parameters were destructively changed. So I think Elektron have the balance just about right, I like it the way it is, it’s much more flexible in my opinion, just don’t think of it as being like any other real or electronic instrument, that’s my feedback

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#7

+1 on above.

Admittedly, I have not totally learned by any means inside and out the A4, actually, only surface. I do not give-up easily and yes, for the mainly ambient/atmos-ethereal-whatever-genre I use mostly hardware synths, keys and modules, digital to analog, I would actually like the trigless trigs, slides (note/pitch/et al) somewhat more “studio friendly option mode” and I think this ALL needs to tidily tie into proper midi out as to allow integration with hardware synths other than Elektron because I along with others already have our sampling means taken care of and perhaps additional hardware sequencer, filter banks as well; some of us never ceased manipulating samples by means other than MPC, having some quite great older synths that make it not feasible to buy an OT.
being a synthesis, it’s been hard for me to get over IMO a weak Filter 1 and hope this is addressed in O.S. update because I think this would help with the analog sweetspots on A4 with doing evolving note slides/trigless trigs…

Would be really sweet if Elektron had an update that activated whatever that "mystery chunk of tasty memory in A4’…not about to ever sell this…yes, can be frustrating because unlike others, I find working with DSI Mono Evolver Keyboard and it’s modulation sequencer, where pitch as a destination can indeed be done.

FYI–Bought A4 to augment my two DSI MEK’s.

But I totally agree with getting past the thought that any given instrument HAS to have same exact way of doing things as aforementioned, this thinking a different way…making one really think, sparks creativity…

#8

awesome thread

an option to encapsulate various note options into the note slide param would be awesome

#9

Sounds like setting up the A4 to respond to overlapping notes from my Midibox (or Ableton) is not possible then ?