Polymetric exclusion?

Elektron Gear Model:Samples
#1

I’m just getting acquainted with Model:Samples and I’m particularly interested in making polymetric rhythms.

One feature that is really important to me would be the ability to exclude (not trigger) the sound on one track when it coincides with another track’s trigger.

With complex polymetric patterns, it’s not easy to predict when two tracks will have sounds on the same beat, so I am hoping this can be done with a condition of some sort. I note there are ways to use one track to stop a trigger on a neighbouring track, but does this work polymetrically? Since the numbers (and distances between numbers) of beats would change relative to one another using different lengthed tracks, I guess not.

So is there a way to make one track’s triggers always override another track’s triggers when they coincide? And if not, where can I set up a petition to have this feature?? :sweat_smile: Because it is super useful for, say, making sure a snare and bass drum don’t sound at the same time, which would be unwanted in most drum patterns.

Thanks!

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#2

Nei just “looks” for a the most recently executed trig condition on the neighbouring track. Track lengths shouldn´t play any role. That wouldn´t help you, though I guess, because it looks for trig conditions and not trigs.

Maybe you could work with microtiming instead? Microtime all trigs on tracks that could mask each other out of the way? A little microtiming to avoid transients clashing usually already helps a lot.

#3

Thanks for your answer. Is there somewhere I can pitch the feature?

Sorry, I don’t understand how microtiming would help. How would this mask one sound with another? It seems to me they would still both trigger and play out in full, just slightly out of time.

#4

feature-request@elektron.se

Yeah, they wouldn’t happen at the same time. Unfortunately I can’t think of a way to automatically stop one track from triggering.

Assuming you have two mid range-y sounds on two tracks or two bass sounds. If you microtime all trigs on one of those tracks a little late, they wouldn’t clash so badly. It’s not q solution for your triggering problem, just a way to get them to mix better.

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#5

Sounds like you’ve described choking.
Does model:samples have choke groups?

#6

Not as such no. The usual advice for choke groups on M:S is to, for example, have a track of closed hihats with sound/parameter-locked open hats on the same track. Taking into account the OPs needs to make the two sounds polymetric, I can’t see how that would work.

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#7

Yeah thats not a choke group.

Choke group proper is if track 1 is playing, any sound in the same group (eg track 2) gets cut off.

Lots of drum machines have it, elektrons in general dont it seems.

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#8

Agreed, it’s the closest you can get on an m:s or m:c … I have no knowledge of the others.

#9

Yeah no choke groups on the M:S. Can’t think of anything that would do what OP is looking for…microtiming trigs out of the way probably will help with the masking problem a bit, though.

#10

Not sure if this helps, but just to try: would plocking notes to 100% count as conditional? Would that help for Nei notes on the neigbouring track?

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#11

I thought about putting noFill on all trigs, but NEI looks for the most recent executed trig condition, so the trig condition has to really do something. Afaik. Not 100% sure. Maybe someone should try…

#12

Sorry this isn’t the answer you were looking for, but it could be easily done on Rytm.
Rytm has 4 groups of 2 mutually exclusive tracks.

1010music Blackbox has freely assignable choke groups.

#13

Good ol Machinedrum has mute groups (chokes) and even trig groups for layering tracks (one trig on a track trigs all the others in the group).
Rytm has fixed choke groups.

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#14

And, sorry I’m coming from DT so I don’t know if this is possible, but locking all the spaces between notes on track 1 with /FILL and then locking the notes on the next track with NEI would work for 2 tracks, right?

#15

Yeah I know the AR has it. (I owned one) didn’t know about machine drum.

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#16

I honestly never use NEI. Just offered it as hypothesis to try out:)

#17

Same.
But maybe it indeed could work with noFill on the neighbouring track.

NEI is true if the most recently evaluated trig condition on the neighbor track was true. (PRE and PRE conditions on the neighbor track are ignored and not evaluated.)

NoFILL is true when FILL is false. A trig with this trig condition is active when you are not in FILL mode.

–> So, when not in fill mode, noFill is true, that means NEI should count that as “recently evaluated”. NEI ("fires), but we want NEI to not play the trig…So use noNEI? This shit confuses me…

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#18

I have the same

(Only I was thinking of using 100% or 99% instead of pre/nofill)

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#19

I’m not sure these count as trig conditions…the manual states that Pre and noPre conditions don’t count for evaluating Nei/NoNei. So we either use NoFill (which means always think about them when using fill mode) or we’re lucky and 100% counts…

I can’t get to my machines till in an hour or so…but that would be really cool if it’d work!

Trig conditions work similar on all Elektrons (given no bugs present^^), so anyone could test this, doesn’t have to be the M:S.

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#20

Ok, lol, these trig conditions are hella confusing!

Seems to work with 100% or noFills on trigs as we thought, with one big miss…it does not take into account different track length or tempo multiplier. So, NoNei never plays with a trig on the same step as on the neighbouring track…

Maybe someone can confirm…

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