RANT: I wish grooveboxes weren't all 4 bars these days

a lot of these tricks like trig conditions, and wacky stuff like reverse and dj style tricks for your 4 bar loops seem like a bandaid for people not being able to play keyboards or even want to learn even a little bit of music theory(or in my case just playing bad melodies til they sound good/jamming, for years)… Also dont forget the addition of adjusting scales so you can’t play ‘the wrong keys’… I feel like a lot of these trig tricks are cool but lets be honest, the 90s and 2000s groove boxs could even record automations… EVEN BEAT KANGS BEAT THANG had 8 bars 05%20AM

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but on the DT and DN can’t you pattern chain 2 blank patterns and record 8 bar melodies that way? Not the ideal solution perhaps. Might be the easiest though. I do miss 8 bars per pattern like on my Korg EMX when I had it.

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Another +1 for the Deluge’s ‘as long as you want’ tracks.

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Don’t see nail polish often in this kind of demo’s :slight_smile:

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Yeah it’s a rare thing for me; I largely stopped because it attracted too much unwanted attention. Besides, @CarlMikaelBjork does it better than I ever did :smiley:

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What’s the op-z approach to this?

…wait a second…

all stepsequencer based grooveboxes have their limits…of course…for good reasons…but especially with the elektron grooveboxes there’s so much options to expand these “limitations” to turn them into ur advantage…so if u want to rant, first find out about scale per track and time signature multipliers…find out what that can for u and see if u still wanna rant a bit more…and if somebody is’nt aware of all the beyond 4/4 options in almost every groovebox out there, well, than keep on playing ur free willy guitars…my goodness…

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I totally agree with the first paragraph, and, the OP-Z’s approach is only almost perfect :slight_smile: you can place four trigs per trig, but only in live record mode. You can’t edit them, only delete and re-record them. (Yet.)

It’d be cool to be able to zoom in and out, and it would be nice to not be always pushed toward the 4 x 4/4 rails.

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I don’t find the elektron stuff good at chord progression anyway. I would not use elektron for that.
I find 4 bars plenty given when using the trig condition. If they add the scale per track on A4 mk1 and AR mk1, I’ll be very very happy.

Cheers,
Alex

There are workarounds for long melodic phrases or long chord sequences, yeah for sure, but they generally suck or are tedious/un-organic. And can be confusing when returning to old projects if there’s a lot of that stuff baked in (the micro-timing ‘two trigs on one step’ workaround for example).

Random variation bases are pretty well covered by the elektron sequencer but not so great for long, ‘intended’ sequences.

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AK’s pretty great for chord stuff imo. Limited voices but it has its own strengths and slots in to mixes really well.

I use Octatrack for Long pads… u can make long pads whit digitone and micro timing to and some p lock

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Chain 2 patterns together :+1:

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I agree that it can do nice chords, but it is not practical to have a 16 bars chords progression with chords, melodies, bassline on the A4. You take the daw, it is easy to do these things there.

Buy an Octatrack :slight_smile:

Also in Live if you want to trigger / de trigger things in LIVE … 1 bars on some track is very neat and more easy to program in real time and make variations in real time…

Then you have pattern variations also :wink:

if I felt that way in the ERA of 1 or 2 bars limit… Now 4 is the standard I felt less I need more.
And as in the Octatrack you can stream an entire back track …

Trig conditions also play a real role in that limit feeling or boring state at some point.
Not a problem for me.

People need to tweak more in LIVE their machine also, to annihilate the boring sensation !!!
If it’s only programming save bucks and keep yourself in a DAW, don’t you think ? :stuck_out_tongue: I would …

computers

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why can’t I just get 8 bars?

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Trying to find answers by yourself would be more of a contribution to the discussion.

Thing is, pattern chaining/song mode is pretty close from such solution.
Maybe not as convenient/ideal a solution as you would expect.

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Yeah agreed, I generally bail to daw for longer sequence stuff too. But that’s the point of asking for more bars :wink: so Elektron boxes are a little more inviting for that kind of stuff similarly to some other boxes out there…

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I’m not sure the two things are really related? Seems quite reasonable to desire a no fuss method to mess with longer chord progressions or melodies, doesn’t mean people aren’t tweaking the s#>t out of everything too :wink:

Probability and trig conditions can’t really substitute for traditional composition in many cases, where variation is intended to be totally precise…