Relatively new to the Elektron scene as I have just recently picked up an Octatrack which I liked so much that I promptly went out and picked up an Analog Keys. Now I’m considering completing going for a trifecta and buying the RYTM next month. I’ve been reading through the manual and I noticed there doesn’t seem to be a way called out to do rolls/flams. Is this an as yet unimplemented feature or am I missing something? Would you use re-trigs or something to accomplish this goal?
Another question which is bothering me a bit - similar to the AK, it seems you can’t have different time signatures for drum tracks, although different pattern lengths are allowed in advanced scale mode? It seems like this would make programming polyrhythms pretty difficult (maybe not impossible, but difficult to say the least). I know Elektron seems to have a problem with allowing overlap in features between their products, but this seems like a pretty big oversight with a dedicated drum machine.
Is this a feature that will be added later or on the horizon somewhere? I guess I can sequence my drums in Ableton and do it there, but I really prefer working OTB as much as I can.
Anyway, these complaints/concerns aside I’m enjoying my Elektron gear immensely, just looking for some clarification on the above.
Rolls are called retrigs on the rytm. You can program them into the sequencer by holding a trig and pressing up (retrig+), which brings up a little menu where you can customise the retrig params. I like this retrig system better than the octatrack’s one because it’s tempo synced and can easily do ascending or descending volume. The other way is to play it manually on the pads, but this can’t be recorded into the sequencer. It should be coming in an update soon at some point though.
Regarding track lengths: you get individual track lengths but not track scale. So each track can loop at 2, 17, 59, whatever for polyrhythms, but if you change the scale to 1/2 or x2 or whatever, the change happens globally.
So the scale length thing will work, but it seems kind of dumb that you can’t change time signatures on a per machine basis with the RYTM the way you can on the Octatrack. I understand not being able to do it with the A4/AK since it seems like that piece of kit is geared towards leads/basses/pads/etc. but the inability to vary time signatures seems like a pretty silly thing to not have with a rhythmic box. Is there any chance at all that they’d ever change this or is it just never going to happen and I should forget about it now?
I really dig African and Middle Eastern drumming styles and mixing time signatures is a really key element of those rhythmic cycles such that maybe the best way to go about doing this would be to sequence from Ableton/Push which takes me back ITB where I don’t want to be. I work with computers all day and the last thing I want to do when I get home is look at a stupid screen.
you can have different time signatures per track…
you just have to wrap your head around it mathmatically. 5/4 = 20 beats 6/4 = 24 … etc etc[/quote]
This.
I like to open up 64 steps, bang out something on the pads, and then shorten the step amount accordingly.
