Sequencing MD and RYTM together in song modes - tips?

I’m forcing myself to arrange songs in song/chain mode on my MD and RYTM because frankly, I want to know as much as possible about the hardware. I also feel like having a skeleton laid out where I can go into each pattern and make different fills, do different parameter tweaks and have all that happening before I print to audio could be a lot more advantageous than doing it all in the DAW later. I also would love to be able to play my tracks live because I think it will make writing faster if I do it enough. Plus I’m arranging with my ears and going by feel which I think is the ultimate way to make a dance tune (at least to me).

The key thing here is my master clock is ableton and I send clock out of that into an E-RM multiclock and into all my hardware. That is how I start my machines, so when it is time to record I just record enable in Ableton and I’m off.

So in this tune I have the RYTM carrying the main elements and the MD with the percussive sounds and ghost kick. Pretty basic stuff. What I did so far is make 8 copies of my main 64 bar pattern in the RYTM and 8 copies of my 32 bar pattern in the MD. From there I will edit the patterns down, get the basic arrangement and then start adding fills and such. I made tracks this way on a Cirklon before but now with more machines in the mix, things start to get a little more daunting.

One reason is the MD song mode is a bit different. I believe both machines don’t memorize mutes per pattern and you have to just delete the trigs. Thats fine because it lets me mute the clap or bass if I want and then track that in later on. It makes sense there, especially for live jamming, where I can mute/unmute whenever I want.

But what’s odd is in the Machine drum I made a basic 32 bar pattern, set the repeat for 8 and hit play. When I hit play on the MD itself, (not triggering with ableton) it plays 8 times and then stops. Perfect. But when I hit play in ableton and trigger it through the DAW/E-rm Multiclock, it plays only one time and then stops. This doesn’t make much sense to me. I can post this in the MD forum as well but I thought maybe some you vets here may know this. I could easily be missing something obvious here. I should mention I hit stop twice so it resets each time I try this.

The RYTM song mode seems to make a little more sense. I hit play in ableton and it plays the duration I tell it to and then stops. Cool.

I definitely need to RTFM a little more because the song edit mode button turns two shades of blue and the mute pads turn yellow, and I don’t know what that means. So I need to learn that.

But I thought I’d see if anyone of you have ideas for that MD issue and also if you have done this type of worklfow and can offer any advice. I can see this becoming really awesome for composing really nice beats that have more movement and complexity than a DAW can do without a lot of editing. Or maybe I am just crazy. Thoughts, advice welcome

Dont know about the md, Never had one, but on the rytm the yellow mute pads are kind off pattern mutes for your song mode. At first you can chain patterns and then in song mode you can program which chain to play in which order and how often . It is pretty cool once you understand it.

Definitely look at the manual and at the forum and maybe watch a video about chains and songs!

With the yellow mute mode You can for example play pattern a3 two times with kick and snare muted and then one time with kick muted and then one time with all sounds on. Then the next row (chain) with patterns and their mute states…

Basically you move with the cursor to the different patterns in song edit mode and set the mutes per pattern…

For using song mode on both devices simultaneously it could definitely get complicated.

While you could program songs for both and start them at the same time (sync) what you can also do is have the other machine follow with program change messages, this is what I did with a4 and AR…

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This is very helpful thank you. I may have to try that program change message idea if I can figure it out. Either that or I will just switch the patterns manually on the MD. Kind of a bummer though for live jams.

Mind blown about the song mode. I think I need to chain the patterns first and get that down . But I had no idea you could put mutes in like that! If I understand correctly I could basically make some transitions by muting the kick on the last 16 beats of a bar for example. If so, that would be sick.

I watched a video on the song chain mode but it did not go into that much depth. Is there a good one you recommend? I will also of course RTM, but I learn visually too.

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Have a look at this one: from 16mins 45sec onwards…

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This was very helpful. I pretty much figured out song mode last night with this and the manual. It’s really not that complex. The next thing I need to work on is transitions and fills between patterns.

I know how to make fills but what I believe is that there is probably no way to automate the transitions unless I just punch them into the different patterns. Of course there is performance mode, and I am thinking maybe I need to dive into that more next.

I may just program the transitions in myself. The only thing that is tricky is most of my patterns are64 beats long and I repeat them twice. So its either performance mode or copy paste into a new pattern and tweak that one.

Anyway, im rambling, just figuring out my workflow on this. I am loving song mode so far because looking at each pattern and adding more or less movement to hi hats or more verb to the snare on one pattern is so easy, especially with live recording a knob.

Looks like a song for me will be at least 16 different patterns. Many will be a base pattern followed by a copy of that with transitions edited in.

You could use FILL or 2:2 conditions for transition rather than having to duplicate the patterns.