Sharing sounds and parameters to other patterns : Kits

Is it possible to share sounds on a pattern next patterns without resetting the parameters like all the other elektron boxes? (i’ve got all the boxes except the digitakt). When you chain to the next pattern, it will have it own sounds and not adopting the parameters from the previous pattern. On all the other boxes is when you won’t load a sound on a channel, the channel just plays the sound of the previous channel. I hope I’m missing somethings else this chaining isn’t really live performance friendly.

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Welcome to little box kits per pattern…
Unfortunately the kit system is confusing for some folks, so many have wanted a strict kit per pattern relationship, I have yet to understand why this would ultimately be preferable, but nevertheless that’s where we’re at…

Your gonna have to do some tricks like copying your sound and pasting it, or storing you sounds to the sound pool or plus drive and loading them to the next pattern… Or other kinds of copy/paste tactics… :smiley:

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copying sounds to the next pattern works but when switching the next pattern, for example, your opened filter on pattern 1 will reset to the filter param in your next pattern. So I guess I have max 4:4 bars + cond trigs to create a song for live performance. Or else I should my MM / octatrack sequence the digitone. bummer.

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I feel ya, I don’t actually have the Digi boxes I’m just an Elektron geek so I know a lot about them… Hopefully others can chime in with solutions they’ve found from experience…

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Yep looks like each track has it’s own seperate sounds so switching from one pattern to another won’t keep the previous sounds. You also have to copy all the sounds over individually from track to track when creating a new one.

would there any OS update for this behaviour? Or should I stick with the arpeggiator / pattern scale tricks or external midi sequencers? I believe this is an easy update tho, but for now it’s for me the only disappointment. Also songmode is missing, but I always chain tbh. now I can’t :frowning:

I really wouldn’t count on those functionalities being added, maybe a few years down the line but judging by the development speed of overbridge it probably won’t happen. Chain mode is not going to be implemented on digitakt and digitone.

OK, new Elektron user here. I just want to make sure I’m understanding this - when I switch patterns, all changes made on the previous pattern’s synth/fx pages are lost? And there isn’t any way to have synth/fx changes reflected in every pattern of a given track? That seems like a massive problem when it comes to live performance, and could be a deal-breaker for me. Please tell me I’m misunderstanding. Why would anyone want that? Instead of having 128 usable patterns, you’ve basically got just one… Is this a bug or the intended functionality?

your previous pattern sounds just stays in place on your previous pattern, don’t worry :wink: You just can’t create ‘kits’ to share with other patterns. Just got response from the support :

So you’re right, both the digitone and the digitakt doesn’t have kits but all the parameters are connected to the pattern. I understand that it’s a feature that is very good to have but it wasn’t initially built with that. It might be implemented in the future, but I can’t promise anything.

Hmm, I think I phrased that wrong. The changes aren’t ‘lost’, but rather they don’t carry over to the next pattern on the track. What I’d like to do is make changes to the sound on a track, and have those changes carry over to every pattern on that track, i.e. link sound and parameter changes to the track rather than the pattern. Otherwise, any live tweaking is lost when you change patterns, no? I really hope I’m just confused here…

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you are right :frowning: .when you chain to a next pattern, you get the sounds you programmed for that pattern. If the chain returns to the previous track, you will be there where you left with your parameters.

But i’m getting creative now with inf note and a complex arpegiator track. but now there is this bug that if you chain to the next track with the arp running, the arp, with it’s sound, still plays. this only happens if the arp is disabled on the track of the next pattern. And you can’t alter the sound also :(.

Imho these are major missing features for live performance, so i need to find a way to sequence this from another device ( monomachine / ot or ableton :frowning: ).

tbh, this is the best sounding elektron machine I own tho…

Yeah, this is kind of mind-blowing to me. I was under the assumption that these boxes were designed for live performance, but this issue sort of cripples it for any sort of live improvisation. It’s a shame because it does sound great, and the sequencer is otherwise excellent. It’s actually still a great sequencer for external gear, but not for the internal synth engine, which is sort of ridiculous. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed in an update.

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Personally I build a pattern the way I want it and then copy the full pattern to 2nd, 3rd, etc… then make the changes after you’ve dialed in the sound on the first pattern. It’s not better or worse it’s just the way that it works. Since I started accounting for the “kit per pattern” way of thinking I’ve very rarely felt the need to go back. Save your tweaked samples as “sounds” then use them across patterns. As for it crippling the live use, that’s simply not true, it’s just a different way of doing things. Search YouTube for Mr. Dataline, dude it’s insaine! If you get away from the song mode way of thinking you can potentially jam for hours using just a few patterns. Mutes, CTR all, turning off and on different parpameters, and the temp save area let you mangle and go off into way crazy territory and then bring it all back together with a reload pattern. It’s NOT for everyone though I guess, like myself, I can’t work in a linear sequencer to create things, I like creating patterns and then messing with those and sticking them all over the place. Other people like a straight up linear way of doing things and chunks of patterns just doesn’t suit their workflow. I think it’s cool that Elektron made these in this fashion, you get creative and go to places you otherwise wouldn’t. Elektron wouldn’t be Elektron if it weren’t for bucking the trend of xoxoxox boxes and would be just another Roland or Korg, and even they are now implementing things like per step conditions. Different strokes I guess. Or maybe a better way of saying it would be different instruments for different tasks. :slight_smile:

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Why can’t you just copy and paste parameter pages from one pattern to another? Doesn’t that work?

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Doh! Yeah that works as well. Like take filter page copy. Go to filter page on n DT pattern paste. Totally slipped my mind.

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@PTSowns, Yes, you can copy and paste parameter pages, but this is hugely inconvenient as there are six parameter pages per sound/pattern, and it requires switching back and forth between patterns. That isn’t workable in a live context. You can also save and load the sound or copy the whole pattern, but again, you can’t do that live. Surely there has to be a better solution.

@Synj00, I’m not sure this is really a ‘workflow’ issue, more of a design flaw. You can still do mutes, control all, etc., outside of the ‘kit per pattern’ architecture. Reload Ptn could easily be repurposed as Reload Sound. This would allow you to mangle your sounds without all the attendant problems of ‘kit per pattern’. As for Dataline, the most in-depth DN video I was able to find is this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVmpDVUqPX8 - and it doesn’t look like he uses any pattern changes whatsoever in the whole 18 minutes, likely because it would screw up all of the meticulous tweaking he’s doing.

Everyone seems to be complaining about the lack of a song mode, but it seems like there’s an even more fundamental flaw in architecture here, one that afflicts both manual pattern changes and chaining.

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For me this would be a great option… To have all chosen patterns linked, and changes reflected in all of them. A compromise would be to have a one key combination that takes the sound and the pattern in one, for pasting elsewhere. Currently having to copy sound, paste sound, copy pattern, paste pattern, before we even get to effect parameters, well it is inefficient. And this doesn’t help with the creative flow. It slows it down.

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So have you realized you can future paste patterns yet? All along the digitone could do what you were complaining about lol

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Fascinating

The ”big boxes” all mostly had this distinction on kits and patterns, and people complained about forgetting about it while playing/jamming, and ruining one or more of their pattns because they messed with the same kit on diff. pattns by accident. Heck, I’ve done this a few times myself, every time it happens you feel dumb. That killer groove you spent an afternoon tweaking to perfection, its just a bloopy mess now when you recall it. FVCK.

Some years go by and elektron decides to make cheaper, more intuitive boxes for the people. Lo and behold, the kits and pattns were joined together and no user would ever mess up their pattns ever again! Much praise was born…

two years later, someone finds out that always having the kits n pattns together might have not been the best idea… Soo, no what? Elektron has tried to give us both methods. Which will we choose?

FWIW I always preferred having the pattns and kits separate… There are also other aspects that I find superior with the ”big uns”, like having 4 setups per project, swing trigs etc, but hey, people want simpler gear… and I bet the DT/DN is outselling the big uns. They’re more ”fun” people say… But I dunno. I think if DN was also made to A4 form factor and had all the big box staple features, I’d probably upgrade ASAP.

Ugh, this one turned out a bit ranty… apologies :nyan:

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Kits are my improv
My only improv
They make me happy
When jams are gray
You’ll never know, nauts
How much I love them
Please don’t take my kits away…

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