Song mode or chaining patterns together

Hello good people,

I bought the AR about a week ago, and it is my first Elektron unit so far (however I am getting a used MD today). It is absolutely incredible, beyond what I expected. However, there is, as many have said, a bit of a learning curve, even though it is not a steep as I had feared.

One question that Im coming back to and I am not sure where to find in the (excellent) manual is if there is any way to link patterns together without making a song arrangement. What I mean is that I for example want A1 and A2 to play in sequence then be able to jump to, for instance, A3 which plays by itself - or any combination like that. Basically I want to make the grid longer, if you get me.

Anyways, I am sure this is a very obvious and easy thing to do, but I havent really understood the song mode yet, so I thought I would just ask instead.

Any help is dearly appreciated.

/

Alexander

AFAIK - im a bit of a noob myself: a chain is a sequence of patterns whereas songs are pre-saved chains. Chains are much easier to improvise with. If you want a pattern to repeat within a chain or song, turn off both modes. Chain and song mode will both repeat the sequence.

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You want to use Chain mode for this. Try to figure out how it works; it’s not the most well-written part of the manual.

A few tips:

  • You don’t have to be in song edit mode to edit chains.
  • Chains are displayed in the bottom left part of the display.
  • Hold the Chain button to move the cursor around. You’re either on a pattern (cursor looks like […]), or in between (cursor looks like |). When you’re on a pattern, you can replace, when you’re in between you can insert.
  • While holding the chain button you can set per-entry mutes (yellow pads).
  • Chains loop. You can drop out of Chain mode to keep looking the current pattern and then go back in to continue.
  • Use function + yes to jump to the entry the cursor is on.
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I pretty much get this, but where are chains actually stored - can you store one with each pattern, and then either the chain or just the pattern itself plays depending on whether you have chain mode activated?

You store chains in a song. You can store multiple songs inside a project. You can switch between chains in “song edit mode” which you can access by pressing [PROJECT] + [SONG].

Awesome tips…chain/song mode has been a bit of a paradigm shift from the way the MnM deals with chains/songs. I was curious why you couldn’t save a song while in edit mode, but it makes since that you can do a lot of the chain edits while not in song mode. Thanks again.

Why the transition between patterns in chain mode is under both commands of MASTER len and chng? I mean if I set len (INF) and chng (whatever value) I’ll have no chain at all. In this case would make sense to have the chain under the command of chng parameter since I can switch patterns in normal mode.