Swing + uneven pattern lengths

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

hi all,
i’ve noticed that the swing seems to be calculated and applied to trigs before the pattern length is taken into account, leading to ‘broken’ sounding swing. this can be heard when using pattern lengths of 3, 5, 7 etc.

e.g: press func+page to set a pattern to just 3 notes. add 3 trigs to them. set swing to a noticeable value.
because of the odd number of steps, the ‘wrong’ steps are swung on every second repetition.

shouldn’t the swing be applied post- pattern length, so that the swing is kept intact no matter the length? i’m wondering if this is a bug, or if it’s just the way elektron gear works. i don’t know - this is my first experience with elektron!

cheers

#2

audio example with 3-step woodblock pattern (plus 4-step kick pattern):
https://clyp.it/iehpve4y
first bit how it currently swings
second bit is how i feel it should swing

#3

second version sounds better imo.
cant say ive noticed though i dont do much with weird step lengths , they’re normally even numbers in my stuff.

#4

the swing is working on a track position level, not on the master track position

so as the swing affects every other trig it’s going to be strange for odd length patterns
as the swinging trigs are normally the even trigs your 3 length pattern swings like this (swing on 2 of every three count) [same as if you turned swing off and adjusted micro timing, if DT has this]

:white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle:

if you made a 2x3 duplicate that was 6 long (swing 2 4 6) it’d swing on these points as you desire

:white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle::white_circle::large_blue_circle:

basically - it’s not a bug, but the way it’s implemented - you don’t swing the master sequencer position, it’s on a track by track basis (and on the analog boxes the swung trigs can be edited too, the OT even has individual swing amount per track - but they all do swing on a track basis - so you can’t swing odd length patterns without the issues you documented)

you could perhaps argue for it as a feature request … i.e. swing every other trig passed on the master seq position, but I doubt they’d be excited to do so

4 Likes
#5

ok. if it’s the same with the other Elektron gear, i’ll have to work around it. cheers

1 Like
#6

as an update to this, in case anyone is interested…

it’s possible to ‘correctly’ swing odd-numbered step patterns by duplicating/doubling the length so that the pattern is divisible by 2.

so a 3-step pattern becomes 6, a 5-step becomes 10, 7 becomes 14.
it becomes awkward after this, as doubling 9-step and above takes you over the 16-steps of the seq, but it’s a decent workaround for now!

1 Like
#8

the answer was here 2 months ago :wink:

1 Like
#9

doh
heh, sorry man, i completely missed that bit.
still, good to figure these things out on your own sometimes!
cheers :slight_smile:

1 Like
#10

100% true - sticks better

1 Like