THE FILL, our missing feature/friend?

danlukas · 2014-05-25T14:01:07.000Z

""t"":

Elektron decided very early on that having a dedicated Fill or A/B button like you find on some drum machines didn’t fit with their views on how patterns should work on their machines.

why do you say this? is it because it is simply not included?

t · 2014-05-25T15:05:00.000Z

Yes, pretty much. The people who make these instruments, esp. in the lower-volume “boutique” context Elektron operates in often have very strong opinions on what features should and what features should not be part of their products. I’m pretty sure the lack of this feature is not an oversight.

Peoplemuver · 2014-05-26T07:22:51.000Z

Hey not sure if this would work perhaps trigger mutes can be assigned to a scene, but in this case un mute???

bluewolfse7en · 2014-05-26T08:02:28.000Z

2 ways I do fills that might help.
First, set say RS track vol to 0 then in Perf set the vol 100 or whatever. Now hit ReTrig & leave it running. Whenever you want to hear the fill just go into Perf mode & hit the pad. Works great leading up to a pattern change.

Second way that adds variety & allows rearranged steps is this.
Choose individual track lengths. On the fill track, steps 1-16, program your regular trigs or indeed none at all.
Steps 17-32 program your fill/rearranged trigs or whatever. (Program 17-64 for longer transitions).
Now switch track length back 16 & hit play. When you want the fill to sound open up the length!

SB-SIX · 2014-05-26T08:07:55.000Z

What you can also do, is place some extra trigs with volume 0, and raise them on scene/performance pad presses. The downside is you can’t mute some triggers and raise others.
Being able to set/mute trigs in the sequencer when holding scene pads would solve this.

bluewolfse7en · 2014-05-26T08:25:40.000Z

^ I’m all for Elektron getting all Cirklon style with their sequencers, wouldn’t be that hard to implement but I get the impression they have their vision & that’s it

snowcrash · 2014-05-26T11:01:56.000Z

""bluewolfse7en"":

wouldn’t be that hard to implement

Are you a software developer? I doubt so, as sequencers or any other realtime applications, where live manipulation of data and exact timing is essential, is not trivial at all.

pseen · 2014-05-26T11:13:01.000Z

Dynamic mute groups would also be good for fills. Let’s say you had some toms programmed but muted, and when you unmute that track, the toms suppress the other sounds of that mute group, for instance the snare and hats.

johnny · 2014-05-26T11:21:12.000Z

Guys, Does the Rytm not have the ‘Retrig’ parameter like the MD and OT?

StinkyBeat · 2014-05-26T11:42:51.000Z

[quote=“” pseen""]
Dynamic mute groups would also be good for fills. Let’s say you had some toms programmed but muted, and when you unmute that track, the toms suppress the other sounds of that mute group, for instance the snare and hats.
[/quote]

Mute groups is one of the main thing I have planned for scenes. Should be pretty straight forward to set up. Dynamic as you want it to be, replace elements, bring some down when something comes in…

pseen · 2014-05-26T11:45:41.000Z

""StinkyBeat"":

Mute groups is one of the main thing I have planned for scenes. Should be pretty straight forward to set up. Dynamic as you want it to be, replace elements, bring some down when something comes in…

OK, I haven’t read the manual closely enough to be familiar with the possibilities of the scenes. The functionality I described is probably already in there?

bluewolfse7en · 2014-05-26T11:47:28.000Z

[quote=“” snowcrash""]

[quote=“bluewolfse7en”]wouldn’t be that hard to implement
[/quote]

Are you a software developer? I doubt so, as sequencers or any other realtime applications, where live manipulation of data and exact timing is essential, is not trivial at all.

[/quote]
Nah I’m not but judging by what Colin manages to achieve with Cirklon I would have thought things like random or alternate directions would be doable? The point I’m making is that he seams to able to come up with solutions to feature requests, is open to user feedback, Elektron less so.
With the AR for eg, there was no beta testing, no room for outside opinion, it’s not a critism it’s an observation!
And finally I’m not for one minute suggesting it’s trivial

bluewolfse7en · 2014-05-26T11:53:02.000Z

[quote=“” johnny""]
Guys, Does the Rytm not have the ‘Retrig’ parameter like the MD and OT?
[/quote]

You have a dedicated ReTrig function for each track that can be divided/multiplied with left/ right arrows. You can even lock ReTrig values to steps using the up arrow

danlukas · 2014-05-26T14:14:35.000Z

The down side of using scenes as mute groups is that you have a limited number of parameters that you can use overall on scenes, 48.

danlukas · 2014-05-26T14:42:51.000Z

""bluewolfse7en"":

You have a dedicated ReTrig function for each track that can be divided/multiplied with left/ right arrows. You can even lock ReTrig values to steps using the up arrow

You can’t add retrig to scenes and perf, right?

bluewolfse7en · 2014-05-26T15:14:48.000Z

Not as such but you can leave retrig running with vol set to 0 then bring in as needed with scene or perf! I used to do a similar thing on the MD. Have a track filled with trigs then rhythmically mute/unmute to create fills.

snowcrash · 2014-05-28T11:53:14.000Z

""bluewolfse7en"":

Nah I’m not but judging by what Colin manages to achieve with Cirklon I would have thought things like random or alternate directions would be doable? The point I’m making is that he seams to able to come up with solutions to feature requests, is open to user feedback, Elektron less so.

With the AR for eg, there was no beta testing, no room for outside opinion, it’s not a critism it’s an observation!
And finally I’m not for one minute suggesting it’s trivial

Yes, Colin’s business runs on a completely different level and somebody correct me, but I don’t think he does the Cirklon for a living. If so, that allows him to be more elaborate and open to development than Elektron who are bound to more classic mechanisms of business development on the market.

As for the software-side of sequencer-logic: I wrote a couple of primitive sequencer myself and what I can share from that experience is, that there are different ways to approach the basic architecture of any sequencer. Early design decisions can have major impact on how easy and if at all certain features are possible. This is especially true with realtime applications.

E.g. features like parameter-slides and tempo-synced LFOs are very tricky stuff to do since there are always limitations in what can be achieved logically.

Also MIDI-synchronization is quite a pain in the ass, as there’s no tempo information that can be retrieved in real-time from just a signal. It must be handled in realtime and e.g. slew rates must be calculated by guessing the right duration between steps etc…

When you want to switch sequencer directions on the fly you’ll need a good application core that can handle all of the above. And as anyone of you might have noticed, the Elektron sequencer can only choose a minimum number of 2 steps for any sequence length. You can’t set it to 1, which to me is a little hint on how the sequencer works internally: it probably needs a “next step” to calculate stuff.

But anyway, I think it could be done with e.g. the arpeggiator in the A4 and OT, since they basically are primitive sequencers by themselves and don’t need to deal with anything in between steps besides note-lengths. I would love it if there was a possibility to add direction-changes and maybe also skip-steps to the arp. That would give us a Moog-style sequencer within those machines.

One more comment on reversing sequencers

There’s a right and a musical way to do this. Let’s assume a sequence length of 8 steps. Usually, if you work on a groove, on- and off-beats are essential parts of it. So instead of
reversing
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
to
8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
it can be more musical when the reversed version starts at 1:
1-8-7-6-5-4-3-2

Makes for much more interesting and musical results. Also because usually on the 1 you’ll place the key-note of the riff and more importantly when working with “rytms”: the downbeat!

So thinking of that it can also be a very nice approach to the pingpong mode.

We basically know 2 pingpong modes, variant A:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-
7-6-5-4-3-2

Makes for some nice polyrhythms, but sometimes can result in unwanted harmonic variation, so usually variant B is also offered, repeating the last and first step:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-
8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

Well you’re in sync now but the double notes will sometimes feel a bit primitive and ungroovy.

BUUUUT, if we apply the musical downbeat concept on the repeating step mode you’d get:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-
1-8-7-6-5-4-3-2

Got me?

void · 2014-05-28T12:09:13.000Z

nice post!
i’ve experimented quite a bit with the A4 sequencer, reversing patterns, scaling tracks (e.g. doubletempo & odd scalings using microtiming), repeating phrases & such and I agree it’s challenging to make something that’s universally useful & musical… rhythm is one thing, harmony/melody can sound quite bad pretty fast…

on the A4, imo, the best thing you can do to for interesting “chancey” pattern variations is to mess with a kit’s poly settings (e.g. use trk sounds + muting/unmuting tracks + enabling/disabling voices)… wish there was quicker access to poly setup.

""snowcrash"":

the Elektron sequencer can only choose a minimum number of 2 steps for any sequence length. You can’t set it to 1, which to me is a little hint on how the sequencer works internally: it probably needs a “next step” to calculate stuff.

the next step could be the same step, should be no problem… i think it’s more a consistency thing with the older machines…

snowcrash · 2014-05-28T12:22:39.000Z

""void"":

the next step could be the same step, should be no problem…

Logically yes, but that depends on how memory is addressed.

i think it’s more a consistency thing with the older machines…

Maybe, I don’t know the older machines that well. Still, would like to know, why it was there in the first place.

I just found it odd… uh even… nope, odd.

smokyfrog · 2014-05-28T12:30:24.000Z

Yes Colin does Cirklons for a living.