Theoretical 'pot' for song mode/ save pattern chain - reward Elektron (or their charity of choice)

Elektron Gear
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Hi y’all,

For the first time ever I just sent a ticket to elektron (well, to be fair, I opened a ticket last year when my DT had a LED fail. That was an incredible experience - best service ever. It was repaired and sent back to the UK in a week!).

Anyway, I sent a request for ‘pattern save’ mode. I’ve been triggered (haha) by the ST release, and that I won’t be buying it because I really need pattern save, and would love a song mode.

That’s just me. Trust me in saying that I’ve tried other workarounds - midi loops, programme change, using other gear. I’m a minimalist and DAW less user - so I don’t want to go back to the flagship boxes or have more than I need.

Now I would prefer this thread not to descend into a moaning, aggro, ‘why don’t you just xxxx’ debacle. If you don’t get it, that’s fine. That’s you. Please let’s not go down that rabbit hole, again.

For us hardcore ‘activists’ out there, I propose we develop a hypothetical pot (for the moment!) to promote a pattern save / song mode in the digi boxes in the next firmware update.

The manifesto:

  • by 22/04/23 (1 year on from today) Elektron introduces at least a basic working pattern chain save function in at least one digi box (DT, DN, ST).
  • all hypothetical commitments will need to turn into actual commitments (we send our money directly to elektron via PayPal or cash transfer). (ok, let’s be realistic - there will be some attrition - so we can say that Elektron will likely see only about 50-75% of the commitment. All the more reason to make it bigger!)
  • if the above is not a sufficient financial incentive, we can add a values-based incentive and say we will channel the money to a charity of their choice

I hereby commit the princely sum of 25GBP to the cause. (let’s keep a running total)

If you’re not sold:

Think how cool it would be to perform over the top of pre-arranged patterns. Does it take a load off?

Think about saving mini-configurations of patterns that you can whip-up on the fly? Perhaps even name mini-configurations, such as ‘intro’, ‘outro’, ‘build-up’, ‘mangle’ etc. This is not about taking away from the ‘live experience’ - it can deepen it too.

Think how much faster you’ll be able to get out into the world of performing live. Not having to worry about chaining in real-time, while also trying to use the ctrl-all function, and the filter, and the randomise, and the fill button, and the mutes… and… and…and…

Think about having a full song! Not using the digi boxes for ‘inspiration’, ‘sketches’ or similar.

viva the revolution!

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I just want to make one statement about the nature of this post and that is to never buy anything for what it doesn’t already do in hopes it might someday do it. I think this alone fuels a lot of very bad software and hardware because people are buying vaporware, features that don’t exist yet.

I know this doesn’t support or detract from your revolution here, but it’s something to think about. I knew there was no song mode when I bought the Digitone just as I knew when I bought the MC101 it doesn’t have an audio input jack. I bought neither of them in hopes the Digitone would get a song mode and treat it the same as the MC101 will never have an audio input jack for regular audio cables.

I hope my comment doesn’t sound condescending or mean spirited because it’s not intended to be. I’m more or less concerned with this ‘never leave well enough alone’ culture that permeates both user groups and manufacturers of all kinds of electronic/computer-based products. Yes, I know ‘soft’ in ‘software’ means it can be changed, but can and should are not the same thing. Even the last minor update to the Digitone initially caused lots of problems and introduced new buggy behavior that had not been present before. I didn’t touch the box for a whole month, basically, waiting for my previously working box that was now broken to get fixed and it was a change that Elektron advertised as something I would want or as essential.

Anyway, I’ve probably rambled enough here…just…be careful about further supporting the #cultofupdates with feature requests for gear that clearly was never intended to have such features (else the initial release firmware would probably have had it).

Love you and I hope you succeed. I’m not against a song mode and would very much use it, I just don’t want it like this, I’d rather have Digitone mkII have it on release day rather than risk breaking the Digitone to shoehorn it in.

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Thank you Sir. All well noted. Not condescending at all. :slight_smile:

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To be honest it’s such a simple thing to add that as an ex developer and ex product manager, I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t add this easily. Some metadata in the project file that contains the chain, and some simple logic to retain the chain when created. Use the step buttons to quickly jump to different sections of the song. Just saying it’s not hard to do this - meaning, the reason they won’t do it is due to some philosophical belief, not a lack of competence. I’d be curious to understand their thinking here but they clearly aren’t going to share it.

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I think if they do it but they don’t make it usable then people from this forum will be happy that Elektron “threw them a bone” and a ton of users will just see a new feature that is incomplete.

If they add song mode, a whole new UI will be needed where one can manage the pattern chains. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see the chain that is already saved, you wouldn’t be able to delete the chain or modify it.

What I’m trying to say that this feature would involve more than just saving project metadata.

I’m a software engineer if that matters… but probably not.

I would personally like to be able to save pattern chains but I would also like at least a basic list view where I can see my chain and add/move/delete items.

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I would go so far as to say, if they released a stand-alone box, with a mixer maybe, that had the elektron sequencer but dedicated to a song mode, that would be a buy for me.

Basic functionality

  • 4 channel mixer
  • Overbridge - send the 4 channels to a daw
  • elektron sequencer, but working in bars rather than steps, stores settings (ie automafted faders) and programme changes.
  • some sort of transition functionality (if a fader starts a bar at position A and ends at position B some options to cross fade, curve etc)
  • some effects (analog heat/distortion, chorus, phaser etc
  • smart recognition or setting for elektron connected boxes (set it to Digitone, for example, and it knows the cc channels for things)

… So niche but what a reward for elektron users.

Sorry - probably off topic, but the point of this comment is - it’s no even about adding functions to existing boxes, per se, but giving the people who want it an option.

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Elektron is known for keeping things simple and limited, I wouldn’t mind an “incomplete” song mode that just stores the most recently created pattern chain in the project.

Sure, they could also build out a more proper UI that shows the whole chain like the MPC does, but I’m not sure that’s needed to satisfy 95% of the needs of most people used to not having any rudimentary song mode at all today. But you’re of course right that they could make it more robust and that that would take more time. Still, it’s far from a insurmountable task and clearly Roland pulled it off with the MC-101 in the end. So again, I think they have other reasons for not doing it after years of complaints/requests from even the top YouTube influencers/reviewers like Andrew Huang.

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This ^

So is it worth a (hypothetical) donation?!

I need a first follower, otherwise this will go literally nowhere. Never underestimate the power of the first follower:

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Exactly. As if a simple thing like a song mode would make the device worse. The opposite is true. It would not take anything from folks who don’t use it and add value to folks who see it as needed.

I never used song mode on any hardware but it’s good to know if it’s there.

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Best of luck! I’m not a current owner of Elektron devices and today I control my dawless production on the MPC so I’m personally less concerned about the lack of song mode. I just think that in theory, this is simple to do and I speculate that there are other reasons why they aren’t doing it.

If I owned an Elektron box, I’d be game.

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Yes. A stand alone Digi sized box, with a song mode that is even deeper than on flagship device.
I would buy that :relaxed:.

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learn some simple programming and make a little pattern change sequencer. cant be much more complicated than a DIY midi controller right? maybe im being naive

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They don’t seem to view the digi boxes as workstations and instead see them as performance/sketch tools. A lot of grooveboxes that do implement song modes do it very lazily or require a paradigm of operation that doesn’t flow with the majority of it’s other features, so I wouldn’t doubt they studied historically the implications of a ‘song mode’ shoved onto something they didn’t design from the ground up to be centered around.

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Perfect is the enemy of the good I suppose.

Maybe they want people to buy a Digitone/Digitakt/Syntakt and an Octatrack.

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LOL. I would buy that too.

Only, we’re not asking for that. We’re asking for pattern save. At least that.

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I actually thought about that and there is a project that does that. The problem is that patterns can have different lengths and an external device would not know what they are.

Since you would need to know the length of each pattern to schedule them on time, you can’t have something that “just works”.

I also tried to send a sequence of PC messages to stimulate me scheduling different patterns vis the onboard buttons but everything but the last one is ignored.

I suppose if someone would reverse engineer the Overbridge protocol then you could build a device that schedules all the patterns and gets their length as they are played.

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I wouldn’t give Elektron a penny for song mode, because they already promised it long ago.

Most of you probably don’t remember, but when Cenk still worked for Elektron and introduced us to the Digitakt, he also promised a viable solution/alternative to song mode.
I actually bought it because of this, but all we got was the lousy pattern chain function.

Unfortunately, it is.
I’ve been working on this for years now, and got pretty far along actually.
My software already turns the Digitakt into a multitimbral synth with portamento, unison detune, spread, all that good stuff, selectable per pattern. All controlled from the DT itself.
My health slowed the whole thing down a lot but I’m determined to finish it, because Elektron is probably not gonna do this.

That should also give you an indication of how important this basic feature is to me.

For Elektron to add this themselves is probably not as simple as some make it out to be, but also not crazy difficult. We all know they have the basic code already from the other machines, and hardware-wise the Digi’s can chain patterns already.

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Not entirely true.
The Digi’s send out a program change message after receiving one, but the reply is sent just before the pattern actually changes. So an external song mode can treat the time between a pattern change request and it actually changing as “overflow” from the last pattern.

It’s a bit tricky to implement, but a good way to keep an external song mode in sync with the Digi’s.

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I like this, I’d love a mixer that has a sequencer (p-lockable) and fx chain like the syntakt, song mode and is also overbridge in a box. Let me usb my boxes into the thing and have all the tracks in the mixer. Plus some audio ins for external gear would me nice.

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That’s something I didn’t know. I will do some experimenting, maybe I can come up with something usable that doesn’t need the user manually specific the pattern length.