?
Because I happen to disagree about the clunkiness of having to remember to save then reinstate a pattern, I should take a chill pill? I don’t need to chill out for having the temerity to have a different opinion from yours.
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you can totally make amazing music just by programming everything if you want to. i see lots of good artists do this. if youre not interested in performing live and demonstrating to everyone that you’re doing something difficult, thats fine. tons of gear from the last 40 years is capable of running long presequenced songs.
i actually find doing some things live easier and more natural than trying to program everything using lots of patterns or song mode or whatever. im not very good about using temporary save states or any of the tricks others have described here. i’ll just bring effects in and out, use mutes a lot, and open and close filters or envelope amounts and usually return things to zero or a value somewhere near what i remember. it doesnt have to be perfect.
But yeah, to your question, a lot of the best artists are doing a lot of things live because they practice a ton and develop good habits. like others said, they make their own rules, like certain customizable functions are always set up the same, and they practice with those.
looks like you did play piano before but didnt enjoy it, so dont worry about it!
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unnecessary
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Thanks. Yeah I guess that’s it at the end of the day - tonnes of practice, like anything else you want to be good at. Not sure why I thought this might be any different, looking back. I’m basically complaining about something I’m not very good at (the various tricks and techniques you and others describe) but have had no practice at getting good at.
Oh I love piano - I have my YT channel and all that - I’m just not a public performer!
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Save iteratively. Meaning : save copies with versioning of your live projects before starting to work on it. This way you can always go back to older versions and save patterns from a fuck up 
I got heaps and heaps of copies of live projects. Like v3_78 and so on
Also have some thoughts on this subject but will wait for when i have a bit more time to write it down 
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MAN, 78 sub versions of a version?
I’ll go to v4 or v5 of a track occasionally but thats my max. Lol
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Yeah I’m a bit neurotic when it comes to that. Probably because I spend my first 15 years of production in a daw and on crappy windows and hackintosh systems
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Nothing worse.
Which is why I bring a chair now for my laptop gigs.
Now I sit behind a screen feeling like a Muppet.
Much better.
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Looking forward to hear your thoughts. I am kinda in a similar boat as OP, and was reading what other people say.
I just need to get that “confidence” when recording, to include performance part in it(and not fuck up the song). Because at the end performing and doing nice transitions is a fun part as well.
But i see everyone is agreeing on same thought about practicing.
Ah, that one is easy for me. I never save my project unless I have reloaded all patterns first.
I know a lot of ppl do this versioning and whatnot, but I never do that stuff. IMHO Elektron pattern space feels limited enough as is, dont want to spend slots on backup/safty copies. Not a fan of versioning my projects either. Everyone has their own methods and preferences
agree to disagree then
I studied alongside such people. They’re technically very gifted and have a great talent for musical interpretation. But take the sheet music away and they can barely play a note. I can’t sight-read for toffee (I always flunked this in my exams) but I can play by ear and I definitely wouldn’t swap, though I’d quite like both.
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Sorry, im a ESL speaker so my tone might not always translate. I just meant that with Elektron it’s far from clunky reloading the initial state (in real-time, one button combination) compared to many other synths. I’ve only had one that kind of could do it (bass station 2).
I can see your point. I’ve often thought if I should just p-lock more and let it play. I basically never use p-locks. To me, tweaking real-time has some kind of danger element to it that I kind of like. It can sound cool or totally destroy it.
I’ve mostly moved to macro-based controlling using pitchbend, aftertouch, breath controller and modwheel macros as you can sculpt the ranges so less risky. It’s wild how much of the modulation is buried in that menu. 24 parameters (keytrack, modwheel, pitchbend, breath controller, aftertouch. 4 for each with adjustable ranges) in addition to the 3 LFOs. It’s a shame you can’t modulate those internally without any tricks.
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The best way to get there is to fuck up a bunch. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll get over the fear of fucking up. The stakes are essentially zero when recording anyway. If the song gets fucked up just do another take, that’s just part of recording. Its not like you hace to nail it on the first take, that would be an absurd standard to hold yourself to.
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The way I write and record with elektron boxes (AR + A4) is definitely “jamming”.
My partner and I will generally come up with some kind of tempo or vague feeling sometimes based on a reference track. I’ll pull up a kick and a snare on the AR from a handful of samples I’ve made from records or vintage drum machine one shots, maybe layered with the analog voices, maybe tweak a few parameters like filter and overdrive. Then turn on the metronome, go into live record, I have it set to do a one bar count-in and then I record the beat. Maybe add hats which I usually just use the default init hats. Maybe add a clap. All of that takes a couple of minutes tops.
Then on the A4 I filter the sound browser to “bass” + “mine” and pick a bass patch I’ve made, maybe tweak a few settings like envelope or filter, come up with a bass line, go into live record and get it down (playing from a midi keyboard). Then maybe do the same thing with an arp part. All of this is done without stopping the sequencers, and everything is being recorded to a laptop while my partner is coming up with vocal ideas and singing.
Then maybe I pull up a pad or lead type sound and play that polyphonically or duophonically on top and jam on that for a while. If I come up with a good idea and get enough of it recorded I might switch to another sound and come up with another different idea, or I’ll switch to guitar. Maybe I’ll record a bit of the synth part into the sequencer first but often not because it’s recording to the laptop anyway.
On the unused tracks on the AR I might bring in different one shot fx samples or do some stuff with SY Chip or pull up a sampled tonal sound and play it chromatically on the pads.
Last night I had something going where I was playing an open guitar string with my right hand, playing keys with my left hand and then while the guitar was ringing out I was tweaking the filter cutoff on a sound that was continuously playing on the AR.
Anyway, we’ll do that for 20 minutes or so and then when we feel like we’ve explored that thoroughly enough we stop and start a new one and usually do 3 or 4 different jams in a session.
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I started making music when there was no youtube and no tutorial videos. From my perspective one should just take the time to explore the equipment for a few years. After a while some methods stick with you and might also change again. You might learn how to program first and then get bored and start trying to play around more.
Don’t think about it, just do it. And what gets lost more and more in these fast changing times: Have patience. You can watch 1000 tutorials but that won’t necessarily make you a better artist.
Practice and repeat… There’s no easy way around. But you can have fun while doing it.
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