I’m new to Elektron products – just got my AR last week – and I’m trying to understand the sequencer. I’ve explored at some length these past few days but there are still a few things I don’t understand or want to verify.
I’ll start with what seems like it should be basic and simple: how the heck do I sequence 8th note triplets over 8th notes? I messed with individual track lengths but that didn’t do what I expected and with the ‘time signature’ parameter being global, not per track, I couldn’t use it. (BTW - ‘time signature’ seems like a strange name for that parameter is it merely changes the length of individual steps and seems to have nothing to do with time signatures in the classical sense.) The only way I could figure to do what I wanted was to enable retrig with the appropriate rate (1/12, in my case). However, when I use retrig it always plays 3 notes (and strangely, sometimes a fourth – still looking into that) so I can’t do things like play the first two notes then rest on the third, or play the first and last of the triplet and rest on the middle.
Am I missing something obvious here?
Second, it seems that the sequencer always counts off 4 beats per bar. Even when changing the time signature of the metronome to 3/4 or 5/4, the LCD display still advances bars after 4 beats though the click track follows the set time signature. Is that correct? If I want to do something like 3/4 or 5/4 I would have to set the track lengths appropriately and ignore the bar count on the lcd display? How do you generally handle this situation?
Finally, I don’t really understand why there’s a ‘max pattern length’ parameter in the scale menu. It basically sets how many pages there are in the pattern. If I set it to 64 but then manually decrease the number of steps (leftmost number) to 48 the max pattern length automatically drops to 48. Similarly, if I increase the number of steps from 48 to 49 the system automatically increases the max length to 64. And, in any case, the pattern restarts after the specified number of steps so isn’t the max pattern length redundant?
As I said, I’m completely new to the ‘Elektron way’ and trying to learn. Generally, I’ve found the AR easy to use and I’m really enjoying it.
don’t have an AR but trying to answer anyway… A4 is very similar.
Triplets: I believe Retrig is the most sensible option you have…
You can enable & adjust Retrig Locks for individual steps, so you could disable retrig on the track, and lock it just to selected steps… search the PDF manual for Retrig & you’ll find how to do this, i don’t remember right now…
You could also use microtiming to achieve triplets, but this is slightly tedious to do by hand. Hold down a trig & press arrow left/right to adjust trig timing… Can totally be worth it for detailed editing though.
LCD showing 4/4 always: sounds like it could be a bug.
Pattern Length: This is only meaningful in Advanced Scale Mode,
where you can have tracks of different length… If the Max Pattern step count is reached, all tracks will be reset to step 1 on the next trig… So you can have e.g. polyrhythms which restart from 1 in a predictable manner…
Right, that’s what I’ve been doing, using Retrig. Using a velocity curve of -128 and setting the length just right I can even achieve the effect of ‘muting’ the third note of the triplet. But this is neither ideal, nor straightforward. Coming from Maschine and Tempest where you can set the grid resolution for each track as desired (8th triplets for one, 16th notes for another) and it’s easy to sequence triplets, I was surprised to find that it’s not straightforward on the AR. And it sounds like this is the case for all Elektron sequencers?
So on the A4 you can have more or less than 4 beats per bar? Can someone with an AR confirm that its limited to 4 beats per bar?
So I played with this a little bit. A couple of questions… You can’t have more than 1 key trig per step, right? What’s the resolution of the micro-timing adjustments? I couldn’t find it in the manual.
I still haven’t figured out a decent solution to triplets yet.
I am assuming elektron will eventually make it where you can record using the re-trig mode, or something.
I was thinking of trying samples for triplets until something else makes more since.
So I played with this a little bit. A couple of questions… You can’t have more than 1 key trig per step, right? What’s the resolution of the micro-timing adjustments? I couldn’t find it in the manual.[/quote]
right, 1 trig per step.
with microtiming, a 16th step is divided in 24 units, so the resolution is 1/384 note.
for a 12th triplet, do:
x>o<x
1...2
where ‘x’ is a normal trig, ‘>’ has mtime of 8, ‘<’ has mtime of -8, ‘o’ is empty…
what comes in very handy here is copy/paste of trigs. hold down one or more trig buttons, hit copy, hold another trig button, hit paste…
Thanks. (And thanks @void). I will give this a try. Good to know about the trig copy/paste especially as this sounds like it could be tedious otherwise! Also, I assume if I record in live mode, that the sequencer would automatically add these micro-timing adjustments as necessary? @JuanSOLO You can definitely record retrigs in grid mode, not sure about live mode as I haven’t tried that. Mostly, I’ve been using retrigs when I want triplets. The main problem I have with it is that you’re stuck exactly the number of notes you set to repeat, e.g., you can’t rest on the first or last note of the triplet. So for, those sequences I think I’ll need to use micro timing.
I noticed in the OT manual that it supports different ‘time signatures’ per track. That would be a much more straightforward way of doing what I want. Any chance that features makes it into the AR, or is it just not possible for the AR?
I just got to say: Me too, I really miss, on the analog four, just like you miss on your analog rytm, something obviously necessary that the octatrack has. In the sequencer advance mode, individual track speed of each track. You know the 1/3 speed, half speed, 1/4 and even 1/8 speed of a track. I guess I´m not the only one missing this feature on the analog four. Like in the top post, on the analog rytm, it can only be set in the master timing and affects all tracks, wich, in my opinion is a major handicap.
So guys, elektron would know about this and maybe even implement individual track speed in an update? You think?
If they dont consider this a major bug on the analog series, how can I, or we, maybe make them implement this in an update?
IME the most hasslefree way of doing triplets is to use the swing setting. If you wish to only use triplets on certain tracks, just remove the “swing trigs” from the other tracks.
But what is the exact swing value for a triplet? 66%?