Is it meanwhile possible to assign different lengths per track?
One year later I am re-digging this thread again 
At least in older reviews it was claimed that uneven steps are possible,
but only for all ten tracks globally.
Cheers
flo
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Wow, I have to admit I have lost track a bit. I haven’t abandonned it, far from that - both my BB’s are still sitting on my desk. But I have been focusing on the M8 lately, because I have had very little studio time.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure you can do that now, among many other crazy things (like morphing - to a certain extent) that seemed undoable before.
It’s really worth revisiting the manual and FW updates, because it has become a totally different machine now.
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If you mean polymeter, yes it is, for a while now. Page 10 in the other approach manual/quick operation guide/field manual (still v0.08 so not all, including names, has collapsed to final form yet, and may miss some precision like polymeter/polyrhythm, but good enough for quick orientation).
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More BlastBeats tracks - no talking just OPL3 FM tones… Folks seemed to like the first batch so made some more,
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Sooo I bought a MegaFM MKI about 2 weeks ago (still making patches and learning it) and I got an OG Digitone end of 2025. I didn’t pay any attention to the BlastBeats before, because I thought it was purely a drummachine, but knowing it’s got 4 seperate synth channels, it got my attention.
I went through this topic already, but didn’t find a complete/satisfying answer, so here’s my question: already owning a MegaFM and Digitone, what would a BlastBeats provide in terms of sounds and possibilities?
The Blastbeats excels in glitchy lofi beats and atypical rhythmic sounds. Due to the way the original chip is designed, the sounds are often codependent on each other meaning if you change one, something else changes. This makes it highly unpredictable which may be infuriating for some, or a happy accident wonderland for others. It’s not a typical drum machine at all and often works well to compliment one
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Well it’s clearly indicated in the manual which faders are shared between voices.
But, yeah, I understand it’s not exactly straightforward at first.
An FM synth with a specific character, I guess?
But you are already well equipped in the FM department.
You have to like the particular grittiness and quirkiness of the BlastBeats.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and the sequencer, with highly configurable “Wiggle” and “Stutter”, is something you don’t have yet with the DN and MegaFM
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The sequencer is awesome - takes lots of cues from Elektron
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And adds up to it 
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Sounds like you first want to explore 4OP Yamaha FM in DX21, 27, 100 or reface DX, then upgrade to 6 OP DX7, then take that to furnace tracker or adlib tracker ii and understand the programming of the OPL-3 and then come back to BB. But perhaps better to buy now, because there wont be so many.
What I want to say: it is not so much about sound. You can achieve this with furnace tracker - but then you have to know and love the OPL-3 maybe because of childhood DOS game imprinting. Else it is not that special. The DX7 OG is much different, so deep.
I love the BB for its direct access to many OPL parameters and the easy and at the same time ideosyncratic UI. I wrote that somewhere above.
Hope that helpsYsorry for directness. Cheers!
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Cool, thanks for the reply. I’ll see if one comes up secondhand. That would make it a bit easier to just try it out.
6.5 Firmware
Fixed a bug where audio routing and MIDI channel settings could appear to save, then be lost after power-off.
Fixed a routing preset save/load bug that could cause an empty preset or no sound after reboot.
Fixed output routing in the online tool so outputs 1/2 and 3/4 are no longer swapped.
Fixed the online tool so routing changes are applied to the hardware immediately.
Reduced a web-tool related issue that could, in some cases, make the machine appear to freeze for a few seconds during playback.
Fixed a bug where a save started during playback could be cancelled if you left Save mode before stopping the machine. Queued saves now remain pending until they are actually written.
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I have managed to find a second hand Blastbeats and have been making sounds and first patches for a couple of days. I find that with the synth tracks, whether I play record it via midi, the 16 keys or per step, it often skips steps or puts in completely different notes than I just played. Does anyone else have this problem?
Also, is there a simple ‘undo’ button (combination) to go back to the last saved state? I find that whenever I make an unrecorded change to a sound by mistake and want to go back to my saved version, I need to reboot it altogther. This may have also resulted in me losing patterns (although the kits remained intact). I’m on FW 6.5, by the way Edit: I just found the ‘Kit reload’ function in the manual…
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Made a short track out of a single pattern, today. Stutter really makes it a lot of fun to jam with: https://on.soundcloud.com/SZl0SHyaPdOnRL5lFl
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Sounds great - and not so chiptuney
(I think the BB goes well beyond that)
Did you turn the Stutter track on and off during the song, or just record several patterns each with their own stutter track?
Thanks! So I was really just muting and unmuting elements and using stutter and bend manually during the song. To be honest, I haven’t really explored all the automation options.
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It’s a bit quirky - welcome to the BlastBeats! - but once you get the hang of it, it can be fun.
e.g. the length of the stutter automation track is determined by the length of the kick track. So if you change the length of this track to an unregular length (say, 13 steps) while keeping the other tracks on a regular length (e.g. 16 steps), you get non-repetitive stutter. Very useful to avoid loopitis/beat loop syndrome.
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It’s quirky indeed! Funny thing is that sometimes, like with clearing certain things recorded by mistake, using the ‘Clear’ function is actually intuitive.
But thanks for the tip to use a different bar length for the kick. I’ll try that out in combination with stutter. Do you then (personally) automate/record the stutter?
After getting used to the step length procedure, it does really helps to bring in varying step lengths. For now that’s just drums. I also accidentally put on probability for a synth track for another track I made with it, and that was actually quite nice. Especially as I’m so used to put in plocks on a Digitakt for samples and synths.
I prefer writing it on the stutter track for more accuracy (you can choose the stutter rate per step)
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I have a strange problem with my Twisted Electrons Blast Beats.
I’ve had it for a few years and typically make breaks/loops and then sample them into Ableton for ease of chopping into one bar/16-step (in length… about one second in time… for slower tempo, maybe two second) WAV files which I then load into my Korg Drumlogue, Polyend Play, Elektron Digitakt II, or into my wife’s Tonverk… as we do with many non-sampling drum machines.
We do this with the Sonicware CyDrums… the Roland SH-4d… our old E-Mu MP-7… the Arturia MiniFreak… even using several ARP Odyssey Plug-ins in the MPC. We’ll create breaks/loops/patterns, record them into Ableton, chop them down to one perfect bar… and load those WAV files into the Digitakt II, Tonverk, etc…
I’m sure many people do similar things.
Then, using Elektron’s superior sequencing capabilities, we make something new and different from these various patterns and loops.
Now onto the weirdness.
When I listen to the WAV files from the Twisted Electrons Blast Beats in Ableton, they sound normal… like all the other WAV files.
But when I upload them into the Korg Drumlogue, Elektron Model Samples, Digitakt II, and Tonverk, they can barely be heard ONLY when being played through my Focusrite 4i4 running into a Samson Servo 170 power-amp, pushing two older red Tannoy Reveals.
Only these Blast Beats samples… and ONLY through the Focusrite 4i4 running into a Samson Servo 170 power-amp, pushing two older red Tannoy Reveals.
All other WAV files/samples sound normal.
AND… if I listen to these same Blast Beats WAV files/samples as being played from the DT2 or TV… but through our Pioneer Elite 5.1 pushing a Boston Acoustics setup, everything sounds fine. The Blast Beats samples sound as normalized as the CyDrums samples, or the SH-4d samples, so forth and so on.
Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?!? Does anyone know why only the Blast Beats samples sound barely audible when run ONLY through the Focusrite 4i4 running into a Samson Servo 170 power-amp, pushing two older red Tannoy Reveals?! Why would this inconsistency occur?!? Could something like this happen if we were playing a show using the venue’s house system?!?
Is this a weird ADDA conversation matter?!? Is it a phasing inversion (the waveforms do look mirrored)?!? But then, why does it only occur then playing through the aforementioned setup… and so far, no other setups.
I don’t have too many external signal processors. My work around to get these samples to sound consistent is to run these Blast Beats samples through the Polyend Mess’s amplifier and processing… which then seems to result in consistent audibility when I’m listening to these samples as played from the DT2 and TV, through the Focusrite 4i4 running into a Samson Servo 170 power-amp, pushing two older red Tannoy Reveals.
If I only worked using the Pioneer Elite/Boston Acoustics setup, I’d never know there was the slightest issue.
This is very weird for me… and I’m wondering if there’s anything else I could be doing besides running these samples through the Polyend Mess.
I appreciate any insight that can be provided here.
Cheers from Delco PA!!