I made a leap in my understanding of A4 MKII kits, w.r.t. sound loading: any modifications of sounds, even when unsaved, apply globally to that kit. Thus if I tweak the current pattern’s sounds, I’m actually affecting that kit’s sounds, not the pattern’s sounds. If I now hop over to an older pattern and reload the kit, any changes I made in the newest pattern’s sounds will be lost.
Of course I then found the relevant manual entry, just before section 9.1.
Note that several patterns may use the same kit. Changes you make to the kit while editing one of the patterns will directly affect how the other patterns sound as well. Remember to save the kit to a new location if you wish to avoid this.
This likely explains why I kept losing sound choices and why older patterns suddenly got “corrupted” with incorrect sounds – they unwittingly shared a kit with a later pattern whose sounds I then edited.
Given this setup, is there a way to have the A4 use a unique kit for each pattern? Why are kits 001-128 rather than A01-A16, B01-B16, etc? Are kits typically shared more often than made unique? Is there a visual indicator that reveals that the kit has been edited or is not at its freshly loaded state?
I remember my workaround for this with the a4 and ar would be to save each pattern to a kit as a starting template. Pattern a1 saved with kit 001 (named the kit a1 to be double tidy) etc.
The system is rather straightforward once your expectations meet the machine’s actual facts: you simply define the pattern-kit relationship the way you want it; several patterns can reference one specific kit (perfect if a sound is meant to stay identical over various patterns), or each pattern can reference its own kit.
There’s nothing difficult about it, once you know what you know now. Simply save a kit for each pattern. You can even name them
Just remember if you want to make a new kit on a new pattern
make a new kit straight away and save before changing sounds
or you will changing the active kit,
which would be linked to the last pattern you were working on.
Once you understand that, it’s much better than the digi kit per pattern
You then can have a kit over say 4 patterns another kit over 2 patterns etc
Or configure it however you want
From what I’ve discovered, any tweaks you make to a sound stay with that particular KIT, they’re never part of the pattern (unless you do a sound lock on a particular trig). That was a big source of disconnect for me – I was expecting sound modifications to live with the pattern since the pattern is where you do most of the work.
This is gold. I still mess this up when I’m jamming and have had a few beers. It’s 2nd nature once you have engrained it into your workflow though.
If you want to alter the track parameters in a kit, apart from using sound locks or plocks that would be saved with the pattern, you just need to get into the habit of loading the kit to the new pattern and then saving it under a slightly different name before you edit.
I keep some kits just for starting jams and have a point to start that isn’t the blank kit.
i dont understand why some people dont gel with kits…
i know electronic music is not exactly the same and has no rules, but…
if you think of it like a band…
they normally dont swap all the instruments and band members
every time they go from a verse to a chorus or intro to main section etc…
if you want to make a whole song from 1 pattern thats cool
but kits allow multiple patterns using the same sounds
Likewise, I don’t understand the fascination with kits. Having that particular sound (adjusted kit, so to speak) on the DT and DN for each pattern is just far more amazing for creating a slightly more aggressive sound on choruses and a more subdued sound on verses - it’s more intuitive imo. Think of a drummer playing more aggressively on a chorus compared to a verse, for example. When using samples or sounds in this way it makes way more sense to me. I think this is the main reason I hate the A4 whereas I love the DN. It’s all personal opinion, of course
I do agree with you,
but what if you want to do a filter sweep or change a sound gradually over 2 different patterns in an intro?
You can still do exactly what you described by making the next pattern completely different by simply assigning a new kit…
there is no disadvantage of having kits only benefits.
It only takes a day of testing things to understand how it works
I agree. Kits are more flexible, no doubt about it. But for pure intuitive music creation, I just love the way a sound (kit) is per pattern as it allows you to quickly create mad progressions throughout a track and the same sounds can be copied and pasted easily if you want to return to a certain sound later, on a different pattern. I guess kits are one of those barriers to entry that many people experience, as OP described. Changing a kit sound to match a particular track, changes that sound on all other tracks, which is a bummer for newbies getting started, unless they think ahead and create new/copied kits for each track. Either way, I’m glad there are two methods for track creation if people decide on A4/AR or DN/DT. I prefer everything on the Digis but others love the Analogs. I’m glad they don’t cross over
The problem is I’ve got the AR mk2, A4 mk2 , OT mk2 and the Digitone
and if I want to use a kit over multiple patterns on those the digitone doesn’t follow.
If I decided to change the level of the keys coming from digitone I have to change it on every pattern…
It’s not consistent across the range… I would love if they added kits to digitone.
it’s not so much of a problem if just using DN, DT combo because it’s a set way of thinking…
That makes sense. An ‘apply to all patterns’ on the DN could solve this issue for sure. But I’m guessing Elektron wanted to remove the added complications of implementing kits on the Digis. Anyway, off topic. Your (and others) solution for OP is bang on
