I think ElkHerd might work through Sysex transfers, but I recently tried to read through a pattern and a project dump and the structure wasn’t immediately legible to me, (though I’ve only done very basic work with sysex before).
Edit to add: I recently got around to trying DigiChain, and I just wanted to say a hearty thanks for your work on that, it’s magnificent and working with samples on DT is starting to click with me because of it.
I believe elk-herd does use sysex, in a similar way to Elektroid.
For DigiChain, I want to be able to open the project file and pull out the pattern/sample/sound settings (it already pulls out the audio files if you drop a dtprj in), and have a minimal UI to move patterns between projects, where DigiChain would then output a new dtprj file for the user to send via the Transfer app.
So not a straightforward as elk-herd, but I want to continue to support Safari/mobile users who can’t use web-USB/MIDI.
Thanks for the kind words too! I’ve been working on other things, but I’ll be spending some time on an update this month 
I would imagine that the structure and limitations of the sound pool are the reasons why Elektron hasn’t implemented this feature. If you copy a pattern from project B to project A, how would you handle conflicts? I’m sure there could be several different options, like “overwrite,” “ignore,” “overwrite and shift upwards,” et cetera, with clearly laid out rules for what happens in different edge cases, but this would approach Octatrack level of complexity—an old shady past that I think Elektron is trying to leave behind.
Essentially, while I can appreciate that this feature is important for a very small minority of users, I believe it would only confuse most users who wouldn’t be willing to engage in the necessary mental gymnastics to get it right. This confusion could lead to unexpected results with patterns that suddenly don’t sound as they used to, all the while adding bloat and yet another thing for Elektron to manage and update. Judging by their recent product designs, Elektron seems to be following a philosophy akin to Apple’s, where users are shielded from the possibility of messing up their setup, even if they want to.
So, in summary, I don’t see this happening 
It’s the actual lack of tools that leads to a complicated gymnastic.
“The slot number and sample name don’t match. Do you want to continue or search for the sample and assign it to an empty slot? Automatic / Manual search”
That’s more like Apple 
I’ve been staring at this sentence for five minutes now and I’m still confused about exactly how it would work 
Well, this tool IS already existing.
Its called elk-gerd and it worked.
It just doesnt work with the last update because its creator stopped working on it.
So the question how or if this could work is irrelevant.
A user created this, so elektron should also be able to do it.
Or at least pick up on his work!
But he (mzero) once said that elektron never contacted him.
AFAIK elk-herd was never open sourced, which is a real shame. It would still be working if it were, most likely.
Not always an easy decision to open source something like this though, especially if you think you might make money off it at some point or the code is crappy or whatever, so I totally understand why it’s not.
And I totally understand the author disappearing, I did similarly with a tool I built years ago as the maintenance burden was too much and I had other priorities (that one was open source so it made doing so guilt free a bit easier). You do feel a sense of letting people down so it can be easier to just do nothing, especially if you’re busy or have other stuff going on in your life.
I’m sure it’s neither of those. Open sourcing also means having to document a lot of stuff and offer some support. As you say he probably has better things to do :). It’s unfortunate but it is what it is.
Afaik He initially build the tool for himself to manage his projects and was kind enough to release it to the public.
For me, Elk-herd really does make composing on the DT far easier and less error-prone. I think comparing it to playing a guitar is a bit unfair, because a guitar doesn’t have a file management system in it, or frets that only appear after you’ve fingered other frets.
But let’s be constructive here. These elk-thirsty threads are, for sure, silly. And probably even unwelcome by mzero, who clearly has their own priorities and doesn’t need to be pestered about some software that a few dozen people happen to like.
So here’s what makes elk-herd so useful to me, and what I wish Elekton would take inspiration from, if and when they release another update:
The big one for me is just being able to easily (and NON-DESTRUCTIVELY!!!) swap patterns around.
When I’m composing, I don’t know in advance what will be the first, second, or final part of a song, and the Copy/Paste/Clear Pattern route is not only time consuming—it inevitably leads to accidental deletions and overwrites. (Also it makes a ton of clickety-clackety sounds that drives Mrs Duppy into murderous rage.)
But I think this issue could be largely solved if the DT had a “Pattern swap” feature where you could simply trade the places of two patterns instead of having to write one over another (a la the SP404-II.)
For instance, FUNC+PTN twice, pick any 2 patterns, then hit “Yes.”
Yes, Song Mode now helps with this, but it’s still so much easier to remember a large number of songs if you can group, say, all the verses or choruses together.
The second feature would probably have to be in Transfer or Overbridge—showing what samples are used in what patterns, to make it easier to free up space, see if there’s a sample you maybe forgot about or maybe isn’t on the +drive, or just to see which patterns are similar to each other. Convenient but not essential.
As for the future of elk-herd, the choice is pretty simple. You can have elk-herd, or you can have Song Mode & the new timestretch stuff. Both are cool; both can be worked around.
But let’s give it a rest maybe? It’s not like there’s some magic number of posts that will make elk-herd 4.0 appear from the ether.
So, your thinking is to take deprecated code that has been abandoned by the original author, hand it off to an entirely different team who is unfamiliar with the source and programming practices, and say, “Here, make it work!” Should be easy 
I think you might be underestimating the developers at Elektron a bit. I’m confident they don’t need to look at this code but can built it into transfer themselves. But a vital thing is needed: time.
So long as you memorize what’s on the paper eventually!
A while back I saw an band who shall remain nameless, and 2 out of the 3 people on stage were sitting at Moogs with their heads buried in their spiral-bound notebooks the entire set. Never even looked at the audience or each other.
They looked so bored by their own music! It was ridiculous. Memorize, people! Make eye contact!
Before time, there would need to be a will … they could make a daw if they wanted, then nobody would need to leave one app, but that’s not their business - wanting them to make apps to make life easier for others (whilst making a rod for your own back) seems like a bad business plan and rather too close to hand-holding imho when the deep device can be used comprehensively as is - it involves a bit of understanding to make your future time with it easier, that applies to many things
for me, when a manufacturer doesn’t offer what i need, i do my best to fill the gap myself, i don’t assume it’s their responsibility to make things to my expectations - i build editors for devices that have existing full editors, but they are just hopelessly badly designed
The idea that Elektron should or would want to utilise a third party’s code because it’s there is at best optimistic imho
Developing for OSs and firmware updates is an overhead, for a marginal(imho) gain - just my 2c - not directed at Dave, more at this groundswell of increasingly unrealistic expectation that the equation is as simple as they want it to seem
The link to the petition was removed, because it’s definitely not the way things work here.
This thread is a way to make your points, or by going the official contact routes - but anybody spamming here to solicit people to spam Elektron will find that such endeavours will be summarily removed.
Yes, through my sarcasm, that was the point I was trying to make. The solution is not “write a new app.” It’s “add the desired functionality to the existing app.”
Sysex management does work, its time consuming though I have done it twice now and it’s fairly straight forward so be it repetitive. Sample slot management is the one that gets me with the lfo samp slot, so now as a rule each time I’m going to create a track with this lfo setting I am going to resample the track to audio so it can be reloaded and werped, sliced ect. Kind of opens up the possibilities to with more lfos to. I will see how much it eats my memory as I’m nearing full on both digitakts. I am become ELK
Oh yeah, I didn’t meant to imply it was - they’re just reasons I’ve not open sourced stuff that I otherwise might have done in the past! I do think there’s a lot of value in just dumping the source for something if it might be useful to others, even without any docs or clean up - but also there’s no expectation to so it’s totally fair.
Yeah definitely. They’re also related. It’s a matter of priority. And it’s a nice to have kind of thing, not a high priority and thus not worth the time investment possibly. Save to say everyone using one or more Elektron instruments must be happy with the ongoing support with massive firmware updates. So can’t complain 
Still, hoping it will be added someday.
I don’t think anybody is arguing that Elektron wouldn’t be able to do it if they wanted to; it’s rather about whether they actually want to (they might not want to make their software more complex), would think it’s possible to do in a user friendly way, would think it’s worth prioritize over some other feature, et cetera.
My argument was that even if it could be done, I don’t believe it would be possible to implement in a user friendly enough way for them to be satisfied. The existence of some working third party software doesn’t refute this argument.
Open sourcing mainly/also means that other people can do this (too). The only thing that’s really needed is to put it on github and add a license, all other work can be done by others aka “the community”.
I’m pretty sure enough people would like to contribute to keep this thing alive and make it compatible with the latest firmware.
This is definitely not the case for every developer. what I’ve read about open sourcing goes a bit further than just dumping the code on GitHub, at least for some afaik. If it’s complex code there needs to be instructions, walkthroughs, some help or even at least a little support to get the ball rolling.
But hey I’m not a developer so maybe I’m talking nonsense. But I’ve read about this from a few open source projects.