Why is there no pattern/project management tool from Elektron?

Elektron Gear
22

You fill up a project with patterns. You start filling up a second project. At some point you realize you want to use some patterns from the first project in your second project.

What follows is just bad user experience.

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23

I’m not one to argue so I’ll stop here! Bummer it’s not for you!

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24

You contradicted Fin’s blithe and half baked reply. How dare you!!!

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25

@Kegeratorz and @bangonadigi i’m sorry, i don’t understand your comments (i’ll blame my poor english)

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I do have to join in support of the request for some tool provided by Elektron to enhance our machines further. While I personally do not see such a product as a dire necessity for me, especially since I do not see that it will ever support the older machines, I do understand how much easier it would be for folks whose workflow seems to be very much affected by the lack of such a tool.

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27

Please name just one groovebox with project / pattern management provided from any manufacturer.

I think this is a niche first world problem.

Could be nice to have, but in reality it affects a really small percentage of users of grooveboxes.

Its a niche thing for niche products.

1 Like
29

Would be nice to be able to delete projects on the OT without a computer.

It’s a bit tedious to memorise them in order to only delete the ones in question as you name them when creating the project, in which point I usually don’t have a clue what’s it going to be.

Therefore they are usually named by the default date.

31

Out of interest, how do you manage patterns and such when they’re in different projects? Do you just sacrifice an evening and do as Prydal describes?

I’ve personally found that exporting and importing Sysex files is the fastest way on my A4mk2 (not sure if OT can do that?), but I totally agree with his sentiment, a file management tool is sorely needed.

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32

OP makes a good point, it’s a lot of admin work if you’re pulling things from various projects and the like into a live set, but I can also see that it’d be quite hard to implement given the inherent limitations of 128 samples per project, and the possibilities of LFO assignment to sample slot and the like.

Edited to keep on topic

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33

Well, Ive got an octatrack so can sample anything and put it anywhere.

Generally, I dont feel any need to play stuff from old projects in new projects. So no need to shuffle things around. If I do, as above. Sample it.

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34

I mean, Fin’s not wrong - it’s possible to move an entire “song” and all it’s sounds from one project to another.
It isn’t simple or quick though.
It was a lot more convienient to do it with elk-herd… and that’s maybe the problem - we all got spoilt by using that!

I doubt writing reliable software to do it and then support it is trivial either though and probably isn’t stopping Elekton selling Digitakts (don’t suppose it was simple for mzero to do either, but he was in a position to just disclaimer it rather than make it work for every single use case)

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35

Yeah, wanting to copy a pattern from one project to another is a very legit concern, and currently the only answer is to do it manually, note by painstaking note (unless there is something I am missing). Which means that in reality, I just don’t. Many people (myself included) have either been using Elektron gear long enough, or don’t play live, to where this is just an inconvenience we work around, or don’t notice. But I will say that because of this, I basically never go back to old projects/patterns when working on new ones. I feel like this kind of project functionality would make me more likely to pull old patterns forward into new projects.

I am genuinely curious though, do those of you who play live, how do you pull together the disparate patterns and projects to make a live set? Or do you just make live sets in a single project, and if there are old songs in other projects, you are just out of luck unless you want to deal with the loading time for the project?

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36

I think this is probably the dividing line:

if people are trying to reproduce “tracks” they’ve made, or are “making a live set” anew each time.
If you’re trying to do the former, it’s LOOOOOOOOOONG.
If you’re trying to do the latter, then who cares about this.

37

it’s not quite note by note though is it?
You can copy a whole pattern, and then save the sounds and import them to the new project.

I mean, not saying it’s ideal, but it’s possible.

(that might be DT/DN/Syntakt specific, I dunno)

1 Like
38

Yeah, it is enough of a headache that I literally haven’t tried so I am pretty unaware of the capabilities as far as copying and pasting between projects. Also I don’t play live and have only ever finished individual songs, so haven’t really tried to do this, but it always seemed like a pain.

So the procedure for each pattern for DT DN and ST is:

  • Save all track sounds to presets.
  • Copy Pattern
  • Change project
  • Paste Pattern
  • Load All track sounds
  • On ST also copy and paste FX track settings

Does that make sense? I think this would miss the effects settings so you would probably need to copy and paste that too. This is all a bit of a faff. Though I will admit that if you have a pattern you particularly like, the side effect of saving all the track sounds to presets is alright.

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39

I agree that you’ve been met with an uncalled-for amount of snark to a pretty reasonable request/question.

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40

Please let’s stay respectful, and bring some help or insight to a fellow Naut.
Snarky comments make the place less comfortable for everyone.

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41

And I totally agree that a simple tool to deal with Parts and Samples across projects would be nice. Haven’t tried the last version of @rusty’s OctaEdit yet but there was some update recently I believe.

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42

Alas downloads are blocked for us mere mortals.

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43

It’s pretty simple really, manage your own files and projects and plan according to the system you are using.

You know what the problem is, so organise your projects so as to mitigate the known issue, or go back to your DAW, or some other piece of gear that doesn’t have this issue.

Or put in a feature request to Elektron, but, like @the_duckchild says, good luck getting them to commit to developing and supporting yet another piece of (presumably free) software for all their gear.

Also, if you’re using more than one piece of gear, it’s not like it’s really that much of a problem switching projects in a live situation, it can be done, just requires a bit of thought and planning.

6 Likes