Elektron Musical Instruments

On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 03:51:46AM -0000, machinedrum99 wrote:
>    Just to clarify something about my last post.  The problem when you
>    are editing a pattern on the MD in song mode is that you only have a
>    split second to make changes to any particular pattern in the song
>    while it's playing.  For example let's say you have a song which
>    just loops 4 patterns, one after the other.  If you are in song mode
>    and working on pattern 1, as soon as the song trigs pattern 2 you
>    can't work on pattern 1 anymore because it changes the pattern
>    editor to pattern 2.  So you have to be really quick and punch in
>    your changes before it switches to pattern 2 (which you're don't
>    want to work on yet).  I think that's the gripe Joe has too.

sort of but not really :-)

I think you're talking about writing everything in song mode and I
don't really do that - I write in pattern mode and use song mode to
structure changes based on the patterns.

so I think really my problem (and perhaps this is true for others) boils
down to two things:
1) abstracting away from the idea of a pattern when trying to fit it into
a song; that is, not thinking about it as being some entity with a set
number of steps that can only loop itself as a whole and one can only
bring in/out tracks at a new loop iteration, etc. don't think about any
of these things and just think about the song as a whole and what should
go where and THEN figure out how to put it there
2) the "figure out how to put it there" part - dealing with the minimal
(though powerful) song sequencing interface and getting it to do what you
want; if you want to grab notes 8-15, loop them 3 times, then play notes
13 through 23 (and change track mutes) 5 times then you need to figure
out how to program such things

these two concepts are difficult because number 1 requires changing the
way you (or at least *I*) look at the song and number 2 requires a good
deal of patience and time to guarantee that you get things just right.

>    Sometimes you just want to sit back, and listen to a long section on
>    your tune, but keep the editing focus on a single pattern in that
>    song, so when you make changes to that one pattern you immediately
>    hear it within the larger context of the whole track.  Apparently
>    with the MD this working style is not possible.

I'm not sure, but I think the MnM will allow this. I know that when you have
a window open (like the ARP window) and change its values while patterns
change in the background, when you close the window the pattern you originally
opened it under is the one that is affected. I don't know if note/parameter
edits are the same.

Joe.