I suggest & would like to see an update for the Elektron sequencer to be able to do 128 and up to 256 steps. That would make much more easy to make long and nice sequences within Elektron and sequencing other gear.
I mean, 64 steps is fine for a drum machine and for a bassline, but for other sequencing purposes its a bit limited… say some nice arps, evolving pads, texture sounds… that’S where the 64 steps are limited af…
Old MPC’s 2k 1k etc can do 1024 afaik. Why not implement that, it must be a line of code for the new gear, add shortcut like FUNC+SCALE+WTVR and there you go, doubled steps once for 128, twice for 256 in ex.
There is a workaround that I have been using: chain patterns… but it’s less than ideal and it uses up a precious pattern slot… specially for live acts.
I would suggest that firm update for following gear:
DT, DTone, OT, AR, A4… & if possible old gear like MnM & MD. (y, i own all of those boxes)
plz. do it. yesterday. Fanxxx gang
EDIT: btw electribes have this feature and they are exactly 20 years old!!
Have you tried per-track scales with multipliers? You can make the 64 last as long as 512 steps if you’re happy to lose resolution. It’s great for long pads.
You get 128 patterns per project, and 256 on the OT. I wouldn’t call them “precious”. I suppose that if you’re playing less loopy music, you might use up all the patterns quickly. The combination of conditions, scales and chains means there’s a lot more to a single pattern than at first glance.
Your request is reasonable and I’m sure you’re not alone in wishing for it… but the “workarounds” are pretty interesting and powerful.
Have you considered playing some parts live? If your application is slowly evolving things like pads, held arpeggios, etc, these would be easy candidates for live play.
irrelevant really but gotta chime in that the old MPCs aren’t step sequencers at all lmao
(they’re just a nearly* arbitrary number of notes tracked with 96 ticks per quarter note resolution. *on the order of 100,000 notes, varying depending on OS version)
In reply to anguslocke:
Apart from the 500 and 2k, you can use the MPC’s as step sequencers. It’s just a different way of inputting notes. It’s the same thing, you input data into a sequencer. You don’t have to play it in “live”, “lmao”.
And tge mpc’s after the mpc1000 had at least 480ppq, i believe the mpc4000 had 960ppq. Which is irrelevant, but whatever
But honestly, more than 64 steps per pattern in Elektrons is just too much considering you CAN NOT loop a section of the pattern. And since all track could playback at different speeds, it’s unlikely they will ever add a “section loop” function. You can also not start the “playhead” from the point you are editing.
When I use Electrons I stick to 16 steps/1 bar per pattern for this reason. But since most of these boxes don’t have song mode, I gave up on them.
Plus; you can not switch between divisions (8th notes, triplet grid, etc) without changing the relative speed of the track. And you could work around it somewhat if you’d have a basic song mode. But again, you don’t have that.
The elektron sequencers are fun to use, but they lack a serious amount of depth in terms of songwriting. The RS7000 could do all of this and I believe the “toyish” Roland MC-303 / 505 could do these things as well.
You can change the speed of tracks. But you are always limited to 64 parts per pattern. Unless you make use of the step roll thing. But only so much control is available to you with this featurette
I’ve thought about this a lot and I really think their machines would benefit massively from this or similar. Like you imply, it’s a major limitation especially to working with potentially longer patterns. But even as it stands, editing notes in bar 4 and hearing the results can be laborious at the moment.
Absolutely this. And it’s frustrating because the sequencers are so good and I love the tight timing compared with working in the DAW. But they could really do with taking things a step (boom) further when it comes to working with notes, pattern length and playhead/looping. It’s currently very tricky to achieve some things that are very basic in a DAW. Eg, we don’t even have overdub, or record pitchwheel…
Every step in the 64 can have a different condition. If you set any one of them to n:8 you immediately have a pattern that is 64x8=512 steps long. If you set one to m:7 and another to n:8, your pattern doesn’t repeat exactly for 7x8x64=3584 steps. You could use polymeter to multiply the repetition/step count even further. I assert that you are not using your Elektron sequencers to their fullest.
Except that
-you can only have one trig per step, so the conditions are basically on/off, can’t pitch anything
-programming conditional steps to deliberately create a pattern of day 16 bars is possible, but it’s absolutely painful.
Conditional trigs are great for percussion, but no bueno for deliberate longer melodic sequences.
