Regardless, thanks for writing about this. I’ve always been curious about microtonal composition but haven’t yet plunged into something like Scala. This was a useful overview of some of the options available in hardware-land.
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great insights 
thank you!
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Absolutely. But if one’s “default” musical pitch set is, say, Bayati or Pelog/Slendro instead of 12ed2 chromatic/diatonic (my own “default” for years has been: “however extensive a subset of a harmonic series I can ergonomically work with, usually octave-normalized”; this is basically similar to La Monte Young), then at present, this is a workaround so time-consuming as to be untenable for practically any musician (I say from observation).
Note that it’s not enough for a manufacturer to provide presets of these “exotic” scales, since for instance, traditionally every Indonesian gamelan orchestra would have its own versions of Pelog and Slendro, “microtonally” (and sometimes “macrotonally”) deviating from the others, or from any theoretical average; and besides, there are always more scales/tunings than can be accounted for.
In addition, much finer pitch resolution (“microtonal” or “microtuning”) than the common Western chromatic scale (which I usually refer to as 12ed2; ie. 12 [logarithmically] equal divisions of the interval 2/1, the “octave”) is absolutely necessary to account for any pitch usage/system that developed before or independently of (or in reaction to; eg. Harry Partch, LMY, RDJ) post-19th-century Western industrialization/colonization; this condition naturally applies to most of the music ever to exist.
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Has anyone managed to get Digi song mode to follow OT Song Position Pointer? I can’t figure out if this is supposed to work
Yes, the mutes are awesome. They’ve made me rethink what a pattern is. Just one pattern NOW holds so much potential, I can already feel my brain feeling relieved and able to unlock more creative ideas since the more mundane, robotic stuff (simple drum build ups, add bass, etc) can be handled better.
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There’s no way to see how long a song is (in minutes:seconds), right?
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I think with the new song mode MIDI sequencing with these boxes becomes a lot more useful and important to many users. Personally I don’t understand why MIDI sequencing is so different on DT, DN and ST.
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The bit I don’t get is why the one machine that can do 8 note poly is the… 8 voice poly synth 
maybe a stripped down song mode for the Models, but the screen is too small for the analog/Digi style Song mode. would be nice though and folks doubted this update would ever happen. who knows?
Thank you very much Elektron! Epic update. Bought an elektron digitakt, it’s coming tomorrow. I’m so hyped to be able to use song mode on it.
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not tried song mode yet, but I guess I use pattern mutes to “perform” patterns anyway… So… feel like song mode will be more useful for being able to insert transistion patterns and more macro-arrangement stuff that I can then mess about within…
I guess it’s because editing multiple notes is more convenient with the Digitone’s track note menu. (At least this is true if you’re not using an external keyboard)
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Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I noticed something annoying. Regardless of your meticulous programming of track mutes per song step, it only takes one jam for it to completely forget which tracks mute when. In other words, forget about using the pattern track mutes live while playing a song if you want to play it again later. I tried to reload the song but that doesn’t solve it either. Only reloading the entire project will bring back the track mutes configured on the original song. I find this behavior strange. Surely the song’s own track mutes should override your live jam changes on the fly, rather than the on-the-fly mutes be saved into the song data?
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for some reason i thought FUNC + NO should also reload the mute states.
am i missremembering or it broke with current update?
i have a memory of spamming func no during pattern changes as a safenet for reverting pattern to the original state.
Use Global mutes for jams
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For the pattern mutes that’s definitely correct, at least on the Digitakt. Didn’t have a chance to install the update and use the machines yet but curious to know if this function is gone…
saving the song via the song menu (save to proj) does not actually save the song to the project - it just saves a ‘placeholder’ into the song’s slots list which is constantly autosaved to. if you want to actually save the song, you need to save the project outside of song mode. i’m finding it quite messy tbh, and found the wording to be quite misleading.
the only way to revert changes you’ve made (inadvertently or not) is, as you say, reload the entire project. ‘reloading’ the song from the song slots does not work as the song has already been autosaved/updated to your ‘erroneous’ version.
for me the whole saving/reloading system for song mode is a bit of a sore point, but it’s something the devs are aware of and looking into. hopefully it’s possible to improve.
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I’ve always found the messiness of Elektron’s “Save Project” function annoying. I never really figured out exactly what happens with Saved songs on my A4MKII so I just save the song then project right after just in case.
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Save everything Kits included
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It does restore the pattern mutes when you’re not in song mode. But when you’re in song mode, any pattern mute changes immediately changes that line of the song in the song mode editor, for some stupid reason, and Func+No ignores pattern mutes altogether in this mode (but restores any other parameter changes made). It’s really weird.
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