A few things I would have liked to have known earlier:
SYNC: It’s pretty straightforward on the model series, make sure CLK OUT is ON on the master, and CLK IN is ON on the slave. (My OCD makes me turn CLK IN to OFF on the master, and CLK OUT OFF on the slave so I know what’s going on. In the PORTS section, pick a channel for program change messages.
Make sure to set PCH IN on your slave device to same channel as PCH OUT on the master.
Pattern changing on both devices works best when the pattern lengths are identical on both devices for the pattern you are leaving. You can set “Chg” to, say, 16 on both devices (on every pattern) to have changes happen on the bar, but by default Chg is set to off, so the pattern length dictates when changes occur. To prove your setup is good, I recommend quickly creating 4 new 16 step patterns that sound quite different to each other on both machines. This way you can test the behaviour.
Good idea to copy the default project to a new project immediately, on both machines - this way you can muck about and always have a fallback project.
I guarantee you will press play one day, hear nothing, and wonder why. It’ll probably be because: 1) all your 6 tracks are muted (func+trackpad) or 2) “chance” is set ridiculously low. You’ll have ended a jam the night before with a deadly muting/chance combo and forgotten to reload/reset.
Be careful with saving! Think of saves as “start points”, and remember that if you tweak, power off, power on, you will still have those tweaks… but you will lose them if you reload the pattern without saving the new version first.
You’ve got individual level control of the tracks with the orange knob (M:S), and you can edit the note, length, and velocity of a trig by holding it down in grid mode and adjusting/pressing that level knob.
I’d need a bit more detail regarding “control both machines” - I can’t speak for the M:C, but the M:S will let you assign a MIDI channel to each track, allowing you play each one chromatically if you desire, or use a Maschine or PadKontrol type controller with each pad sending out on those channels if that is what you want.
The “AUTO” channel concept with Elektron boxes is cool, but can be confusing. Basically, if you set a device up with an auto channel of say 15, then any MIDI data coming into it on 15 will trigger the CURRENTLY SELECTED SOUND chromatically. it means you don’t need to be on a pad’s assigned MIDI channel (hurray!) but you might accidentally trigger noises on some weird-ass sound at gigs (Booo!).
Here’s how I would map it, for super max flexibility:
1 - 6 - individual channels for the M:S tracks
7 - 12 - individual channels for the M:C tracks
13 - AUTO CH for M:S
14 - AUTO CH for M:C
16 - PG CH
I found the setup of the model:samples really solid, really simple - you are going to have some seeeeerious fun and the gang of 'nauts on here are friendly, knowledgable folks who will always try to help out.
Enjoy!