MIDI Track Plays Free Behavior

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Was experimenting with using “plays free” mode on my MIDI sequencing tracks and encountered an issue which could just be normal behavior but I’m wondering if there’s a workaround.

Assume MIDI tracks are all plays free, one2, quant 4/16. When changing patterns do you need to manually retrigger each track when you’ve arrived at the next pattern? I had assumed it would maintain the play/stop state for each track but it seems like it doesn’t. “Start silent” doesn’t seem to change anything whether it’s on or off.

Is it just me or does this make plays free midi tracks unusable if you plan to use more than one pattern? Let’s say you’re sequencing drums on T1, bass on T2, lead on T3. No matter what you do all of your MIDI sequencing will grind to an abrupt halt once the pattern has changed. Conversely if the play/stop state was conserved between patterns then if you had drums and bass playing on pattern 1, then changed to pattern 2 it would continue to sequence the drums and bass with a new midi trig pattern and you could start the lead track sequencer on command whenever you wanted.

Am I missing something?

#2

Seems normal to me. Btw a option to keep play state would be interesting, and if it could also have the possibility to keep the track of previous pattern, it would be great for transitions.

I found a hack to hold midi plays free in Hold mode : hold plays free trigs, go to audio tracks mode, release trigs. You can go back to midi mode, midi plays free are still “holden”.
I’d try to change patterns after that, not sure it’d work.

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#3

Neat hold hack but it didn’t keep playing on pattern change. Yeah I was hoping for Ableton style abilities to start/stop midi tracks independently and change patterns (a la scenes in Ableton) with certain tracks still running but it looks like no dice.

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