I have been looking but I think we don’t have this thread for M:S, so here we are
After first months with the machine I have realized I have not used the FILL feature… Any tips with that? How do you use it?
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It’s a very powerful tool for transitions. It brings a lot to a static beat.
It took me ages to figure out the fill button doesn’t work when in step record mode. I kept entering fill trigs and the fill button did nothing til I figured that out.
One tip for fills is it can be worth keeping a spare track just for fills because otherwise you’re stuck with just the empty steps on a track for it.
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It does if you use the latch fill [function]
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Ooh what’s that?
Pg 29 of the manual
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Interesting, I didn’t know that was a feature.
Can’t remember which thread I learned this from, but here’s a better way to chop samples on the M:S -
Lay down a trig and p-lock sample start (you can even p-lock at 0 if you want to)
Now when you edit Sample Start, you can keep tapping the track pad to audition that chop without affecting your currently P-Locked steps. Repeat until you find the groove you’re after.
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i don’t suppose you can load samples into the M:S via an ios device? mines in the mail still so forgive my ignorance 
after scrolling thru the forum looks as if this is a hard no at this time. bunmer!
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I really like the Fill button, but I have to put the word ‘fill’ at the end of my pattern name to remind me to use it!
My favorite thing to do on the M:S is to set up long chains of conditional trigs, to create generative patterns (meaning that the music writes itself, in a sense). I’ve found the following to be a fairly quick way to get it going. I’ll create a bit of notation here to hopefully make this more understandable:
T1 = track 1
t1 = trig 1
T1t1 = track 1, trig 1
So T4t3 would be Track 4, trig 3
(do all of the following in grid record / step sequencer mode)
- Create a trig of whatever sound you want (including p-locks). Let’s say we start with T1t1. We’ll call this trig the ‘leader’
- Copy T1t1 and paste it onto the next trig, T1t2. We’ll come back to this later. We’ll call this trig the ‘follower’
- Go back to the first trig, p-lock the chance to a percentage, let’s say 80%.
- Go back to the second trig, T1t2, and p-lock the chance to PRE (meaning it will fire only when the previous trig, T1t1, also fires)
- Copy T1t2 and paste it onto a bunch of subsequent trigs, say T1t3 - T1t10. There can be no gaps or skipped trigs, you have to use all consecutive trigs, but some can be silent if you want, by p-locking the volume to 0. We’ll refer to all of these trigs as ‘followers’ as well.
- Optional: for a bit of flair, I often set the last trig in the sequence (T1t10) to retrig on something fast, like 1/80. Makes for a glitchy end to the sequence.
- Optional: you can sample lock each trig in the PRE sequence (T1t2 - T1t10) to be different samples, if you like, to make a complex sequence.
- Repeat the above steps for subsequent pages in the sequence. You can vary the starting trig’s location, it doesn’t have to always be the first step.
- Repeat the above for all other tracks, T2 - T6. Aim for a minimal, sparse composition as it can fill up quickly and become just a random wall of noise.
If you find that your composition doesn’t sound good, try changing the ‘leader’ trig’s chance percentage to a lower number, so lower it from 80% to 40%, for example. Repeat that over your various tracks, and you should have a much more sparse, and hopefully musical, composition.
That’s an easy way to get started making generative sequences. Of course you can get much fancier with it, just try all of the different conditional trig options for the ‘leader’ trig, and the ‘followers’ will come along for the ride!
Also play with the inverse PRE option (meaning that the trig will fire only if the previous trig does not fire). Combine that with a leader set to 50% chance and you’ve got lots of variation.
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Can get even crazier when you also use NEI…
Indeed! That’s where you start getting really complex. Maybe a retrig on an inverse NEI, with percentages on either side.
Great! I will try one of this days 
nice thread, lots to learn. I wish someone would make a video showing all of these things
great idea! do you have any videos / audio links of your experiments? def going to try this
Sure! I’m actually planning to make a video on this technique, hope to get that done soon. For now, here’s some of my works in progress:
These aren’t terribly musical, but they have sort of a Broken Toy quality that I like for a short duration, but gets grating after a bit, so I kept these recordings short. That’s another oddity of generative sequences…how long do you record them? Some sequences could be days long (meaning they could play for days without repeating)!
These are based on Hainbach’s Isolation Loops soundpack (free/donation based), which are excellent, plus a few of my own samples.
In the first two recordings, I have 2 - 3 tracks that aren’t generative, to give the song some sort of structure. Then 3 - 4 tracks are adding generative flair and fills. In IsoLoops2 (my favorite), everything is generative.
These recordings are straight off the Model:Samples with no performance element (so I just hit record, then hit play, and didn’t touch anything until I stopped recording).
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looking forward to the tip video
Greetings from a new Elektronaut. Looked for a sampler / groovebox since last fall, and got the M:S a couple of weeks ago. Play mostly ambient, so will load a lot of own samples on it, as soon as I get better acquainted with it.
–> So far my favourite “trick” is to take a sample (used a lot of Hainbachs Isolation loops), assign it to a [T1] with inf decay & repeat on. Copy this Trig to [T2], inf D + repeat, and just slightly make the second sample shorter.
Tweak ad infinitum. 
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