I’ve been using the Analog Four and the Cycles together for a while now, and keep running into a weird problem. I have the MIDI Out of the Analog Four connected to the MIDI In of the Cycles, with all Clock and Program Change stuff set accordingly on both devices. When I change patterns on the Analog Four - say, from pattern B4 to B5 - the Cycles follows suit and changes from its pattern B4 to B5, in sync with the Analog Four. The hitch is, it only does it in sync if the Cycles’ Scale Setup is in PTN mode, not in TRK mode. If the Cycles is in TRK mode (IE if I want the different tracks to have different lengths), it still changes patterns, but it doesn’t do so until 8 steps later. The problem persists regardless of whether I do the program change manually or using Song/Chain Mode. I have also checked the “Chg” setting on the Cycles’ Scale Setup page and it is just set to 16; should not be an issue (changing it just makes things worse, lol).
Hope this is not too much or too little information, first time posting on here! Any help would be much appreciated, as you can imagine it really puts a damper on music-making! Thanks for reading
I don’t have a Cycles, so can’t give you specifics BUT if it is the same as almost every other Electron machine there will be a ‘CHNG’ parameter in the pattern length page. If this is set to a number, the pattern will change after that number of steps. If it is sent to NONE it will change immediately.
Thanks so much for your reply! Yes, there is definitely something to what you’re saying here. Looking at that feature a bit more, there is an “OFF” setting for the CHNG parameter, which in this case just makes the Cycles stop changing patterns altogether. Then above that the first number is 2, so the Cycles will change on step 2 of the Analog Four. Kind of a cool effect having the two machines a 16th note apart but not the intended effect this time If there were an option to set it to 1 step that would solve it so this seems to be on the right track! I’m off to work now but will spend some time with the manual, and if no dice maybe I’ll make a little video this weekend to demonstrate this strange problem better.
OFF, yep that’s it - far away from all the machines sorry.
Ok, the other things then is that your master track lengths need to match in each pattern. So say you have Track 1 on 4 steps, track 2 on 8 steps, and track 3 on 32 steps, you want the LEN parameter (I think this is the right abbreviation) to be a common multiple (e.g. 32). This needs to be the same on both machines. The scale used to have to match on both machines too, but I’m pretty use I have sets that have non-matching track scales now.
That makes total sense! The weird thing is that the Cycles doesn’t have a master LEN parameter like the A4 and others have; instead it just has PTN mode, where all the tracks are the same length and scale, and TRK mode, where they can have different lengths and scales (equivalent to “Normal” and “Advanced” modes on the A4, just with no Master LEN parameter). If I use PTN mode and the pattern length is the same as the A4 then it is no problem and they change patterns together; TRK mode is what derails them, even though there is no polyrhythmic trickery going on (the three tracks in this example are set at 16 1x, 64 1x, and 64 2x). So strange! But just noticed there’s an OS update I haven’t installed yet so we’ll see if that does the trick. Thanks again for your replies!
*Edit: no dice after the the OS update:P
If there were an option to set it to 1 step that would solve it so this seems to be on the right track! I’m off to work now but will spend some time with the manual, and if no dice maybe I’ll make a little video this weekend to demonstrate this strange problem better.