Silly question about the scale feature and the arp

I assume that the scale feature doesn’t extend to locking the arp to scale, correct? Which means that unless my arp is made up of only octaves apart steps, it won’t follow proper intervals when being played. Am I correct in that thinking, or am I missing something? I’d be so happy if the arp could be set to play to the nearest note in key.

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On the analog 4 it does… I hope here two :confused:

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From the manual :

9.6.6 OFFSET
Offset selects the offset (note) value of the chosen arpeggiator step in semi-tones. The offset is from the original note trig. The SCALE KEY settings found in the TRACK NOTE menu affects the note values of the arpeggiated notes.

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That’s what I thought, but it never seemed to work. I’ll need to test it more.

So maybe mine is broken? Here’s what I’d expect to happen.

  1. Set key scale to C minor (C D Ef F etc).
  2. Open arp and program with offsets 0 1 2 3.
  3. Expect to hear C D Ef F but actually still here the regular chromatic scale.

That doesn’t seem to lock to the scale.

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Also noticing the same with my digikeys.

I’m probably just not understanding it, and would really appreciate a video explanation.

Take care out there!

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It doesn’t work for me too. Maybe I’ve misinterpreted the text if I compare it to the text in the A4 manual. The auto-adjusted is maybe the key word.

From the A4 manual :

10.9.3 KEY SCALE
Sets the key scale of the track. All notes on the sequencer track will be auto-adjusted to the selected scale.

Time to contact Support for a clarification.

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Ooof. The auto-adjusted is probably what it needs. Bah.

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The SCALE KEY setting is the root note setting for scales.
What you want is to have KB SCALE setting affect the notes.

So I think you can just set the root note for the arpeggiator.

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The way I see it when I’m in the Add Notes menu is that you choose a KB Scale so only the Keyboard is affected by this, not the offset notes of the Arp.

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Right. That’s all well and good, but it’s kind of a waste.

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So, only OT and A4 have this Option with their Arp.

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Yeah, I wish it were different.

In my view, the whole KB SCALE setting is useless anyway, the only thing it actually does is filter midi notes that are out of scale(on auto ch) and turn off a couple trig lights.

There is no real benefit for using it, I mostly just set the root note(SCALE KEY) and ignore scale.

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I just received an answer from Elektron about this.

My original email was :

Hi, does the offset notes in the Digitone Arp auto-adjust to the chosen Keyboard Scale like on the Analog 4?

Their answer :

They don’t, but that is actually a bit weird. I will report this to our developers and hopefully this is an improvement we can implement for a future OS.

Kind Regards,
Patrik - Elektron

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Great that you emailed them, if this prompts them to implement the auto-adjust! Thanks

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The KB SCALE / KEY settings are … head-scratching

They appear to be there for people who don’t know music theory to learn what notes are in different scales…?

They don’t affect transpose and apparently they also don’t affect arpeggio

You’d think the primary purpose would be to expand the range of the trig keyboard and it doesn’t do that either

Strange

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Send a feature request to get the scale mode of Syntakt added. It would make so much sense on Digitone.

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