Strategy for performing pattern-chained songs

[UrbanOrangutan]

Hey Elektronauts, I have question about live performance involving pattern chains, or multiple patterns. What methods have you come up with for “performing” when a pattern chain is playing? I think the difficulty I find stems from the fact that sound and effect settings are all saved on a per-pattern basis. This makes it difficult to maintain consistency in your sounds as you move from pattern to pattern. Or, if the mix of the sounds doesn’t suit the sound system in the venue/you want to make an adjustment to a sound you have to repeat the process on each pattern, which seems not very manageable when performing.

I generally fall back on muting tracks here and there to create moments, and otherwise playing a synth or guitar along to it like it’s a backing track. But if that’s the case, I’d might as well arrange everything in detail with the powerful sequencer and just record it into my loop pedal so I can start the track instantly rather than going through the whole awkward entering the pattern chain every time (for the complex songs, at least. Shorter or simpler songs I can queue up the pattern changes live), but I think that is not fully bringing out the potential of the digitone. It would be nice to have the freedom to shape the sounds in a track as I move through different parts of the song, but you inevitably end up with an abrupt transition when the next pattern begins. You can prepare shifts in the sounds between the patterns, beforehand, to inject more movement into the songs, but that is not performative. Any tricks or functions that I am missing?

I suppose it’s not a problem so much when sequencing external gear, because you can cc or p.lock parameters, or not, in which case you can control the sound you’re using through the song.

It would be super nice if there was a way to link sounds/settings between patterns or on a bank level.

Anyways… Long story short, what is your approach to getting the most performance out of the digitone when dealing with structured songs that require moving through a number of patterns?

Cheers!

[hrrld]

Hi, very interested to see what others write in response to this. Of course, this has been asked many times many ways on this forum, but your exposition is a particularly nice one.

My answer to this (very unfortunately) is to just hard-force a 1-pattern-per-song approach.

Two quick thoughts about this:

1. You can do more with a single pattern than you think, even if you think you can do a lot with a single pattern. Conditional trigs + per-track time scales + clever (and by clever I guess I mean high) M.LEN settings + LFOs + fill trigs + mute mode + external midi controller with separate knobs for the 4 tracks of modwheel (CC1 on channel 1/2/3/4) + sound locks + …
2. I’ve also done a lot with sequencing DN from another sequencer (specifically, rasp pi just playing longer linear midi files). This is obviously sad because you sort of throw away the DN sequencer, but hearing it play out longer sequences (imagine: music with bridges and key changes, weow! ) I have found to be quite inspiring.

Of course, +1 for some kind of linking so we could just open up the filter on a sound and somehow have that reflected in another pattern, but, assuming that never comes, there’s still plenty to do.

Hope that helps, take care.

[fotis.m]

This is my main question around the Digitone as well: why have such an amazing and detailed pattern sequencer but so few options to apply changes across patterns? Let’s say I want to have a synth line which gradually changes in volume and filter settings across 4 sequencial patterns. I can’t really find a way to do this in a reliable way.

And to tell the truth this was my main expectation from the updates. While they are great, it still appears as if the workflow is on a per pattern basis.

Please let me know if I am missing something. I love my DN, I am just wondering how it can become even more amazing for live sets and jams.