I’m still fairly new to my MDUW+ and one thing I’ve noticed is that my ‘global’ settings have gotten reset a couple of times. I’ve only been using Slot 1 and just trying to set it up for my basic setups so far, which are:
No base channel (’–’)
Send out clock and control messages
It’s been set up this way for a few days as I’ve started integrating the MD into a potential live setup where it’s basically the master clock.
Tonight I had the MD hooked up to the TM-1 and was loading in a couple of the free sample packs from Elektron’s site via C6 and saw that the ‘MIDI IN’ light on the TM-1 was playing whenever I played a sound. I looked at my globals and base channel was back to 1-4, and the external sync settings had been reset to ‘not send’.
I’m not seeing anything in the manual about how/when this might get saved or restored. Is it possible that I may have been clumsy with C6 and caused it to reset? Should I just stay off of Global Slot 1 for doing any custom settings? Or should I have a global slot set up a certain way just for doing C6 SysEx stuff via TM-1?
I must admit that I’m not really understanding slots and their relationship to things like snapshots and banks and I’m starting to get a little trigger shy as I’ve already accidentally lost work by loading something without saving (happened tonight when I followed the ‘detailed’ installation settings for one of these sample packs which bypassed the quick-snapshot menu, so I lost all my custom work of the past few days. Whoops! Lesson learned).
You should aim to assign different global slots for different configurations of your gear so that you can recall them when you need them. You do not need a specific global slot for SysEx dumps.
If you load a different snapshot or load SysEx data that includes global settings, then you will potentially overwrite the global settings in the MD’s memory. Many users lose work in their first weeks with the MD and MM until they understand how the actions in the GLOBAL > FILE menu work. Careful reading of the options described in the manual is useful.
That said, some people have reported bugs in the retention of global settings in the past.
So even though ‘Slots’ are the first thing that comes up in the Global menu, are they really tied to the Snapshot?
It was late last night I thought it might be this way, since the non-Drive (and historic) versions of the MD have just that single snapshot so globals really are global.
A snapshot is the whole content of an MD’s memory, including the 8 global slots.[/quote]
So in this context, would you advise to start out with using only one snapshot, and modify global slots within that snapshot as needed?
…[/quote]
That works for me; I assign a global slot for each configuration of my gear:
[ul]
[li]standalone (no MIDI in or out) for troubleshooting[/li]
[li]slave to my main sequencer[/li]
[li]master when sequencing other gear[/li]
[li]etc[/li]
[/ul]
You may need to use another scheme for your needs.
Save the work in a Snapshot other than #1 because there are some recovery procedures that restore the factory default data to Snapshot #1.
Every time I feel that I want to try something different, I use a new snapshot.
But mostly this is another backup location to complement SysEx files saved to computer; the latter is more flexible for me and I rarely stray far from my main set-up.
As with all things Elektron, think about your own practice and how the features can be used for your situation.
I use them for quick studio reconfiguration. I keep all 8 uniform across all my MD and MnM snapshots because thinking.
My settings overlap Peter’s above somewhat. I can quickly switch up my MIDI cable routing for setups like
[ul]
[li]OT as master, MD and MnM as slave[/li]
[li]MD as master, MnM as slave, using the MiniCommand[/li]
[li]MnM as master, MD as slave, using a keyboard[/li]
[/ul]
etc.
So Snapshots really are the highest level of everything. I had previously bookmarked / took notes from a previous post about this, but it never mentioned the Slots, which I’ve added to my notes.
I’ve tried. Maybe it’s my attention deficit behavior, but this bit was just unclear in the manual and felt like it was spread across multiple pages. The Global section is huge and when you’re not dealing with managing and loading samples, trying to find some of these details about is not easy. It’s generally a good manual but this bit was unclear.
I’m not trying to have anyone read the manual for me, I just didn’t understand this part. Since the slots page comes up first when hitting the “Global” key, I thought it had precedence over Snapshots (esp. as snapshot management is a couple more menu dives away), which is why I was surprised when my MIDI routing settings reset a second time. I didn’t want to have this happen on stage.
But before posting here, I tried consulting the manual (multiple times - this question’s been nagging at me since I got the box a couple of weeks ago) and maybe I just missed the spot where this is explained, or it blew past me as I’m still coming to terms with some of the jargon; or I was just looking in the wrong place trying to understand Slots when I should have been trying to better understand everything in a snapshot. In any case, I missed it, even after multiple tries!
Maybe because without a +Drive, Global really means Global, but when Snapshots come into play they have precedence, but the UI for routing and management was already in place?
Anyways, thanks for helping to clarify this point about Snapshots for me! It really helps.
I’ve tried. Maybe it’s my attention deficit behavior, but this bit was just unclear in the manual and felt like it was spread across multiple pages. The Global section is huge and when you’re not dealing with managing and loading samples, trying to find some of these details about is not easy. It’s generally a good manual but this bit was unclear.
…[/quote]
Fully agreed. Take what I write as advice, not admonition.
Yes, the terminology can be confusing for this very reason.
Thanks. It’s good that the information was included in the manual, which I do enjoy reading, but I wouldn’t have minded a warning box around this section.
For +Drive equipped units the Battery Backed Memory will be replaced by factory patterns, kits, songs and global settings. The first Sample bank will be replaced with factory samples, given you have a UW version of the Machinedrum. The first Snapshot will be replaced with factory patterns, kits, songs and global settings. No other Snapshots or Sample banks on the +Drive will be affected.
Lesson learned (the hard way). Maybe avoid using the first Sample bank, because like the first Snapshot, a Factory Reset would replace them both.
