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Some suggestions (and a lot of praise)

nilspupilsnilspupils
edited August 2013 in Feature requests and bug reports
Hi Julian and forum,
on vacation with my brother in law (who is a high class professional drummer btw.) my question to program some beats turned into a whole night LXR techno session, only with the LXR and the two of us! He was really impressed by the machine, calling it way ahead of anything in the market especially the Nord Drum. He especially noted tightness, live functionality (especially morphing!) and overall sound. In the end he also wants one, which i offered to solder for him (and which is already ordered).
He offered some little suggestions for future firmare updates, which i would like to share:

1. Badly missed a function to save kit and pattern together especially including the tempo. (Has been said already)
2. He had the impression that the shuffle function was a bit "off" timing-wise, which i could not hear...
3. Sometimes we had troubles with patterns which didn't load. Could have been an error on my side (or the beer) though :) Perhaps a visual load confirmation would be a good thing...
4. A quick reset or init function to start out new.

I have been thinking about using formants in some way to add even more diversity in sound but i should start a discussion about that another time...

Overall we had a _great_ time with your machine!
Thanks and greetings, Nils
PS: Have a nice vacation!


Comments

  • julianjulian
    1.) is on the todo list
    2.)I have to have another look into the shuffle algorythm anyways.
    one thing I wondered and never found a very pleasing answer is how to handle the notes between the 16th notes.
    All shuffle descriptions i've found mention only a 16th step grid.
    but what do I do with notes on a smaller grid?
    Shifting them linear results in a very unpleasing groove. At the moment I shift the notes in a logarythmic curve towards the shifted 16th note. It's better but still not 100% sure if thats the right way of doing it.
    3.) This is somewhat hidden. Since at the moment patterb loading takes a while, the new pattern is loaded in the background, while the current pattern keeps on playing. After the new pattern is loaded, you have to manually activate it with one of the pattern select buttons in performance mode. So you can decide on which beat the pattern loaded in the background should start playing.
    4.) where to put it? a new target in the clear button menu for "preset" ?

    I'm glad you like the machine :)
    thanks for the kind words.
  • elloello
    edited September 2013
    what about a midi clock divider? so i can for example divide the external clock thru 4 and it plays accordingly slower
  • elloello
    abd i'd like to have the chain restart when synced. now it goes on with the last pattern, which isn't the desired option – at least for me
  • julianjulian
    MIDI clock divider is planned for a future update (as well as clock dividers/prescalers for the trigger extension clock inputs)

    Chain reset is a good idea! added to the list.
  • elloello
    cool :) for the midi divider (a multiplier would make sense, too, i guess)
  • julianjulian
    yeah, multiplying is the hard part.
    Dividing is easy.

    But since it is really needed for the trigger extension (you don't always have a 32ppq clock at hand)
    it will find its way to the midi clock, too

  • nilspupilsnilspupils
    @julian: As far as i understand it from Roger Linn's comments here:
    http://www.attackmagazine.com/features/roger-linn-swing-groove-magic-mpc-timing/
    the "Linn" swing only affects the 16th and not the steps inbetween. I will however ask my drummer pal how he would handle these steps...
  • julianjulian
    yeah thats what I thought, too in the beginning.
    but that would lead to overlapping notes.

    normal swing goes up to 50%-75% shift towards thenext 16th note.
    If you shift the note just 50% in the direction of the next 16th, that means the note is now placed on the location of the 4th or 5th sub step. So what to do with the previous sub steps. You definitely don't want to change note order ;)
  • nilspupilsnilspupils
    @julian: Had a chat with the drummer last night how to handle substeps when shuffeling: From a musical point of view substeps should either belong to the binary or the ternary pattern and nothing inbetween, as this would lead to polyrhythm. Even when 16th are shifted by a certain amount, these substeps should stay independent in their binary pattern, even though "note" orders could change by that. Or they should move to a ternary pattern at one point alltogether.
    I hope this makes sense in any way.....
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