I was curious if there has been any discussion of supporting multiple playheads on the Tracker+ like there is on the Play and Play+
I love the feature on the Elektron boxes where we can have our Tracks play at different speeds and directions. I recently saw a video for the M8, where it supports multiple playheads across its 8 tracks in order to support this technique.
Now, I know the nature of the Tracker+ is to show the Track view scrolling, but since it’s a digital UI, a type of UI scaling could happen on the Tracks which are assigned a different playback speed.
FWIW, I use this feature a ton on Drambo, Play and on the Digitakt 2 to get more complexity and variety from what I am playing…so the track feels less repetitive and varied—it really goes a long way in breaking up the monotony of a 16 Step Track.
Anyhoo, I’d love to hear what others think of this.
It’s a great feature on the Play…and think it would be doubly great on the Tracker+
Cheers!
here’s a link to an example of a 16 Step track using different playback speeds per Track:
I have tracks playing at 1:1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 the overall Track Tempo speed.
I guess the issue is that I can imagine a possible UI implementation but it will look veeeeeery trippy. Imagine the tracks sliding up at different rates (like rollers in a poker machine spinning at different speeds).
The motionless state of the UI can be advantageous to manage polyrhythms but I can see how disorienting it could be for some.
I would vote for this, but I can see how far from the original trackers it goes…and that might be an issue.
There might be a solution in which the Track lanes with different timing could be visually compressed vertically to show the full amounts of Steps, so the entire screen wouldn’t need to scroll.
It could then expand back to normal UI size when Stopped, so user could edit their Steps.
It would definitely require some reimagining, but it could be done with some thought and exploration.
Another option would be to Stop scrolling the view halfway down, or three quarters of the way down, so the Playheads operating at different speeds would have more of a Cascade, rain drops feeling to them.
It’s a great feature regardless, and the M8 does it as well in the Tracker domain…so a solution is possible.
I logged on here to search this topic- psyched to see I’m not the only one contemplating this. I’m not sure if its possible but I would love this feature. The workarounds mentioned are very cool and I like the idea of squeezing complexity/creativity out of the workflow as it exists now, but multiple playheads would really open the Tracker up for my use case.
I mentioned a similar idea recently, that, while not being multiple playheads might be easier (?) for Polyend to implement. My idea is for each track to allow for user defined loop points. An example would be placing the START LOOP POINT on, say, step 3 and the END LOOP POINT on, say Step 15. In this way there is still only one playhead; each track would act in a similar fashion to the loop feature in the performance mode. Might not be any easier to put into practice than multiple playheads but if so it would be lovely to have this feature in hand.
that being said, multiple tempo’s would very much so be the bee’s knees.
I would like to add, that technically you could already do polyrhythmic tracks by using performance mode. In performance mode you can mix different patterns together. So you could have Pattern 1 in a different length as for example Pattern 2. Only drawback - the moment you leave performance mode this will not work anymore of course
Absolutely , thats why I mentioned performance mode in my reply, and while it is an excellent feature this method lacks fine control- the user cannot define the start and end point other than trying to activate the loop in real time. Also, the choices of loop lengths is limited to numbers divisible by 4. Lastly, the performance loop, as you know, is global meaning that all tracks selected would share the same length, start and end points.
Very happy that this feature exists at all, even if limited- its great! My thinking in drawing attention to this method of looping was to point out that since loop points indeed already exist on the Tracker, even if primitive, that maybe this loop feature could be fleshed out and ideally added to the pattern screen.