Hapax Mute Performance

[Luilu]

Hey there Hapax comunity. Ive spent some weeks playing with the hapax, so far loving it. I Want to discuss the function of the mute button in the step sequencer. till now i find it a little bit odd that the mute option mute all the clips from a track. I almost allways use the mute for drum tracks (like mute the kick or hihats claps and so on), But the hapax mutes the sound in all the clips! not just muting the clip am working. Is there a performance reason for that ? Im missing the point of muting all clips?

Somebody else finds the hapax shuld just mute the Instrument in a clip???

[Loz]

You can do this!

Go into Step mode (with your drum track selected) and then press and hold the arrow for the row or rows (instruments) you want to mute, then press the mute button. It will just mute triggers on those rows only (this also works in step mode for normal Poly sequences as well)

[Luilu]

Hey loz yeah that’s my problem after muting the instrument, the instrument ist muted in all clips…

[Loz]

Oh I see. I get what you mean now, although I actually prefer this arrangement (as you get more variations from 8 patterns (one of the reasons I love the Elektron Rytm so much) but I can imagine it’s annoying if you’re expecting or used to mutes being on a per clip basis like a lot of drum machines.

Maybe suggest a change to Squarp and see if it could be a menu option.

[Thibault_Squarp]

Hi @Luilu ,

Firstly, I’m glad you like Hapax

Now, I’m not entirely sure I’m getting the issue you’re describing.
There are multiple muting behaviours, for multiple use cases.

1. MUTE + [TRACK BUTTON] mutes an entire track. Changing patterns doesn’t change the fact the track is muted. This will also mute any incoming MIDI that is routed through this track.
2. MUTE + [EVENTS] mutes events, so THIS is local to a pattern, because you can think of a pattern as a collection of events, and parameters. This will NOT mute incoming events.
3. On drum tracks, MUTE + [ROW BUTTON] is just a shortcut for [ROW HOLD SELECTION] + MUTE. This avoids having to wait for the ‘hold’ delay to kick in, and makes muting/unmuting drums a performance.

My question is 3-fold:

1. What precise series of actions are you performing?
2. What is the outcome?
3. What was the outcome you expected?

[xeamus]

What is the reason that you can’t first hold Mutepad and then press a Rowpad to mute a row just like you mute a Track?

If a Rowpad starts to blink (as they do on muted tracks) you know that that row is muted (as a extra function instead of just watching the pads in the grid change color) . The blinking Rowpad will move if you go up/down the grid. Unmute with Mutepad + select all.

This way you can mute more than one row at the same time if you press Mutepad + multiple Rowpads (that don’t need to be near eachother) instead of selecting one row at a time and then mute as now.

Perhaps I’m missing something?

[Luilu]

Hey my problem with the mute is not that! I understand that is possible to mute rows und groups of rows and also all the kit. My problem is while performing live if the song changes, the next section still muted. That I find super strange. As I am used to mute single rows or instruments or drum lanes per clip/ pattern and not for the hole song. Like buildup: with muted kick and then drop with unmuted kick. With the hapax you always need to unmute again when the song changes to a new section. And that for me it’s really strange. The work around is to create a new pattern which is actually a disadvantage! So that’s why I would like to see in the next update that drum instruments notes are just muted for the clip or song section and not for all the midi track.

[thetechnobear]

I think its just ‘approach’ …

I think the key here is:

@Luilu

The work around is to create a new pattern which is actually a disadvantage!

you want to mute particular notes (aka percussion ‘line’) ,which is handled by having different patterns… and works, but you dont want to create new patterns (which I kind of understand) … instead somehow you want to use the same pattern, but somehow revert it to unmuted, on song section change.

so we , this of this more generally as the idea that a change (in this case mutes) to a pattern is somehow not ‘permanent’ , such that a change (*) in section can ‘revert’ your changes to the pattern.

if we view it this way, then we can see this is kind of related to the ‘snapshot’ feature of hapax,
which if you haven’t investigated… you might want to look at

I did talk about some possibilities of snapshots with Squarp whilst beta testing the Hapax, and some ideas on how they could be improved - but interestingly Ive seen little discussion of them on the forum… so not sure others are using them much. so I not getting extra love

however, they do offer the key to idea of separating temporary and permanent changes (and importantly in this case reverting)… so perhaps the “feature request” here is that song sections could use snapshot to revert changes. this is kind of what they were designed for, ‘go off piste’ then come back to a known point.

anyway, as always, best to contact squarp directly, and see if you can work thru a good solution.

---

(*) note: mutes are no different in this case from other pattern changes, and frankly - thats a good thing, as it allows for a lot of creative flexibility - rather than codifying a particular musical approach.

[xeamus]

Hopefully you didn’t thought I was writing directly to you, it was just a reflection for a better muting workflow.

[jemmons]

Is this like how the Elektron Digi-boxes have a Global Mute Mode (AKA "green mutes”) and Pattern Mute Mode (AKA “purple mutes”)? Global Mutes mute a track across all patterns on the device. Track Mutes are local to the pattern. So you can mute track 1 in pattern A, switch to pattern B, and track 1 will no longer be muted. But if you switch back to pattern A, it will be. Is that the kind of behavior you’re talking about?

One thing I’ve noticed in the Elektron community is that people tend to have a way they think about mutes, find the mode/color that matches it, and then avoid the other one like the plague. But no one agrees on which one is “right” or “most natural”. So requesting some sort of configuration option from Squarp would not be our of order.

On the plus side, I don’t know of many that are jumping back and forth between the two modes, so this could be a pretty high-up setting; at least on the project-, maybe on the system-level.

[Luilu]

Yeah yeah and yeah also yeah. Thanks jemmons and Techno bear you both nailed the point. I think electron and Roland boxes users are used to revert to an initial state. Especially for techno this is quite a normal workflow/ performance trick. Which right now with my limited hapax knowledge I can’t achieve. While life performance unmute kick then press section 2x change section, then go to step to the new clip und unmute there… So quite complicated…

I’ll try Snapshot maybe this is the squarp way of muting.

[thetechnobear]

@Luilu

Especially for techno this is quite a normal workflow/ performance trick

I think some devices are much more focused on certain ‘musical genre’ workflows…
e.g. a drum machine will have a certain view focus on how percussion works, and so have mutes in a particular way.

(so not surprising, you mention roland/electron in this regard)

whereas some sequencers are more general… so have (and imho, should have) a more more generalised workflow
e.g. hapax’s drum tracks are pretty much a ‘skin’ over a normal polyphonic track, where notes = percussive track.
this gives 90% of what’s needed to 90% of users…

but generalisation does mean some small compromises, you’re not going to implement a very specific workflow, that inconsistent with other workflows. and also might be usable to a (relatively small) % of users, given you have a broader user base.
(more generalised instruments, will have users using in a wider set of genres, almost by definition)

so the question is (for developers) how do you support these use-cases…

many users say ‘just make it an option’…
however, generally developers do NOT like this approach, for a variety of technical reasons - basically, it will bite you on the a*se later
( this is a common, ‘conflict of interest’ for devs vs users - users see it as a quick/easy thing to do, but for devs… ‘its not that simple’ )

instead, the better approach is to find a more general approach, is consistent and has multiple uses. but this is much harder to design, and also implement = more dev effort.

this was why I mentioned snapshots… they might not quite do what you want…
but they are a powerful concept, that could potentially with a small tweak, do what you need - but also have a much wider range of uses.
e.g. not just muting, but for example, resetting fx parameters between song sections.

its also not a new concept, but rather an extension to something already preset.

[ChilledPanda]

The snapshots are ace (similar to the elektron temporary pattern save), but it is destructive, so unless you switch back to the original (pressing snapshot so it is green), which I believe Luili was trying to avoid when pattern changes, wants it so it unmutes the changes to that pattern, though I guess pressing the single snapshot button is better than trying to unmute loads. But if you don’t want that to be done until the current pattern has played then you are kind of back to the original issue and if you wanted to switch back to the pattern to play it unmuted again there is no way to do this as editing is always done in the currently selected/playing pattern.

What would solve it would be for if you switch the current track pattern whilst in snapshot mode it then it reverts to the original unless you confirm (long press on snapshot whilst its on red). But then again I could possibly see someone possibly finding an issue with it been that way, personally I feel it would work well because it feels like it is a performance tool in the main.

It did originally catch me out when trying it as the been able to switch between the original and the changed pattern was nice, now I have to remember to switch back to the original before exiting snapshot if I don’t want the changes.