Feature Requests

[t2i]

Great machine, love the drumbrute (aside from my scratchy kick2 level pot). Taken much of what I enjoy about the playability of the old Korg Electribes and greatly improved & extended it.

Few things I'd like to see added,

1. Per part timing divisions. So one could have hats doing triplets over eighth note kicks. Would love per part bpm for polyrhythmic insanity, but that's likely unrealistic if using a single clock source.

2. Adjustable LED settings. Brightness & timing adjustments in MCC would be great. Don't know if the "ERASE" button was supposed to invoke the Bucha Effect but I nearly fell off my chair the first time I pressed it in a dark room. If it has to be hardcoded, something around 1/8th notes @ 100bpm would be preferable to the current "tactical strobe" setting.

3. Swing Inversion. Pressing "SHIFT" + "Swing - Current Track" or something to flip the swing pattern so delayed hits become advanced instead. 

4. Swing/Slip offset envelopes in the MCC. Bipolar graph allowing quick creation of variable offsets, with master applied amount. Would be extra awesome if one could tweak master amount while playing live to fade the slip pattern in and out per part. Love the slip effect, but it is rather tedious to program on longer patterns.

5. Step Repeat Hold - Press "SHIFT" + any Step Repeat button while playing to hold the Step Repeat and allow two handed tweaking of the sub-pattern. SHIFT flashes to indicate sub-pattern mode. Press "SHIFT" again while in step repeat hold to cancel and resume the main pattern.   

6. Change Pad Trigger Default - In MMC allow selection of default for whether a pad sounds when selected. So rather than SHIFT + PAD for no sound, PAD could be no sound and SHIFT + PAD would sound.

[sealion]

5. Step Repeat Hold - Press "SHIFT" + any Step Repeat button while playing to hold the Step Repeat and allow two handed tweaking of the sub-pattern. SHIFT flashes to indicate sub-pattern mode. Press "SHIFT" again while in step repeat hold to cancel and resume the main pattern.

I agree with that one as 1st pick if I could only have one from that list.  The double click to hold function for shift and drum roll is something I use on my social entrophy engine and double hit shift and drum roll which stays on would free you up to play the filter/drum decay/pitch knobs in live work.

[Darkatek]

Cool ideas man, specially the last 2. Being able to latch the step repeat with shift would be cool.
Another cool thing to be able to would be being able to play the pads while on mute or solo so you could have 3 different parts and still play single hits on all of them if you know what i mean?
I guess you could achieve this by dividing the pattern in 3 different ones and change between them if you wanted to play over only some parts but you would have to have them pre programmed so its not the same flow and intuition.

[groovelastig]

Hey everyone, first post -

First of all, I love the Drumbrute! I love the sound, and the sequencer is ace as well - in fact, I liked the sequencer so much that I went ahead and bought a Beatstep Pro as well. There are so many great features, e.g. I love that there are 64 steps, and I love the polyrhythm mode. So thanks for desingning and making that instrument!

I have a few feature suggestions that came about after playing the drumbrute for a while:

1. MIDI control of the Start / Stop / Rec button, when Sync is set to internal.

Idea: The CCs that you define in the MIDI Control Center (Manual 10.9.3 Transport settings) do not only transmit from the drumbrute to a DAW that a pattern was Started / Stopped / Rec'd, but can also be send from the DAW to simulate a button press of START REC or STOP.

When receiving the CC set in the MIDI Control center, e.g. CC54 Value 127, the Drumbrute will the be set to REC (or start playing with its internal clock, or stop playing, depending on the CC number).

Use case: I record to a DAW. In a midi Track, I've set up a MIDI CC to trigger the Drumbrute to start playing, and 64 bars later, I've set a trigger to stop the drumbrute. I'll be able to use the nice clocking of Drumbrute instead of the clocking from the DAW while recording the audio and MIDI from the drumbrute.

I'll then be able to set the tempo independent from the DAW e.g. go crazy with Steve-Reich-style phasing when recording different takes, while making sure the "Punch In- and Out" of the Drumbrute always happens at the same time in my DAW timeline.

2. MIDI control of what the retrigger strip does

Idea: Have four notes predefinded from the MIDI Control Center, on a seperate Channel from the drum notes, send and receive (emulate) the use of the retrigger strip. E.g. I've pressed and released 1/4, Drumbrute sends a Note on and off to the DAW. When I play back the same note, Drumbrute recreates the effect ofpressing the 1/4 on the strip.

Use case: I improvise the use of the retrigger strip the first time I've recorded to my DAW. But maybe my performance wasn't so perfect and now I can just go and tweak the notes that got recorded from the retrigger strip. Now, I will be able to record the same pattern including the retriggering over and over, e.g. with different sounds.

I could also send slow arpeggios to the retrigger strip and create crazy glitchy patterns ..

3. MIDI thru from USB to DIN MIDI

Idea: Right now, notes played to the USB MIDI are played by Drumbrute, and also recorded to the Sequencer, but not instantly relayed to the DIN MIDI out. It would be great if incoming notes from USB MIDI could just be passed on to the DIN MIDI.

Use case: DAW -> Drumbrute -> Rack Drum Machine e.g. Jomox Airbase 99 or Roland R8-M
Play patterns from the DAW and have them played on the Drumbrute and instantly replicated on the rack drum machine.

4. MIDI Control Center: Note Names and Numbers everywhere

In the MIDI Control Center, dropdowns having to do with MIDI notes are sometimes displayed as Note #39 and sometimes as C2. It would be really cool if  every dropdown hat both number and name - #36 C-2. It would be really cool because I've come across at least 3 different systems of naming notes in DAWs (starting at C0, starting at C-2 and going from C-1 to C0, starting at C-2 and going from C-1 to C+1).

Same with manufacturer manuals and handbooks. In the end I always use something like MIDI Ox to figure out what note is actually meant.

5. In MIDI Control Center, Transfer patterns from Drumbrute to Beatstep Pro vice versa

Idea: it would be cool to copy a pattern from Drumbrute to the Beatstep Pro Drum sequencer and vice versa in the MIDI Control Center. Both applications look kind of similar, maybe this could be implemented.

6. Make the retrigger strip more stable

Sometimes when going crazy on the retrigger strip, drumbrute loses its spot and scrambles the drum sequence. I am under the impression that it happens more often with sequences that have swing. This is more of a bug fix request but thought I'd post it anyways.


Well, those are just my ideas from a few weeks of use. Maybe none of this is implementable, but one can always dream .. : D

[groovelastig]

6. Change Pad Trigger Default - In MMC allow selection of default for whether a pad sounds when selected. So rather than SHIFT + PAD for no sound, PAD could be no sound and SHIFT + PAD would sound.

I'd like to second this request - makes sense why the default setting is what it is, but it would be awesome to be able to swap the behaviour around via MCC. Also for the Beatstep Pro!