(1) Today the Snaps page in my Electra show at the top the buttons
Load - Load & stay - Send current - Remove - Save .
The term Recall was used in a post about Snaps back in April, and pushing that button appeared to mean that a button press sent the Snap (its parameter values) to the Preset and also to the MIDI unit (right?). Recall is not found on that page today. Could I ask what these 5 buttons mean? I assume Remove means that that Snap disappears. The Save-button is to be hit just before choosing a place to park the Snap, then it’s there. What happens with the buttons Load, Load & stay, and Send current?
(2) Is there any way to change the name of a Snap?
(3) Is there any way to export a Snap, or all one’s Snaps, as a file (a backup), and if so: how is it to be stored, and how is it to be activated or sent to the Electra?
(4) Before writing this I was busy having fun making Snaps for the Continuum. Are all those Snaps I Saved marked as associated with the Continuum Preset?
(5) Can there be more than 36 Snaps for a particular Preset/MIDI Unit combo?
+1 to be able to name Snaps. Like name of presets inside a synth.
+1 also for being able to dump them to the computer somehow (sysex dump ?). Allowing backup but also transfer from one E1 to another…
The five top buttons in the Snaps window represents actions you can do with the snapshots.
The Load, Load & Stay, Remove, Save set the actions to be performed with the snapshot. It is like setting the mode of operation. In general you choose type of the action and then pick the snapshot slot where the action will be performed.
For example, if you choose Remove, then you tap the snapshot that you want to remove. If you choose Load, you then need to tap the snapshot to be loaded.
The Send current behaves differently. It immediately triggers action of sending all current parameter values to connected devices.
the meaning of the buttons:
Load - loads snapshot (saved parameter values). It updates all preset controls and sends them to the connected device. It is like changing a patch on the synthesizer. The Snaps window is closed automatically.
Load & Stay - identical to Load but does not close the Snaps window. You can use it to quickly send the snapshot values to the connected synth. Once you close the Snaps window, the preset will be populated with values of the last loaded snapshot.
Send current - does not load any snapshot, instead it sends all current values of the controls to connected devices. ie. it syncs Electra and the synths.
Remove - removes the saved snapshot.
Save - allows you to save current values of controls to given snapshot slot.
Unfortunately not in the webn editor yet. It can be done in the Electra One console.
The snapshots (on the grid) can be also drag and dropped to different locations.
not yet.
Snapshots are always stored within the preset slot. It means that each preset has its own snapshots. The only shortcoming now is that if you upload different preset to the preset slot the original snapshots will stay there. We want to resolve this together with export/import function.
Each preset may have up to 432 snapshots (12 banks of 36 slots). You can see the list of banks by holding down the [SNAPS] hardware button.
While holding the [SNAPS] button down, the touch on knobs can be used to select the bank. You can recall this menu by pressing [SNAPS] button even when you are on the Snaps page already.
It is our intention to integrate this fully in the web editor and make it possible to store, backup, share snapshots in app.electra.one. The export / import to a local file for backup reasons is also part of the plan.
Thanks Martin very much, the buttons and integration (so far) with the Console make great sense.
For my experiments with these functions, I might have chosen another but I first chose the Preset for microWave V2. You may know it has no Patch request functionality, ie no feedback from the mW as to where its various saved-parameter-settings have been set, so all knobs and sliders are shown by Electra to be in “neutral” positions or “zeroed out”. I raised Cutoff freq and Resonance a bit (so I at least passed where they had been set in the Patch chosen on the mW). Saved this as a Snap (A0). I then changed to a different Preset on the Electra, then a different Patch on the mW, then on the Electra re-loaded the Preset for mW, and reloaded the unchanged patch on the mW. Now Cutoff freq and Resonance (judging from the audible sound when played by the Keystep) were (of course) once again where they were in the stored Patch on mW. Then went into the Snaps page on the Electra (“under” the mW Preset) , hit the Load button, then clicked A0. Silence resulted.
I repeated this experiment w the Matrix 6/1000 preset. Same result, silence.
Since I don’t really understand more than what I hear, the view of an innocent is this: when hitting the Load button, then the A0 button (on Electra), all of the positions of all the parameters as they actually were in the Preset on the Electra - meaning: Cutoff and Resonance were in some sensible place, while all the other parameter positions (as shown in the otherwise untouched Electra Preset) were in “neutral” or “zeroed out” positions that were also sent to the synth, resulting in no sound generation at all. I could be wrong of course, or maybe I have misunderstood your post.
I tried both these things in a number of ways, all essentially equivalent, all resulting in silence. Getting back the original patches in the synths was an easy matter of changing the patch loaded on each respective synth - then of course it went back to what was already stored there.
The first question that arises: would correct Patch Request programming in these two Presets have had a very different effect? Since I have not seen what it looks like inside a Preset with functional Patch Request capability, I assume from what I’ve read in the forum that every parameter in the Preset gets updated to match what’s in the current patch in the synth. And then I would expect that hitting the already-saved Snap would have changed only the cutoff freq and resonance settings in both the Preset/Electra and the synth, while all the other parameter setting would have remained unchanged from their already-saved-to-the-synth values?
A second question is: should it “work” this way, or could it be that - when working in a Preset that has no Patch Request functionality - before saving a Snap, one must make sure all or most parameter settings in the synth (of the ones that can be affected by the Preset) have been “touched”, ie by approaching their saved-patch-values using the Electra’s knobs and sliders, so they are also very nearly approached in the synth, BEFORE saving the Snap?
The result of the experiments didn’t make sense to me, but I hope what I wrote here does. Would be great if it turned out to be simple operator error…
what you describe is actually correct behaviour. There are two ways of keeping Electra and the synth in sync. The patch requests and the snapshots. When using patch request, it is the synthesizer where the sounds parameter values are read from (ie. the synthesizer is the source of truth). When using snapshots, it is the opposite situation. It is Electra who holds the sound parameter values and loading the snapshots sends all the preset parameter values to the synth. ie. you will get what you can see in the preset. It does not make distinction about what you changed or not, all parameter values are always send.
If you want to build a patch from scratch, hit “Send current”, after you open the preset. It will sync all parameter values between Electra and the synth. Doing this will result in either silence (often because all parameter values are 0) or if the author of the preset put some decent default values it could make a sound (eg. plain saw with a sustain at max). From this point you can modify and save the patches using the snapshots.
Thanks, so a Preset can just as well be full of meaningful values. Thus one could create a set of Snaps that for a particular synth could serve as templates. Once backup and sharing of Snaps becomes doable we could have repositories of template classes for any specific Preset/synth/effect etc. Or more to the point here maybe those templates could be saved together with the Preset (thus when moving the Preset from the E-site to one’s Electra would also move a set of Snapshots. Still, getting easy-to-use full Patch Request capability will be transformative for the platform.
Is it possible today to include Snapshots in one’s published Preset? So that when a user downloads the Preset to the Electra, Snapshots come along for the ride? Or is that already answered by your reply to my question Can Snapshots be exported or sent (Not yet) ?
When I download a Preset to My Presets, then open it in the editor, do I see exactly the same as I will see in the Electra if it’s sent there?
And: can I tell from what I see in the Editor (or in the Electra) whether or not Patch Request has been programmed for the Preset? I mean: while the Patch request button on the Electra is always there, the function needs to be programmed - will programming this function into one’s Preset always result in there being an on-screen-button to initiate (step 1 of) the Patch request, and right after that one (step 2) hits the physical Patch Request button on the Electra?
Snapshots are not supported in the web editor yet. It will be quite some job - like an extra dimension of the presets. We will definitely start with making it possible to edit and reorganize them and keep them safely stored in the cloud. Once this is done the work on sharing, cloning, etc will be done.
There are two ways to find out:
when you preset the [Patch Request] button and you can see activity on the MIDI indicators (at the top of the screen), it means that Electra requests the patch dump data from the connected devices.
if you open the [Edit device] and then [Edit patch] in the editor and it shown any data, the functionality is implemented. Like this:
I am taking a note. I like the idea that presence of the patch request functionality would be somehow indicated in the preset. It could be also used for filtering / searching the presets.
