Parameter locks and conditions: the Elektron soul

A trig can carry its own parameter values and its own dice — sixteen steps become an arrangement.

Here is the idea the whole Elektron cult is built on. A trig does not just say play — it can carry its own copy of any parameter. Hold a step, turn a knob: that value now belongs to that step alone, painted amber on the hardware screen. This is the parameter lock — p-lock — and it means one track with sixteen steps is potentially sixteen different sounds in a row.

One pattern, sixteen sounds

Lock a different TUNE on each kick and a drum track becomes a bassline. Lock cutoff rising across four steps and you have written a filter sweep into the pattern itself — no hands needed on playback. Every machine parameter you have learned in this course is lockable: the p-lock is what turns the previous fourteen lessons from knowledge into writing.

Trigs that roll dice

The second half of the trick: a trig can decide whether to fire at all. Probability rolls dice every pass — a hat at 50% breaks the machine-gun feel instantly. Conditions are deterministic instead: 1st fires only on the first cycle of the loop, 2nd only on the second — a two-bar phrase living inside a one-bar pattern. (The hardware takes this further with full A:B ratios, FILL, and neighbor conditions — same idea, bigger menu.)