OS X Kitten App for Elektron's Anlog Rhythm

Published on Mar 1, 2016 Jakob Penca

"this shows mixing patterns & kits with the free Kitten app for OS X.
excuse the stray button-pressing sounds at the beginning...

get the app here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5...

The following guide hopefully explains the whole thing sufficiently:

you can do the following things by pressing a pad/trig button:
copy a sound from any kit into the current kit (pad chooses which track)
copy sequencer track & sound from any pattern to the current pattern AKA MEGAMIX (pad chooses which track)

on the FX track:
SYN: enable/disable kitten - this also disables/enables internal triggering of the pads, respectively.
SMP: choose between kit (0) and pattern (1) mode
VEL: choose source kit/pattern (1-127) - note that 128 is not available.

so if SYN is 1:
if SMP is 0, press a pad/trig to copy sound from selected kit (VEL) to current kit
if SMP is 1, press a pad/trig to copy seq.track+sound from the selected pattern (1 = A01, 17 = B01 etc.) to the current pattern+kit

you can copy individual sounds and/or sequencer tracks from any kit/pattern. this is pretty funky for jamming/mixing a live set from your existing stuff.

so, sounds 1-12 and sequencer tracks 1-12 can be copied, but:
what about FX settings/scenes/macros?
what about copying entire patterns, or kits?

there are only 12 pads and they are used to select tracks, so the app uses the ENV/LFO toggles on the FX trig page for copying kit settings and entire patterns or kits. so the ENV/LFO toggles actually perform an ACTION.

ENV: get kit fx settings
LFO: get kit/pattern

if SYN is 1:
if SMP is 0, set the ENV toggle to 1 to copy KIT settings (FX etc..) from the selected kit to the current kit.
if SMP is 1, set ENV toggle to 1 to copy KIT settings + sequencer FX track from the selected pattern/kit to the current pattern/kit
if SMP is 0, set LFO toggle to 1 to copy the entire selected KIT to the current KIT
if SMP is 1, set LFO to 1 to copy the entire selected PATTERN+KIT to the current PATTERN+KIT

so this is a bit weird and takes some practise to learn, but it does work really well once you feel it.

Ok for example, you are in pattern A and want to mix into pattern B track by track.
go to FX track
set SYN to 1
set SMP to 1, to enable MEGAMIX
select pattern B's position using VEL
press a pad or trig to copy a track from pattern B to pattern A
repeat with more tracks
note that the kit's FX/scenes etc. are still from pattern A's kit.
set ENV to 0, then to 1, to grab pattern B's kit's FX/Scenes etc.
set LFO to 0, then to 1, to grab the entire pattern B with its kit. transition complete.

of course you can go crazy and mash up all the patterns/kit that you have by messing with the VEL thing. :evil:

so, about copying/overwriting etc:

anything which happens to the PATTERNS, will overwrite your current pattern, and there is NO UNDO.
anything with KITS will copy data into the current KIT. you can reload KIT or SOUND.


so it's best to start out with an empty pattern, and load an empty/unused kit into it, unless you deliberately want to mess up your existing patterns.

another thing to keep in mind:
the parameter's on the FX trig page may not always reflect the state of the app correctly.
after launching the app, or manually changing pattern on the AR, settings may be incorrect.
if in doubt, set the relevant parameters (VEL, SYN, SMP, ENV, LFO) to the settings you want, to let the app pick up the right values.

as before, there's some settings in the Rytm GLOBALS which you need to set up:
MIDI CHANNELS: track channels must be 1-12, FX = 13 (which is the default)
MIDI Port Config: IN/OUT must be USB or USB & MIDI
MIDI Port Config: OUTPUT CHANNEL must be TRACK CHANNEL
MIDI Port Config: PARAM OUTPUT must be CC
SYSTEM/USB-Config must be USB-MIDI ONLY"