Multiple tracks in patterns losing "pointers" to track engine

OP-Z
,
1

Prefacing with, this could have been avoided with a backup - I try and back up my OP-Z very often, but sometimes I’m not by my computer and seemingly my dongle for my lightning era iPhone disappears when I need it most. I also want to state that I have no synth engines currently on my OP-Z, it’s just samples/psuedo-multisamples.

So, I had a pattern I was really proud of, tons of Step Components so it was like 32 bars. Jammed on it for a day, and got super busy, so didn’t record or back it up between the last couple days since I made it. Last night, I was playing the pattern back, and noticed there were lots of elements missing, checked track mutes and nothing was muted. Two tracks, Lead and Chord, were both silent, even when I selected them and tried playing keys. Very confusing, then I realized, the tracks themselves weren’t pointed at any instrument slots. Like, it just lost the data telling it “Lead was using instrument 6, and Chord was using instrument 8”. I definitely did a bit of editing on those instruments (mainly the Lead, Chord was mostly untouched) and should have saved them as presets. When I decided to (after backing up, and copying the Pattern) load up those instruments on their respective tracks, it didn’t really help. Nothing sounds right.

So, obviously the solution in the future would be backups/preset saving as much as possible. However, I’m mostly wondering, has this happened to anyone else? I realized it’s definitely happened to me before, and my OP-Z has been acting extremely buggy lately, often having to turn it off and on to fix it acting (sorry, vague) strange. Is there any way to go into Disk Mode and the specific pattern and fix the directory so it points to the correct track again? I know how stupid that sounds…but since there’s no way to have a track pointed at literally nothing, I’m not even sure how this happened in the first place.

1 Like
2

sorry to hear about this. yeah its frustrating. its happened to me a few times before too. i learned that what caused it (for me anyway) was i would inadvertently swap track’s instrument selection or rearrange it in the iOS app, and that moves the pointer in the track data. i would say the best way to avoid it, at least in my experience, is dont rearrange or reorganize instruments in the iOS app in the middle of a composition process (days/weeks/etc). if you absolutely must, just remember which one you want and repoint it once you reload your track. also, as you said, doing a backup is good, using the bounce feature (hold P and rec) and it takes an entire snapshot of the project and you can reload it and it will be IDENTICAL to whatever you had at that moment (regardless of what state or reorg your OP-Z has undergone in the intervening period).

3

interestingly, I haven’t used the app in ages so I don’t think that’s why. However, my OP-Z did fully run out of battery at one point before this happened - I suspect that did it. Thank you for the tip about the bounce feature! I always wrote it off and thought it only recorded a 10 second snippet of your pattern(s). Really good to know for the future.

1 Like
4

i think it might still be possible to do the preset reorg stuff without the app, but it’s just much easier (no nested button combos) to do it in the app, AFAIK anyhow.

the battery running out shouldn’t cause that but i def could be wrong.