New Schaltwerk Features Documentation

By J. Kimble


 

 

Introduction

This is a fictional document describing features that do not currently exist on the Doepfer Schaltwerk.  The Schaltwerk has been available since 1997, and has seen only 2 minor updates in the five years since it’s release.  Many owners have suggested new features and fixes, which have gone unimplemented by Doepfer for unknown reasons.  I am creating this document as a wishlist of some features and how they would work.  Enjoy!

 

Added Features

 

The Rotate Function

 

 

This function will rotate tracks or patterns left or right.  To access the rotate function, press the rotate button located to the right of the data wheel. 

 

TRACK ROTATE

 

If you press the ‘rotate’ button once, you will see this display.

 

 

To rotate a selected track left or right, turn the data wheel or use the ‘Dec’ and ‘Inc’ buttons.  The track will shift all triggers left or right one step at a time. 

 

For example, you have a track programmed like this:

 

 

If you use the track rotate function to rotate the track one step to the right you will get this pattern:

 

Notice that steps ‘wrap-around’.  This means that step 16 is moved to step 1 when rotating right and step 1 would be moved to step 16 when rotating left.

 

PATTERN ROTATE DISPLAY

 

If you press the ‘rotate’ button again, you will see the pattern rotate display.

 

 

This function rotates the entire pattern at the same time.  This works in the same way as the track rotate function, but it rotates all eight tracks at the same time.

The Autosave Function

 

The autosave function is used to automatically save a pattern while playback is running.  The pattern is saved automatically when changing to a different pattern, or when using the 1-2 or 1-2-3-4 Pattern Link.  This is useful for live performance or on-the-fly pattern editing.

 

Autosave is turned on by pressing the ‘Autosave’ button located next to the ‘Tempo’ button.  The LED above the ‘Autosave’ button will light.

 

 

To turn the autosave function off, press the ‘Autosave’ button again (the LED will go out).

 

The Track Clipboard Function

 

This function works like the existing Pattern Clipboard, but instead of storing a complete pattern, it stores a track.  This allows you to easily move individual tracks between different patterns.

 

The save the selected track to the Track Clipboard, press the ‘Track Clipboard’ button located next to the ‘Pattern Clipboard’ button.  The LED above the ‘Track Clipboard’ button will blink to show that a track is stored in the track clipboard.

 

 

 

To paste a track, select the pattern and track you wish to paste to.  Then press the ‘Track Clipboard’ button.  The track will be pasted and the track clipboard will be empty (the LED above the button will go out)

 

The Individual Note Length Function

 

This function is used to increase the duration of a single note.  It is accessed by pressing the ‘Note’ button three times, the note button is located to the right of the data wheel.  You will see the following display.

 

 

This value is a positive offset to the track gate time settings, so for a default ‘1/16’ length single step this value is zero. 

 

To make a note event longer, you can increase this value by rotating the data wheel or using the ‘inc’ button.  The value increases in whole step values.

 

A note length cannot be extended past step 16, so the maximum values for each step is as follows:

 

 

As an example:

 

Using this function you can also create overlapping notes within a single track, which is especially useful for monophonic bassline synthesizers (303 clones) that trigger the ‘slide’ function by playing notes ‘legato’ (overlapping).