Description

Hacktribe Companion – work in progress

Eleven years ago I bought a Korg Electribe Music Production Station (the synth version; the sampler hadn’t been released yet). Back then I wrote the Electribe2 Pattern Editor and uploaded it to MaxForLive.com—currently 4042 downloads.

My Electribe was eventually relegated to a drawer, but the Electribe2 community is still alive with the Hacktribe from Bang Corrupt as a motor, so my unit is back on the desk. At the time I considered converting it to an Electribe Sampler too risky; today I switch the firmware freely between the Hacktribe Sampler and the original Electribe 2 synth.

This month 1010music is releasing the Bento. It outclasses the Electribe in almost every respect—but at a hefty price. I’m more a programmer than a musician: I prefer gear I can extend. The Hacktribe firmware offers plenty of hooks, so a new project was born: Hacktribe Companion.

Limitations I have to work around

Panel MIDI – The Hacktribe wiki claims every knob/encoder can send NRPN, but I haven’t got that working yet; the box is still meant to drive itself, not act as a general MIDI controller.

NRPN input – At the moment only global parameters seem writable via NRPN; pattern and part parameters must be sent as a full dump (≈ 1.1 s over USB, 6 s over DIN).

Menu system – Lots of turning and pressing, very little context. An external overview screen would help—dedicated to Hacktribe, not like a full Ableton Live display.

Minimal extra gear – No extra MIDI interfaces if possible; just a mouse and (when useful) a QWERTY keyboard.

Conventions in this project

- Parts 1–8 → melodic (pitch and velocity changes, chords possible).

- Parts 9–16 → drums/percussion (pitch fixed to C4) velocity changes possible.

- Part 8 holds a silence-sample; I record dial moves into this part so no sound is generated while editing.

- You can override these conventions if needed.

What the Companion will not become

- No full Push integration—the Electribe feel stays central.

- No feature overload outside the Hacktribe concept.

What the Companion will add (phase 1)

A 1024 × 768 window (shown on an iPad via Duet Display or Twomon) featuring

- global-parameter editor

- pattern & part editor

- per-part step-sequencer overview

- Menu editing with a simple mouse click.

Further plans (phase 2)

Extra MIDI tricks – e.g. use part 8 as a silent “ghost track”, process its notes/CCs in Max (probability per note, ratchets, etc.), then feed them back into part 7.

Preset/librarian section with

- Factory Electribe sounds (including dial settings)

- Factory sequences

- Chord progressions from Scaler 3

- Patterns from XO and MicroTonic

- Various sample libraries

Download & feedback

Please download the dummy if you are interested. Probably I will abondon the project if no downloads occur.

I have no working Demo yet, but I plan to publish a weekly progress build.

Have ideas or suggestions? I’d love to hear them!