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This is a muti-faceted question for both arranging stuff at home and for live performance.. So I have a bunch of great sounding loops but arranging them into a song with some structure is tricky!

With the lack of pattern chaining and fills in the electribe, how do I get out of the loop?

For instance: I want a cymbal crash or an SFX sound to automatically trigger when I move into a particular pattern but I don't want the crash to trigger every time the pattern repeats.

Any tips or tricks will be great... this is an area I have struggled with in all my years of messing around with electronic music making.

I 've chosen to stick to hardware so the limitations can focus my creativity without getting lost in the infinite possibilites that the computer offers, but the limitations of the electribe sequencer are looking a bit too much at the moment...

One way to work around what you're saying is to possibly think about the device a bit differently. More like an MPC or an SP unit. I think sauce did a tutorial on how to use the mute function to play phrases longer than 8 bars and my ideas is a variation on that you could employ with loops that are more fully realized.

Try loading your loops onto each pad and have every single loop trigger on beat 1. Then simply mute and unmute pads to create a sequence of whatever length you want. So the loop on pad 1 can have the crash you mentioned, but the loop on pad 2 doesn't have to.

And while this can't really be automated, it is one way of performing a tune on an electribe, especally if your loops are concrete sections of a song. You could even use half of your original tempo to get 8 or possibly 16 bar loops to play out before having to switch to the next part.

I try to stay in 1 pattern as much as I can, with a few sets of 2 or 3 different rhythm and lead parts and mute between them, but I have found the addition of a Kaoss pad has really helped with linking patterns, using loops, delays and modulation patches.

A tip I have learned from the default patterns, specifically pattern 158 "surfchord" (my favorite pattern btw) is to work on four bars but set the pattern length to 2. Have a two bar loop and have a two bar fill hidden until you extend the pattern length to 4. (Open the pattern and adjust the Length to see what I mean)

Utilizing the half bpm trick can be useful in this, though I find using the electribe for rhythm and harmony and an external synth for melodies this can work wonders to make quite useful songs. Also pairing things with the pattern set can be useful, amongst other things such as what Frenzies mentions.

I tend to break things up in 4s, top left 4 pads for harmony and effects, top right for melodic variations, and the bottom 8 for percussion and sfx. This can also make a pattern last longer. Using a Kaoss pad for effect edits can make switchin between melodies more interesting (if your master effect isn't free).

Don't feel limited, the electribe is more than capable if you understand it for what it is. I don't see the lack of a song mode as a limitation, I forget it existed and think of new ways of arranging things with the functions the electribe has. All this plus the event recorder has made many nights disappear.

Hope this helps
-4kb

EDIT: as far as the crashes, just have it hit once in the sequencer, then mute it. You can always adjust the trigger mode if it's a pitched sfx, and just trigger it manually after to prevent it from hitting each go around. I do this with noise hits as well as crashes, remember once you mute the pad it doesn't mute the sound, just the sequencer track!

All great suggestions.

Looks like we are seeing greater crossover of Kaossilator techniques popping up - we seeing tuts on touchpad arp use - and the "hidden" fill at the end of a 4 bar pattern mentioned here just being one old Kaoss standby.

Step Jump and Last Step really livening things up - all these ideas keep yu busy when put in use playing and always thinking and hoping for happy accidents.