Machinedrum User Appreciation

Damn, every once in a while I get the urge to snag an Elektron and I've got it again. It just occurred to me that I'm never going to save up enough money for one of these guys: that's what plastic is for! So, here we go, I am finally going to buy one. I'm not sure whether I want the SPS-UW or the Monomachine though. Since I have other gear it seems like the Monomachine will play nicer with it for MIDI and audio processing, and apparently it's a bit deeper.

But the Machinedrum kind of looks like it's just more straight-up fun. And that sampler is frigging ridiculous and fabulous, I know I would have a gas with it.

For a long time I was sure the Monomachine was the right one. On paper, it's fantastic. But I know that day 1 after I get it I'm going to want a Machinedrum.

I think either way I'm going to enjoy it, but I want to get started with the right machine because I'm not going to be able to buy any gear for a long time. First and foremost I want a machine that I can sit down with and not worry about configuration or routing with other gear like I do so often now, I can just get down to business and have a blast making tracks with. I have a lot of experience with synths but I've always bought gear that was kind of punishing like the TX81Z that sounds great but requires tons of unintuitive menu surfing. I want a machine that's weird, surprising, and inspiring but nice sounding and friendly/easy to use.

Oh, yeah, other stuff I have: MPC1000, Shruthi-1, Nord Micro Modular, Yamaha TX81Z, Alesis Quadraverb and a bunch of random portable/chip/turntable/stompbox type stuff.

Any thoughts?

well the nice thing about the monomachine is you can make great fucking use of your Nord and Yamaha & Shruthi-1 by using the midi-machine mode on the monomachine (where all the melodic sequencing of those external kit pieces can be done using only 3 tracks out of 6 on the monomachines midi mode) . With just your mpc1000 and monomachine side by side you can have a pretty mean nasty and powerful music making rig for full song making. Im not a huge fan of the monomachines built on synthesizers, you can tweak them to some interesting places but as far as a bread and butter synth mode it does not have one. You can get it to basic bassline sounds and stuff but id say it's more for digital wavetable style sounds and tweaked out FM synthesis.

Hmm, so it sounds like the Monomachine will play more nicely with what I already have for sure, which is not surprising from what I've read already and from the manual.

So how about the workflow? At the end of a long day working at a day job, which one is more fun to sit down and rock out with? Which one is more fun to play with by itself? After having a good jam and coming back and listening months later, which one sounds cooler?

It seems like these machines are so deep that everyone who uses one gets into different things within them. Critics seem to say they always sound the same and they're digital and cold and thin, but I've heard tons of variety in what people are pulling out of these. For examples, I was really surprised to learn today that Actress uses them, and Quaristice sounds like no other Elektron jam I've ever heard. The only "signature" they really seem to impart is that kind of clicky minimal house "dub" thing that was trendy in the early 00s, and I guess you can hear a little of that in Untilted too. And that seems like that's more a result of a certain type of drum patch programming than a really strong characteristic of the Machinedrum itself.

  On 2/25/2012 at 1:57 AM, sweepstakes said:

Hmm, so it sounds like the Monomachine will play more nicely with what I already have for sure, which is not surprising from what I've read already and from the manual.

 

So how about the workflow? At the end of a long day working at a day job, which one is more fun to sit down and rock out with? Which one is more fun to play with by itself? After having a good jam and coming back and listening months later, which one sounds cooler?

 

It seems like these machines are so deep that everyone who uses one gets into different things within them. Critics seem to say they always sound the same and they're digital and cold and thin, but I've heard tons of variety in what people are pulling out of these. For examples, I was really surprised to learn today that Actress uses them, and Quaristice sounds like no other Elektron jam I've ever heard. The only "signature" they really seem to impart is that kind of clicky minimal house "dub" thing that was trendy in the early 00s, and I guess you can hear a little of that in Untilted too. And that seems like that's more a result of a certain type of drum patch programming than a really strong characteristic of the Machinedrum itself.

The Workflows about as good as it gets, you can do almost anything on the fly and get things going in minuets that would be a lot more arduous and time consuming than tweaking with a mouse.

People who say the Mono sounds cold don't really know what they're doing as the internal gain structure is designed to distort so all you have to do in put the overdrive -6 and scoop out a little top end mid then it becomes more silky smooth like a Nord. There also a lot is can do when combined with the sequencer/apreggitaor that goes above and beyond your regular VA especially when you start triggering things separately.

I'd say the MonoM is a more complete machine than the MD especially if you want to integrate it into a lager setup however the Elektron UI is more suited to the MD imho with a little more menu shuffling on the MonoM. Sound wise you have to try harder to make the MD not sound like a MD and the Mono only really comes alive when you get busy with parameter locks.

The only niggles are all parts are stuck in the same pattern length, the song mode isn't the most fluid way of working, the poly mode can suffer from stuck notes occasionally and it can get lost if you start getting eager with the buttons but I've learned a lot of this is to do with the delicate PSU and since getting a £20 hi-fi mains regulator the machine has been a lot more stable.

Folks, anyone got any experience of the Ruin & Wesen Minicommand? I'm intrigued by it and can think of a number of uses for it, but I'm unsure if I'll ultimately be put off by the programming element of getting it to do what I want.

Cheers!

  On 3/9/2012 at 12:21 AM, jeyemusik said:

Folks, anyone got any experience of the Ruin & Wesen Minicommand? I'm intrigued by it and can think of a number of uses for it, but I'm unsure if I'll ultimately be put off by the programming element of getting it to do what I want.

 

Cheers!

I've never tried one but I did buy a CME bitstream for around the same price so go figure!

  On 3/9/2012 at 12:21 AM, jeyemusik said:

Folks, anyone got any experience of the Ruin & Wesen Minicommand? I'm intrigued by it and can think of a number of uses for it, but I'm unsure if I'll ultimately be put off by the programming element of getting it to do what I want.

 

Cheers!

i got one without the intention of programming it myself, and it does have some really cool features. You can generated a 'random' kit by hitting a button, you can play drum sounds as note-pitch based melodic instruments, you can generated quasi algorithmic sequences using those new melodic instruments. Beyond that i didn't get much use out of it, ill probably sell mine soon

Thanks for the advice guys, as it was I took the plunge and bought at the same time as an MD UW Mk2 with + Drive both in mint condition and with me trading my old Wavestation SR it worked out a ridiculously good deal all round. Should be with me early next week.... I'm like a wee guy waiting for christmas now...

guys, can you recommend a good synth to use with the MD UW in a live situation?

Looking for something that's fun with baselines/melodic stuff to plug into the MD inputs to resample & mess with. Shouldn't be too pricey, I'd rather have something simple that sounds good. Been jamming with a friend's monotribe which was fun, not sure about its sonic range though, and the controls are a bit too simplistic i think. But a monotribe sorta thing with a better sequencer and the ability to save sounds/patterns would be good i guess.

Anyone played with a meeblip?

Dark Energy? You can sequence it from MD's MIDI machines.

meeblip looks cool. But the firmware's written in basic!

waldorf pulse, superbasstation, MS2000r

ms2000 is great. :) I'd actually love to trade my keyed version for the rack one. :)

thx for the suggestions... out of these, the Dark Energy appeals the most to me, seems like good fun in a compact design...

guys, I discovered a neat technique for the MDUW...

have you ever tried... to create a tempo synced click-track sample, e.g. a few 32th steps with a GND-IM -> RAM record -> copy to ROM,

load the sample into a ROM machine, route this machine to an individual output, plug that output into one of the inputs, then set up an input trigger? you can do this with several ROM machines, and any 2 machines at a time can be triggered by the 2 inputs via the ROM samples. With this setup, you can play & tweak triplet grooves, other polyrhythms, flams, rolls, you name it, only by tweaking the pitch parameter of the sample. Then there's LFOs & retrig..

it's not in the Tips & Tricks or Next Level documents, and the guys over at elektron-users like it too: http://elektron-users.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&func=view&Itemid=28&catid=9&id=191313#191313

Cool trick. Throw a delay pedal into the mix as well!

Finally snagged an OT. Good god. My gearlust has gone into cryo.

  On 10/10/2012 at 12:44 AM, psn said:

Cool trick. Throw a delay pedal into the mix as well!

whoa!

  On 10/9/2012 at 7:44 PM, phling said:

have you ever tried... to create a tempo synced click-track sample, e.g. a few 32th steps with a GND-IM -> RAM record -> copy to ROM,

load the sample into a ROM machine, route this machine to an individual output, plug that output into one of the inputs, then set up an input trigger? you can do this with several ROM machines, and any 2 machines at a time can be triggered by the 2 inputs via the ROM samples. With this setup, you can play & tweak triplet grooves, other polyrhythms, flams, rolls, you name it, only by tweaking the pitch parameter of the sample. Then there's LFOs & retrig..

 

 

it's not in the Tips & Tricks or Next Level documents, and the guys over at elektron-users like it too: http://elektron-user...d=191313#191313

OOOOH SHIIIIIIIIT KNOWLEDGE DROPPED

that looks awesome, im assuming that's your app...?

thanks! and yes... stay tuned, there's more video coming to give a taste of the features...

this app will be the bees knees, unless i starve before it's done : /

This is getting a lot of love at the minute, posting in case people haven't heard:

https://soundcloud.com/futureimage/live-at-jetlag-lounge-home-of

  On 6/18/2013 at 6:32 PM, phling said:

i don't have a machinedrum but this looks amazing. great functionality & a really nicely designed interface.

on an unrelated note, what were you using to film that? how did you get that really cool looking Steadicam effect where all the camera movements were all smoothed out?