Machinedrum User Appreciation

your randomizer just turned a hihat into an evolving modular r2d2-sorta patch, this is really cool.

glad you're having fun with it! as soon as i get a midi interface or usb thingie for the ipad ill give yours a spin.

try saving at least 2 snapshots for each voice in the reaktor patch, then set the morph time to something like 15-20 seconds. Play back a pattern you've already made, then to start the morphs simply assign one snapshot per morph position then move the slider from A ----> B. If you move it all the way to the right in 1 second, it won't matter because your morph time setting is what controls the actual morph time. I've done a lot of cool patterns on the Machinedrum this way, by very very slowly morphing between one kit and another.

this might also be a cool or rather an easy way to make poly patches very quickly, so for example you call up a snapshot on one of the voices and it auto duplicates it to the rest. I can cook up the poly chain mode and this feature for you in the same reaktor ensemble if you want, let me know!

one thing I didn't include in here was FX automation, and it appears that one or two of the CC values is wrong. Do you know if they updated the midi implementation chart with the newest OS upgrades? If they did I missed it.

also last time i checked (or at least in the manual) there is no CC value (yet) for LFO destination. This is a bummer if they don't add it because the amount of crazy modular random patches you can get if this was accessible via CC would increase by like 10 fold

Edited September 1, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

i gotta get a full version of Reaktor, that free player puts itself in a 30 minute demo mode and won't save anything, means i can't check out the morpher..

so does it morph patches on the A4 smoothly? if so this is great news.. i've made a patch morpher (you could actually send 2 patches from the A4 to it, and it would morph between them) but it made the A4 glitch out, I was maybe just stupidly sending too much data too quickly.

 

you can definitely set almost all A4 parameters via CC, env/lfo destinations included. Some of them are simply not documented in the manual, showing a dash instead of the controller number. Best to hook up some MIDI monitor and tweak the knobs to read them out. There are a few parameters which can only be set via NRPN, though i don't remember which ones. (the patch mirroring in my app only works with the A4 set to NRPN parameter output).

 

However, the way your randomizer works does actually kinda hit a sweetspot i think... my randomizer did randomize everything, and most patches were total crap.

With yours, it's best if you don't start with an empty patch, but rather with a sound that's already defined and interesting imo.. the LFO and ENV destinations as well as the oscillator options are kept intact, means that there's still a certain logic in the patch.

i want one of these so bad. pls.

  On 8/31/2013 at 9:11 PM, phling said:

Give it some time & love.. imho it's not an instant gratification machine.... :]

 

I've made a little iPad thing for the Analog Four which gives it polyphhony.. it's currently in the App Store review queue but should be available soon (i hope)... if you have a Mac with 10.7 or higher, it also runs on that, I could post it here if you're interested.

 

Yes please! And yeah I'm still new to hardware and all that so I guess I just need to get over the learning curve.

here you go: http://cl.ly/2c1Z321m2i22

 

iOS version is still in the review queue. For it to work, in the A4 MIDI PORT CONFIG,you gotta set the PARAM OUTPUT to NRPN, and OUTPUT CH to TRK CH. When in doubt, use a fresh GLOBAL slot and just check that these 2 settings are set. You should be able to use any CoreMIDI compatible device as note input, including the virtual IAC device.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Guest

in/out obv. have to be set to USB or MIDI&USB.

  On 9/1/2013 at 12:47 PM, phling said:

 

 

However, the way your randomizer works does actually kinda hit a sweetspot i think... my randomizer did randomize everything, and most patches were total crap.

With yours, it's best if you don't start with an empty patch, but rather with a sound that's already defined and interesting imo.. the LFO and ENV destinations as well as the oscillator options are kept intact, means that there's still a certain logic in the patch.

i see, so if the destinations are randomized to you're saying the patches were not as good. I guess that makes sense. And in regards to the patch morphing, i did get it to work but i only tried really slow morph times. I'm sure it would choke with something like a 4 second morph time instead of 20. works on the machinedrum too very well, not so well on the monomachine though.

 

If i hook my A4 to a computer with midi interface and bluetooth can I send Osc to and from the A4 using your ipad app without an extra device? Id really like to try it but dont know when ill get around to pimping out the ipad

Edited September 3, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

yea most of the time the patches weren't very good, e.g. you wouldn't hear anything or not much.. of course it would produce interesting stuff too..

but I think the key is to make a randomizer that's immediate & nicely controllable.. a user has to be able to choose which params to randomize, and by how much.

 

it would be great to be able to read the kits and sounds from the synth in order to mutate them.

it's possible to do it when you send a sysex backup, and i've reverse-engineered the sysex structure for sound patches for this purpose. my last randomizer was based on this. but it's now broken as Elektron are still changing around how the A4 SysEx is structured and I can't be arsed to start all over with a hex editor...

 

the app does only MIDI via cable at the moment..

imo definitely get that Camera USB adapter though... if you dig morphing, my Machinedrum morpher kicks ass. It's based on reading the kits from your MD and morphs between them, including all FX & LFO parameters and machine assignments. It's got MPC-style pads for selecting kits and a MIDI controllable crossfader.

hey gents,

Just got a MD UW, she's a dream!

Having a little issue with MIDI machines - I can get them talking with my gear, however the Machinedrum is sending it EVERY machines MIDI info, i.e. lets say i have 10 tracks playing various steps - each one of these is sending it's respective MIDI note to the Minitaur as well as the MIDI machine stepped MIDI notes that i've plotted into the sequencer...it actually can sound pretty sweet at times, but obviously not what I want

I'm sure there must be a simple solution to this that i'm missing...?

it's a setting in the GLOBAL menu.

 

IIRC, if you set BASE CHANNEL to off (--), it will stop doing that.

  On 8/14/2014 at 6:25 PM, phling said:

it's a setting in the GLOBAL menu.

 

IIRC, if you set BASE CHANNEL to off (--), it will stop doing that.

 

Boom!

 

What a turn around - thanking you, sir.

You can store presets of configs in the global menu too for different setups. ie one for the studio, one for live use, one for when you take it to a friends studio etc....

 

Very handy.

 

Love my SPS-1 mk2 - I wish I had spent the extra for the UW version tbh but I've got an OP-1 thats filling in nicely for sampled percussion duty.

  On 8/15/2013 at 11:07 AM, phling said:

 

  On 8/14/2013 at 10:01 PM, xox said:

Anyway...they showed with Untilted what can be done with MD & MnM.

But THEY showed!

 

yeah this. hasn't happened with the analog four yet. (shudders at the thought of sean booth not even liking the analog four, what then huh? wat)

When I first heard Exai I would have bet a nut that it was A4 all over it. In fact I would have bet the one that's quite a lot bigger than the other two.....

the thing with MD and MnM is that they sound very special and distinct. they're very much unique machines, especially in times of making untilted.

 

would you, A4 & AR owners, say the same thing about A4 & AR?

Edited August 15, 2014 by xox

defo yea!

 

also: http://forum.watmm.com/topic/84501-strom/

Yo - one last thing (for now)

I cant really get my head around the idea of the pattern banks - is it just a destructive editing method in which whatever bank number is open, for example E7, is constantly being 'saved'?

So let's say i open an empty bank, or rather clear a bank and make it empty, then i fill it with a few lines - once I change to another bank, what i just did is then preserved in the last bank?

I find myself just taking 'snapshots' in the global menu once i'm happy with a sequence, it just feels like more of a logical 'saving' method to me, i've already lost a few sweet sequences from changing bank numbers :/

yeah this bank thing is weird.

actually, inside the machine, there is no such thing as banks.

there's just 128 patterns. (8 x 16)

B01 is pattern 17... it's better to think of it that way, imo.

 

so what you're editing destructively are the individual patterns, which are grouped by the UI into banks (A-H) of 16 each....

 

and yeah this accidentally-tweaking-a-pattern-behaviour is how it is and I also think it's kinda weird:

patterns save automatically, and kits need to be saved manually.

 

your strategy of saving snapshots is a good one, imo.

it's like saving a project in a DAW.

phling, you should work for elektron, at least in a public support department.

you just need to show them how much you know about the machines and you'll get the job

There's an open position for that in Gothenburg now. :)

thanking you once again, phling - i'm sure it wont be the last time

i love mine! got an A4/MD/AR combo. sold the OT to buy the AR, but i will probably buy one again.

 

 

ive been dreaming of the AM - Elektron Analog Modular

Quick machinedrum question, comrades

 

Does anyone know a way, or if its possible, to trigger individual machines to play their own sequence via midi while other machines trigger normally?

 

What I mean by this is: I want to trigger one of the machines as a sequence via midi, while still individually trigger one shot notes on the other machines.

The reason being is that the machine in question (rimshot) has been live parameter lock tweeked, it has 16 'notes' in its sequence, usually If I was just physically playing it with the MD I would mute and unmute it rhythmically but now as of stands if I trigger the rim its always just going to play the first note in its sequence. The reason i want to do it is so I can plot out the exact drum line for stem recording purposes remotely and be able to play it back along with the other instruments without having to 'play it live' each time.

 

I'm very poor at explaining these things, I hope that made some sort of sense

Any ideas?

Mute the track, and sequence it from an external sequencer via MIDI? Mutes work on the sequencer, not on the audio.