Monomachine User Appreciation

Seriously, this thing is just as awesome as the Machinedrum. A new OS update added a flanger and phaser to the FX machines. Using the flanger you can now achieve some kind of Karplus Strong synthesis!

It's great for band use too. I drum in a jam band where really none of us totally know what we're doing - we'll jam for hours, get it all recorded and see what's good. I guess we'll probably make some kind of album where the good jams are reconstructed/recorded properly. But I have the Monomachine by my side all the way through, a lot of the time just for general "freaky shit". Some drones through the tape-echo simulator beneath some smooth guitar go down really well. It's good for any arps or sequences too, especially seeing it has a 16-step arp + the 64-step sequencer.

the Monomachine is the most pwerful and innovative electronic instrument of the decade

the most powerful hardware sequencer (and arpeggiator) made yet is ingeinously simple and immidiate to use, I'll never use anything else and software seems like whatching paint dry by comparison

the sound engine looks basic on paper but is one of the best digital sources I've heard next to the Nords and Waldorfs

combine the two and nothing comes close

I've had my grubby mits on a lot of fancy hardware over the years but this my fave bit of kit ever (combined with the KP3) with a lot of milage to go and few have only started to scratch the surface

the Bbox is inspiring to use and when you start connecting FX machines in series this get very interesting

which user are we appreciating?

  On 12/27/2009 at 4:21 PM, futureimage said:

Seriously, this thing is just as awesome as the Machinedrum. A new OS update added a flanger and phaser to the FX machines. Using the flanger you can now achieve some kind of Karplus Strong synthesis!

 

It's great for band use too. I drum in a jam band where really none of us totally know what we're doing - we'll jam for hours, get it all recorded and see what's good. I guess we'll probably make some kind of album where the good jams are reconstructed/recorded properly. But I have the Monomachine by my side all the way through, a lot of the time just for general "freaky shit". Some drones through the tape-echo simulator beneath some smooth guitar go down really well. It's good for any arps or sequences too, especially seeing it has a 16-step arp + the 64-step sequencer.

funny you should mention improv work as I also use mine will my little troop for imrovised perfomaces using KP3's and other grooveboxes all synced to MIDI

chaotic at time but progressive and fun to do :-)

i love the monomachine, i use it to control my vermona drm-1, polyevolver, novation drumstation and modular synth as well as it's internal synthesizer. very fucking powerful device

Rich bastards.

anyone obtain a minicommand or monomachine joystick controller yet? the dude says he's going to start selling a new batch soon but he hasn't sent me an invoice. the minicommand addon especially for the machinedrum looks pretty damn nice.

I just got one of these (MKII) off a friend since he said his Octatrack has essentially replaced it. The FM+ intrigues me the most. It has no kits so I'm enjoying building them. I was a little surprised that the verb is so cheap sounding, so I mainly use it as an effect with the gate and dampener. Most of the effects are kind of bland really, but usable with some creativity. Great little machine.

im not a user (yet?) but i liked this:

sounds like oversteps at 2:50

yeah, that is a great video!

I need to start using my monomachine more often. I think the problem at the moment is that it's among a rather large setup; I should just disconnect it and use it on its own, or with a reverb pedal or something. I think I just got into the ever-cascading mindset that I need to keep adding gear to fill out the sound, when I should really be treating it more with a chiptune mindset, ie. learning to exploit the machine in order to make it do everything I want!

I want one

right now thinking the old-style Elektron devices are way nicer than the new ones

so special sounding and the display graphics are so nice weird videogamey

I've finally decided to buy a MnM. I will wait on the OT--who knows what may happen with it. the chance of an elektron product that approaches sampling in a different way seems possible, and I'd assume that would affect the OT price, or maybe I would want the new thing, whatever it is. I'm thinking 2017.

the question I have is, are they in stock anywhere right now? they announce that they are overstocked, then nowhere has them. everywhere says "MORE ON THE WAY!!!"...

maybe places like B&H/sweetwater are doing some kind of adjustment with elektron? i wonder what the logistics are when a manufacturer cuts the price of a product of which big box sellers have already purchased a large quantity at the previous price?

Looks like most retailers are getting their stock replenished around late March / early April, or about a month.

Nah Modey, I think it's better intergrated with other gear. If you do a track solely on the MM then it's just going to sound like Monomachine (not a bad thing particularly) But if you mix and match sounds you get real sound variation and lovely colours.

It's easy to keep adding tracks when using Elektrons and making the entire sound scope full with what you have in front of you. I find these things come into their own when played with other gear and maybe only using two tracks. let the other gear take the idea somewhere else rather than following the grid you just made.

I dunno though, whatever ha.

  On 2/26/2016 at 1:56 AM, phling said:

I want one

 

right now thinking the old-style Elektron devices are way nicer than the new ones

so special sounding and the display graphics are so nice weird videogamey

Totally agree! I didn't even blink when the new elektrons came. OT was kind of interesting, conceptually, but i'm more interested in synthesizers.

Later, everybody was crazy about the analog line, i was cold as ice. Analog this, analog that, everywhere!...and i'd choose digital synthesis over it any day of the week, especially elektron's digital. Daniel Hansson was a fakin genius!

Analogue is a buzzword but people still buy into it. I personally love analogue but I love digital too.

I have all elektrons apart from the rytm, I found it's menus a pain and just disregarded it in 5 mins ha.

They are all different and equally capable so it's hard to say which ones are the best. People should decide what they want it for then decide which one is best rather than just deciding to get an Elektron.

The MnM and MD can sound a little bland at first until you dig in and get Plocking then your brain starts to whir. They are real fun and the interface is simple.

The A4 is similar that in the basic sounds are not all that, if you are an old dude all about the raw tone of an osc or filter then you bought the wrong box. It's all about taking analogue sounds way past what they were previous able. The performance macros are really fun.

The octa is a totally different beast and i'm not yet qualified to comment as I have not given it the time it deserves and while it's really fun, deep, bonkers, usable it's not found it's way into my sound yet. Although I won't sell it because it has huge potential especially live.

If I was forced to sell them and only keep one, it would be the MD hands down.

  On 2/26/2016 at 11:21 AM, Chesney said:

Nah Modey, I think it's better intergrated with other gear. If you do a track solely on the MM then it's just going to sound like Monomachine (not a bad thing particularly) But if you mix and match sounds you get real sound variation and lovely colours.

While I agree having the MnM with other gear is well worth it, I don't think saying the MnM on its own will always sound like the MnM is that accurate. Unless you're playing with familiar sounding presets? It has FM, subtractive synthesis, formant synthesis, SID, user waveforms, sine/noise, as well as 3 LFOs, ADSR and some FX for each. There's a lot you can do to create all kinds of different sounds from classic to completely bonkers.

I think my issue with using external gear is that it just takes a lot of work in order to play the same thing twice.. I'd like to take the monomachine to a gig by itself and recall all of my sounds exactly as they were at home, as a starting point for my set.

That said, it's seriously awesome to pair it with an ES-1, or KP3+ (plockable x/y settings!).

ah yeah, studio vs live. That totally changes it ;)

And yeah, the MM is deep enough to break out of the elektron stand alone sound because of how many styles it can do, and that vid above shows it to a degree. I guess it's really due to the vast amount of vids/demos online being boring that it's hard to imagine people getting as deep as the machine wants them to. I'm optimistic that we hear music all the time that has Elektron machines stamped all over and we would never know. These people never demo.

What happened in the passed month that now everyone is obsessed with the Monomachine?

  On 2/26/2016 at 11:42 PM, digman said:

What happened in the passed month that now everyone is obsessed with the Monomachine?

Elektron dropped the price of it and the Machinedrum by a few hundred bucks. It's also been gaining a bit of cult-ish status along with the rest of the Elektron gear over the past few years...so all of that together leads to a surge in interest, I guess. The MM is a great little machine, no doubt about that.

true artists don't usually spend their time making how to videos imo, so there are always those rare videos that break through. this is my favorite MM vid:

i have a question about sequencing external gear...

you could sequence an entire drum machine on just 1 of mnm's 6 midi channels, correct? i assume the trick would be playing the right note numbers which aren't usually laid out in a nice chromatic series (for some reason).

  On 3/18/2016 at 9:21 PM, sheathe said:

i have a question about sequencing external gear...

 

you could sequence an entire drum machine on just 1 of mnm's 6 midi channels, correct? i assume the trick would be playing the right note numbers which aren't usually laid out in a nice chromatic series (for some reason).

Yup, no problem-o. Honestly what I'd do is get the MIDI channel(s) dialed in right, then just start banging on the trigs, move up and down octaves til I find my drum buddy buddies. Arpeggiators + drums = good times.

  On 2/26/2016 at 1:05 AM, modey said:

I need to start using my monomachine more often ... I should really be treating it more with a chiptune mindset, ie. learning to exploit the machine in order to make it do everything I want!

This is exactly how I treat mine. I was only into chiptunes for a brief while with LSDJ a few years ago, although I piddle around on LGPT from time to time. The MnM really scratches that chiptune itch for me now. It's a damn good time banging around, trying to make the most out of 1 or 2 tracks, fine tuning, and carving my initials into its planks, and it doesn't sear my eardrums when I plug headphones straight in the way LSDJ does.

It's pretty rare that I use it with anything else, although when I first got it I had this dream of using the program change locks to treat my Shruthi-1 like a drum synth. Still haven't got around to that a year and change later!