Good point about the mix thing. Need to explore that.
My music is very much organic and nature inspired, therefore i need warmth and breathing tones.
Should be possible no?! Im positive about it. just give it more love thats the bottom line i guess.
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I get the feeling that a lot of topics here are about swaping this for that, not so much about trying to master a synth.
Yeah, it seems much easier to ditch a piece of gear for a different one, than to master the gear in front of you. All that time spent looking at specs / features of something different, when all I need to do is focus on what’s in front of me. You get back what you put in, right?
I still need to dig more into MD myself - there are many machines I’ve barely even used - that said I’ll offer a few thoughts on achieving ‘warmth’ with MD only
I find the track distortion can be warm in a rather subtle way at very low values, especially with slight modulation to make it ‘breathe’ more. I think the MD track distortion is much more ‘analog’ at subtle settings than the OT lo-fi FX
track EQ and modulating it can also add movement and more warmth to the sound, but it’s usefulness varies
the amplitude modulator can add lots of movement when used subtly, and can greatly add to harmonic richness and thickening, although this often will need to be sculpted carefully with the filter as you venture into more extreme territories
careful filtering of bit-reduced samples can sound rather warm - it’s that old school sampler kind of warmth. in general the filter I think is surprisingly warm if used subtly at low or no resonance
the FX are also very crucial to getting maximum warmth from the machine, particularly focusing on careful filtering on the reverb and delay. Also perhaps modulate the master EQ and/or compressor for subtle or extreme movement of your whole drum bus - although strictly for ‘warmth’ the master EQ and compressor may not always be that useful depending on context
I really need to explore the machines a lot more, but I’ve definitely found some surprisingly organic sounds lurking below the surface here and there - like the granular clap synth produces some raw tones and textures I’d normally expect to have to produce using field recordings - not always the most immediately usable sounds (it is useless to actually use it as a clap as far as I can tell ) but in the right context and processed carefully with MD voice architecture they can really bring a lot of life to a mix in an unanticipated way
edit: there’s also just a lot of gain stages inside MD and places to clip signal, so it’s pretty easy to suck the dynamics out of something, essentially the design does not have seatbelts
Btw your video helped a lot with regaining faith. When in doubt, ill just turn to this topic as a help and support group.
The Dynamix compressor can have a huuuuuge effect on how the overall sound of the MD gels. Getting my head round a bit that really changed things for me.
The TRX B2 kick was a revelation as well.
Also, I may be completely imagining it but I’ve always felt like the groove that comes out of the MD is really tight straight away and needs less fussing with in terms of swing or whatever to make it work than many other drum machines.
Mine’s having a bit of a hiatus from my setup but I’ll bring it back out soon for sure. Definitely a keeper for me.
Getting this track done with MD cowbells only was the real eye-opener, for me (thx again @Ryan for such an obviously amazing brief!!)
Iirc the sysex is still there to be downloaded.
Check the whole thread for ideas of what MD is capable of when restrained to the one and only cowbell !!
God damn this is AWESOME. How did you get the chords? What on earth? They sound like a polysynth.
EDIT: Nvm you already answered in the other thread lol. Three tracks with different pitches to get chords…Wow! Very, very cool. Must’ve been tricky to program though, surely? Did you just do it by ear?
Yes, by ear. I prefer when it sound right to the ear, no matter what the exact frequency is 
And you can actually link [edited] 2 tracks to play them simultaneously, did you know ?
To stay on the topic, may I say that lately I’ve really been falling in love with another part of the MD : the filters !!
They are excellent, IMO. For instance, by retrigging a BD sample and filter it + adding a LFO on filter width, you can go acid pretty quick !
The one thing I’m missing is dedicated mute buttons. I have to do my homework and program my QuNeo for this, it would be so useful.
I was wondering about this! I have a MD Mk1 non-UW if that makes a difference. If you can neighbor trig on the MD like the MnM then I need to experiment with that right away.
Chain two midi tracks is something i used to do alot as well. This feature would be baller with trigless trigs on midi tracks. Seeing in how this is dead (dev and feature wise) the under sentiment for this thought is “oh well” LOL
Alume,
What I found is that after my trip into modular I thought that I would not be able to get the same type of sounds out of the MD. But a rethink made me realise that I was looking at it all wrong. I should not only think of the MD as trigger sampler (which I was doing by using 909 & 808 samples). I was getting good results from that. But nothing like I was getting from the modular. What I did instead was go back the most basic of machines in the MD. Just like I would do with the modular. Start with noise, or a simple wave. Go back to using the LFO’s to create movement. My modular journey had actually taught me use it like a synth, not just a groovebox. I am getting much more out of it as a result.
Yeah maybe i shoudl just let go of the idea that it can do the bread and butter drumparts and focus on the other aspects its good at.
This is the best path for every gear, IMO.
Love how much gain you can get out of the MD.
Pretty sure the VOL param starts distorting after midi value 63/64, but i have noticed the Distortion param (in most cases) won’t start distorting till midi value 96…
The distortion from VOL param comes on slower once it reaches that point and is much more mellow where the Distortion param is a little later (usually) and then having a quick/strong onset, but providing nice warmth before hand…
yeah so many places for gain! it really depends on what kind of raw signal you start with how it ends up working out, very reactive and interactive system. carefully and subtly managing the gain is extremely crucial for MD to sound warm
hmm, being a bit liberal here but disregarding the source machine itself (which may have it’s own internal gain stages!) I count
so many opportunities to make it sound terrible! (or amazing) 
A bit. Make sense.
Isn’t Track Level before Fx sends?
yes it most definitely is! I added track and master level as an afterthought edit as I forgot them the first time
it’s pretty often I am working with MD and I can hear some unwanted clipping or distortion and then it’s time to do some digging, with heavy modulations things get particularly challenging, just like working with a modular synth
Another lover here !
I got my second hand MD mkII à couple of years. I fell in love fast cause diferent engines, easy to get glitchy sounds, and flexibility. A months ago, I bought à DT, at the begining I had à little concern about the posibility the DT replace my MD… but I notice fastly that is not possible ! MD it’s irreplaceable!
