Is it possible to sequence polyphonic synths with a Monomachine? I have a Nord Lead 2 that I current sequence with an Akai MPC 2500 and I’m just wondering if the MnM can replace it.
Yes, you sure can. You just can’t sequence more than one note at a time using the internal synth tracks to sequence midi.
I do not own the monomachine but i am quite sure that you can sequence external gear using one of the 6 external midi tracks (not internal as suggested) . Moreover the maximum polyphony should be 4 notes (and not one) but all with the same length. In other words just simple chords.
Yes, you can sync polyphonic gear quite well with it. What you can do is set several of the MIDI racks of the mono to the same MIDI channel, and then program chords by using each channel of the monomachine for an individual note of the chord. I was doing this just last night!
4 note polyphony is a bummer, but oh well! I might just be selling my MPC soon or trading it for a Boss RC-505, lol!
Monomachine has no limit, Octatrack has a limit of four notes.
Awesome. Now I just need to learn the machine inside and out. 
It’s a fun beast to learn
It’s the best. It’s like the girlfriend that you want with white hot lust, then you start dating and realize she’s maybe not as ideal as you thought, then you grow together a bit and realize she’s a real keeper despite any flaws and worth putting a ring on.
4 note polyphony of OT is a limit per track, not per MIDI channel. At least the manual is not mentioning any restriction like this. Theoretically you could assign more tracks to the same MIDI channel to gain more polyphony. Although I’m not sure how i.e. the live recording would look like if you would play more than 4 notes concurrently … would they be dynamically spread over all available channels? Gotta try this.
Concerning the MnM MIDI sequencer … manual states:
Chords can be entered in the MIDI sequencer, but all notes of the chord need to be the same length. If you want to play true polyphonic notes you need to make use of several tracks and direct the output to the same MIDI channel.
Does that mean that there is also some polyphony limit per track? (I’m off the MnM now so I can’t try it right now).
No. You can only record to one track at a time on the OT MIDI sequencer.
In v1.01 of tIB’s ‘Tips for using the Monomachine’ document (compiled from posts on the Elektron-Users forum), it is stated:
[i]"The MNM is able to sequence 6 midi tracks each offering a root note + 3 additional notes thus total 24 in theory. In practice this is not quite true: Midi memory limit is 400 midi notes (single or root) and 192 chord notes.
Using this info, a single step for single midi track can have an astounding 193 note polyphony. However, you can only enter 99 chord notes per step, so the actual polyphony is 100. Using all six tracks you can trigger 5 more base notes so you can get 198 note polyphony.
Well, nobody is going to use all that on one step, so the polyphony is spread across the steps. For example, you can have 4 note chords for every 64 step, and this would make total 64 base notes and 3*64=192 chord notes. You would have still 334 base notes for other midi
tracks and they would have to be monophonic because the chord notes are all used for the 4 note chords.
So, the amount of polyphony on Monomachine is a bit unclear by its definition, you seldom max the midi memory out so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Important thing to note is that notes are shared between all the tracks inside the pattern so entering a lot of chords on few tracks eats the polyphony from others. And this limit affects only the Note on-steps. You can still have all the triggerless steps you like for controlling CC
and PB."[/i]
1 Like