A Solo Solution

kusalamati · 2014-11-18T09:45:25.000Z

So I was in China at the time, I happened to look on the Elektron website after many years and discovered the A4 and Rytm, got major GAS and bought them both to greet me on my return home.

Thing is, as my GAS thread suggested, the idea of owning gear is out of accord with the reality.

What I am aware of is that I just like to sit with one machine on my knee and play away with it making tunes in the box.

I think I have become averse to having gear in a particular room in the house, set up with lots of wires (okay I know it’s only two machines), rather than just switching on and letting rip wherever.

Which Elektron boxes do people find lend themselves most readily to solo jamming / creation?

I’ve mulled the idea of getting a MM again for that purpose, but this could just be more unrealistic GAS.

I would be interested to hear of peoples solo experiences.

CH3OH · 2014-11-18T10:40:57.000Z

From my experience, you can go solo with any box.

It depends, however, on many other things.
Do you need many tracks? Then order of machines would be like A4-MNM-OT-AR-MD with MD being the best option.
What type of music are you after? These devices are pretty versatile, but it would be a better choice to go for MD rather than A4 if you’re into glitchy weird stuff, for example.
How much live control do you want? MNM looks least attractive in this sense, since it doesn’t have neither macroses nor scenes nor ctrl machines.
Is sampling and resampling is a part of your workflow? OT and MD rule here.

Personally I find MnM excellent solo machine when it comes to strange drones, bleeps and FM noises. 6 tracks are enough and restrictive in a positive way — it makes you think and constantly evaluate your sounds. I wish there was better reverb though. But my more complex industrial techno type of music needs more than six tracks usually, as well as heavy drums manipulation and distorted samples. This is where MD and OT come into play.

Anyway, any single box would work for me.

kusalamati · 2014-11-18T18:25:51.000Z

Cheers, I own an A4 and Rytm and have found the Rytm works somewhat nicely on its own, but with the A4 around it seems daft not to pair them up.

Think I could be tempted for the MM further down the line for such a solo venture, once I’ve worked with my current 2 as a pair (even though it does mean going upstairs amongst the wires).

R7 · 2014-11-18T23:54:29.000Z

You could just get yourself something like the EIT-1 and have them both connected to each other.

https://sites.google.com/site/companyofquail/home

Or get some rack ears and mount them in a case like the http://www.thomann.de/gb/thon_19_koffer_10_he.htm

or the http://www.thomann.de/gb/thon_19_koffer_8he_live.htm if you mount one unit raised.

Those would give you that super portable setup without having to get ride of a machine.

As for your original question, I have both the A4 and the Rytm, and really like both but I consider the Rytm slightly better at tonal melodic and bassline stuff than the A4 is at drums. Some people on the forum really like using the A4 for percussion but I always find it seems to lack some punch and used up tracks quickly unless your super creative with p-locks and sound locks. You can still only have 4 sounds going at any given time.

On the Rytm you can have 8 voices blaring at any given time, and 12 total but some share voices. The FM machines and the Toms can make some great melodic lines if you set them up with less pitch mod than drum sounds usually have. The chromatic machines on the synths currently don’t track pitch correctly but I don’t think you’d ever notice it if you weren’t mixing it with other machines. You can also load samples, including single cycle wavs to expand the tonal pallete.

The A4 does have a bunch of synth features that the Rytm doesn’t have. PWM, two filters, much bigger mod section, feedback OSC, AM, Unison, Polyphony and easy transposing. So they do compliment each other very well.

kusalamati · 2014-11-20T21:31:15.000Z

Thanks for that.

It’s reading a post like this that makes me realise there’s so much to delve into with both of these machines (A4 and AR).

I’ll stick by my commitment to working with the two of them (together or separate) throughout 2015. There’s more than enough to be going on with in this respect.

TrabanT · 2014-11-20T21:44:04.000Z

a4 : too few tracks

MM: too metalic , too few drum sounds

OT: no internal sound genesis (few exepctions, too few)

MD uw : awesome wicked … i recorded some a4 one shot synth samples, catapulted me into a new way of producing / having fun on my lap

AR: wasnt for me (felt very limited coming from MD)