Been using it this way since the update. Though the dual VCO sound did kind of dictate the direction I went in. The BT machine is more than good enough to replace the BD, and a sampled snare layered on a flat Tom works nicely too.
But if you want the ultimate in stand-alone…
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Haha I had to Google that. Damn that’s not photoshop…cool!
I have Rytm MKI for two years now and if I want just lay down on a sofa and mess around with one piece only (I have bigger modular unit, Octatrack, effects and some other synths) Rytm is the thing that I will take. It is everything I always wanted in one box. It has its limitations, but this promotes creativity and at the end of the day, this machine is super flexible, sounds like million bucks and I love to work with it.
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I currently using my ar mkii as standalone - I really love working this way and find it inspiring having the hard limits of the machine. However, when I want to expand its pallette a bit without the faff of other hardware synths, I connect it to iPad via usb
Using iPad pushes these limits out loads - i personally use it as send effects unit for the high tom tracks.
This feature of the ar is amazing. I can load a longish sample or recording, normally pads or melody from my digitone or Typhon, effect it in AUM with various audio units (more textural reverbs and rythmic delay type stuff), and send it back to main out of the AR seemlessly. Really neat setup and perfectly acceptable to operate whilst lounging about.
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agree you can easily use the Octatrack as drum, pad and bass machine for full songs. I do that for live shows in the past plus love using movie and anime samples to bounce with the beats. Rytm would be great to pair with the Analog 4. But if you can only have one Elektron, the Octatrack is the one to get in spite of the deep complex learning curve. It is the swiss army knife of the Elektron family.
My post isn’t really about the AR, but the idea here of doing complete tracks with just one box triggered the thought that I might as well just weld my Digitakt and Digitone together. They seem to be mated for life in my setup, and I can do satisfyingly complete music with just the two. 
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Which iPad apps do you use with your Rytm? I just got an iPad this week and am trying to get my head around how I can incorporate it with my Rytm and A4.
Why did you do this to me when I was so content with my setup? 
Seriously, that’s some beefy, groovy and musical stuff right there.
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Indeed. My bad ^^
But the lesson @George_Michael was giving then is “one box”. And a pair of gloves.
At the moment I use AUM with yaled, a few of the dram bos apps, black hole. I recommend watching the haq attaq YouTube content on iPads apps (and of course the elektronauts thread). iPad and ar make a great combo imo.
Great setup… I use the sp404 kind of like that.
You can’t get each track as a individual audio input in AUM using USB, isn’t it ? You have an audio interface.
No, you can’t send individual tracks of AR to individual tracks of AUM via usb. You can send 2 AR tracks at a time to one in AUM, which is enough for me.
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Next weekend I’m doing a small set, planning to do it just on the Rytm. Intend to also do some live sequencing / step programming, so velocity modulation is a great tip. If I just set some modulation parameters for velocity in advance I’ll end up with more movement and dynamics in my improvisations I imagine. Nice.
Also curious to try out this weekend if I can use the Rytm headphone out as a a send-return via some FX going full wet back into the Rytm. If I’d just use my H9 on top of the Rytm it’s all super compact but might add some fun. Any experiences here using external effects on Rytm going back into its own inputs?
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I’ve done something similar with the individual outs being sent to a friends modular for them to sculpt and then the whole modular out going back into the rytm to be treated by the compressor, so I wouldn’t see why the headphone out would behave any differently. Might be cool too to send the input into the audio in instead of the external in with input monitoring set to on so if any super weird sounds come out, you can sample it in real time and create new drums on the fly. Not sure exactly how the audio in input monitoring works in the greater signal chain (i.e. if it hits the compressor at the end), but that is what experimenting is for!
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Tried it. Feedback loop 
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Sure, because it comes out of the headphone out again. It will only work with the individual outs 
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: of course. My two seconds of testing it before posting was using the individual outs, somehow forgot the plot while writing a 3 sentence post!!
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Haha same; sometimes you just really need to work things through to see the picture
I love using my RYTM MKI as a stand-alone box. I think the degree to which this works out for someone depends more on the stylistic tendencies of their music than anything else. Back when I had an OT, I wanted to use it to compose full songs, but despite its more-than-adequate capabilities it just wasn’t conducive to the kinds of tracks I liked to make. I’m a big fan of older minimal, loopy, dubby, stabby, jammy stuff (think STL and early Thule Records), and that style has a distinctly unclean analog sound and benefits from being able to tweak synth parameters spontaneously and organically while jamming out a track, rather than doing more technical/structured arrangements with samples. The AR is a dream solo machine for this, especially with the 2VCO as AdamJay mentioned. The OT is a dream solo machine for more structured, detailed, and FX-heavy music imo. You can get organic-sounding jams out of it of course (and synth lines with single-cycle waveforms), but the limitations/monophony/analog sound of the AR provide the perfect one-box simulation of a stripped-down old-school analog setup.
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