Autechre MD+MnM sysex files! [+ MPC, Nord]

That book should be nominated for GOAT thread

Anyone with a MD fancy making a sample set from the sounds ?

That way we could enjoy them with the DT and the AR as well.

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How did you get such a great view of the screen and not have it washed out? Did you use some lighting?

Worry not…only they can do what they do with their music. I think the confidence in that was demonstrated by handing out those sysex.

Still, very cool that they would share.

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I don’t get why it gets such a bad rap lol. It’s very utilitarian…It doesn’t sound “gorgeous and lush” but if you just want your machines to sound a little wet and not so dry, it gets the job done for sure.

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true. Some parts remind me a lot of their recent stuff.
You change the bpm on some points in the video… But the original tempos of the patterns are included in the sysex right?

Edit: I guess it was midi slaved in the live gigs…

I’m playing with the sysex myself and unless I’m mistaken (I actually hope I’m wrong) the only way you can save the tempo on the MnM is via the song mode. Otherwise, when you load up a pattern it will just stay whatever tempo you’ve got.

I went to the song mode to see if AE had done anything there, but alas there are no songs. So I’ve no clue what tempo these patterns are supposed to be. Just play around!

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I think in the big ‘WATMM AMA’ they said they never really used song mode except for some of one track on Untilted.

I’m looking forward to digging into these just to see more sound design things. Sometimes reading all of the tips’n’tricks in the world can’t get through my thick dumb brain, but I’ve picked up some good tricks from things like the ‘Nicholas Lem Collection’ soundpack from Elektron even if I never used the patterns or sounds for any of my own stuff.

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Me too! I’ve already got some little notes jotted down as I run through the sounds :wink: Reverse engineering is the best way to learn this kind of stuff, I think. Even when I got my first synth (MS2K) the first things I did were go through patches I liked the sound of and just put the knobs where they were supposed to be. The “original value” LED indicator was very helpful. Learned a lot that way.

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The MD sysex has some songs, but it seems more like the patterns were laid out in the order that a set would progress.

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I’m really tempted to load the MD sysex but I have an SPS-1 non-UW non +drive :frowning: I could save what I’ve got to my computer and then go back and forth but that’s just too much trouble. I would really like to see their drum synthesis ideas, though…And combined with the MnM good Lord. Some of these patterns on the MnM are obviously empty and I’m left wondering what the MD is doing during that time.

Does C6 indicate the number of kits, patterns etc when you originally load the file there? If not, redownload the sysex file.

Are you trying to load into an instrument that already has patterns and kits loaded? If so, you need to use the “Orig” receive method. Note that this will write over whatever is in the instrument currently.

Give us a step-by-step write up of what you’re doing if the above doesn’t work.

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Some little notes from my couple hours going through banks A through D:

They use hold LFOs a lot, which I had never used before. This gives every sound its own kind of bounce. They seem to use it with the filter base and width most commonly, amp volume sometimes too. I had to look at he LFO chart in the manual again to be sure I understood just what it’s doing…

The arp on bbox, particularly on pattern B08, works really well.

They routed an LFO to the retrig and another to the retrig time of the Bbox. Cool sounding stuff.

B14 has a reverb trig on every step. If you play with the amp decay (even send an LFO to it) you get a really nice, percussive gated reverb effect.

They utilize some distorted reverbs and it sounds pretty sweet.

Sometimes there are p locks where all they’ve done is turned the volume to 0. I wonder if this was so they could easily add variation without a new pattern? Go to a p lock, turn its volume back up to unity and suddenly you’ve got a “new pattern”. I imagine they played with various volume p locks live as a means of introducing quick and easy variation…But that’s just a hunch.

That’s all I got so far. Note selection is to be expected…Lots of half step stuff. It seems they use Swave Pulse a lot, as well as FM+ Dyn with uneven ratios.

Oh and lastly, from what I can tell they never once turned off the HPF and LPF key tracking :wink:

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@pselodux, correct me if I’m wrong but I thought I saw you post a youtube of you going through these banks. Did you pull it down?

So …who will perform those patches and record it in multitrack? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think that’s called “Quaristice + Quaristice Versions + Quaristice.quadrange.ep.ae” :wink:

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I use pieces cut out of a transparent plastic document folder (check your office supply stores!) over the screen to dim it down a bit. Purple seems to look best on camera.

Also, good webcam and bright lighting, yeah.

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Hold LFOs are the best things. I’m surprised you haven’t used them. Especially on the silver boxes, it’s the best source of random and best way to add at least some variation and life to repeating patterns in a world without conditional trigs.

(And side note - I think Monomachine’s LFOs are my favorite Elektron LFOs. Having three of them with so many p-lockable params is a powerful resource).

It looks like their Monomachine usage is about as I expected. I still can’t wait to dig into it. But I’m thinking it’s the Machinedrum stuff I’m most keen to dig into. I struggle with my beats and have had harder time finding good inspiration and tricks for what I want to do there than I have with Monomachine.

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This is one I’m my favorite things to do on the monomachine. I Add the third lfo to pitch, it’s fun stuff

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One thing I didn’t think to check was that if there were any other outputs being used on the MnM… I could have missed a few sounds. There were also a lot of unused kits.

They mentioned in the AAA thread that they never got any recordings of that tour, but this is making up for it imo!

For me, the HOLD LFO is an important part of the Elektron experience :smiley: it’s a great technique

yesss I knew they were legit

Check further up in this thread! I just have the 30min video; I may do a longer one dissecting some patterns but I’ve got my own music/sound design to work on :stuck_out_tongue:

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