Creating a DJ set

Elektron Gear Machinedrum
#41

Song mode is working out fairly well. Starting to integrate an Ableton project.

On the MD, CTRL IN = ON lets me jump around the song on Ableton’s side and MD automatically stays in lockstep. A4 does the same without addl. configuration. (I’m using it for bass and pads.)

However there was a problem. Ableton sends MIDI clock to everything, when all we need is Song Position Pointer (and just to MD) since MD is the clock source. So the other devices were playing 2X speed unless I turned off sync output. I set up a virtual port that’s connected only to the MD and I set Ableton to send sync through that instead of the MIDI interface’s “Sync Out” which goes to all ports. Thankfully, A4 is still picking up SPP … maybe MD is forwarding it??

“Section” pattern changes will be automated in Ableton, a bar ahead. ESI, M:C, SE-50 will respond to these.

M:C requires manual pattern change when jumping to another section. But it is responding to PC changes as the song plays.

I’m considering the idea of an audio-clip-based backbone that stands on its own so that even if I mess up things wouldn’t feel silent.

Sampled a NL3 kalimba patch into the ESI just as an exercise. It wasn’t too bad, normalizing, trimming, looping, and recreating the amp envelope took maybe 15 minutes but that was because of fumbling around a bit. It really tries to make it as easy as possible despite having no graphical display. Normalizing was SO SLOW… waited a solid 10 seconds for it to finish working on a 0.5 second sample.

Update: Mutual SPP updates seemed to be working … and then started having feedback loops. Ableton is back to being clock master, no special MIDI routing.

#42

Just some notes about some changes I’ve made to the workflow. @reeloy, your advice has resonated with me.

The bulk of the music will be audio clips. If I don’t know what I’m going to tweak, it gets put into the arrangement and I play around with that just like when I’m cutting album tracks.

M:C and Keystep will be the main station.

  • melody
  • finger drumming
  • M:C manual pattern changes - doing it in the arrangement doesn’t work well (see below)
  • M:C track params
  • M:C “control all” via track+param
  • M:C momentary mutes, manual takeover

MD will have different roles depending on the song and section

  • CTL-8P
  • func+param
  • momentary mute and solo (no impromptu manual takeover of trigs possible)
  • song mode. A4 may need it too, but I might just record all A4 stuff to audio clips so I plan on abandoning the song on the A4

Ableton will house audio and MIDI. MIDI sequences will be for tweakable sequences that I can’t manually play or are more convenient than trying to do it with patterns.

ESI makes it possible to have any sound without lugging everything. Making synth presets with it is fun and efficient. Didn’t think I’d use it for more than supplementary hits and phrases but it sounds great as a synth.

M:C needs help to remain in sync with the arrangement, so I’m just always going to man it, maybe using chains to be able to be away from it. If we stop Ableton, M:C has no idea where to play from the next time we press play so it just pauses in place. So I have to press stop on M:C too to get it to start from 0 if I go to another bar in the arrangement. And if the pattern needs to be different, it doesn’t know until we press play so it changes up to 4 bars later. So I have to manually put it at the right pattern. MD doesn’t have this issue, because of song mode - it is always in sync with Ableton which is nice. But babysitting M:C makes sense because I consider it my core instrument anyway. I can’t sequence it entirely from Ableton because so many patterns use a lot of sound locks. However, these complex tracks could in theory all become audio clips in which case I’d sequence the remainder in Ableton and the need to babysit M:C goes away. I want the ability to mute tracks though. So I’m going to prefer to keep all M:C patterns as patterns.

1 Like
#43

…let the cycles run…instead of pausing it individually, have always one short empty pattern at hand…

1 Like
#44

Not a DJ set, but I’ve been putting together a live set of covers and originals on the OT and various other synths. I’ve attempted this set about 5 times now, redoing it every time as I figure out better ways to do it. I think the key element here is keeping it simple and really defining the scope of what each instrument will do and how it will do it… and then sticking to that scope. So much easier said than done. It’s a lot of configuring.

#45

For me it’s been a process of untangling. I have these patterns that are basically song seeds, and the whole thing feels like a clump of cables that I’m slowly teasing apart and gradually things become clearer.

MD is the background device instead of M:C (reverse of my original thought) but knowing that, it can break out of the role now and then. M:C has some percussion too. It’s just going to be a process of committing to arrangement vs leaving stuff in the pattern.

I’ve been thinking about takeovers on MD and I think I’m just going to design new pattern/kits with a takeover in mind and duplicate the machine, or set up something with the ESI but you give up some params then. It really annoys me how trig buttons no longer respond when you mute their tracks by hand. I suppose I could add something that can mute Ableton tracks but we’re keeping it simple.

#46

:thinking:

1 Like
#47

Relatively speaking!

#48

I’m really curious to hear what you make, I really liked some music you had posted in another thread!

1 Like
#49

No tracks left on the MD? Otherwise you might consider duplicating the ones you want to fingerdrum, use those and mute the arranged ones. Or link 2 tracks, have the first one silent but triggering the second one, you mute the first one and can freely drum on the second track.

1 Like
#50

Alright, so, I’ve been working on the beats and pretty happy with how much it’s improved over the Soundcloud version…

Obsessions over minimizing the setup are behind me. The band consists of:

  • Laptop
  • Flight case containing MD and ESI
  • A4
  • M:C, run through A4’s audio inputs (AMAZING feature)
  • and Keystep32 though that’s still just an assumption

I’m just about done trying to do anything on Machinedrum’s sequencer. It’s just too restrictive for the kind of music I want to do, and the need to create new patterns or figure out how to stuff what I want into them is fun on the more modern boxes but on Machinedrum it is like a puzzle. And I’m not interested in just playing around with it and seeing what comes out (though I’m not saying I’m not interested in making tracks that way, just not this set.)

I’m happy to be able to say though that I really, really like having modulation happening in realtime on Elektron’s synth engines, controlled by LFO, hand, or MIDI. Otherwise I’d be sampling everything in (and maybe leaving some boxes at home), but I tried that out and I guess I’d only use that in “emergencies” because of the tradeoff. Control over the sound is everything, to me it’s what gives it life, and samples are a bit of an approximation.

Song Position does not work as desired with MD when outside of song mode. The MD attempts to guess where it should be, but it assumes the entire song is composed entirely of the current pattern. Song mode does away with this, but I think I don’t want to mess with that anymore and instead select the kit directly via Sysex with a M4L I made. So I have to choose, do I want to use p-locked anything on MD, or abandon that and do it all from Ableton?

M:C also has issues, it often switches to Pattern A1 in some situations when stopping the clock, I haven’t yet figured out the exact reason.

The only device that behaves optimally is A4. This is fortunate because I expect that it’s way more convenient to program 303 basses on-device.

Selecting programs using a the CC To Program Change M4L device works much better than program change via clip settings.

On M:C, I use p-locks, particularly preset locks and SHAPE on CHORD a lot, so it’s going to be a hybrid. I might reserve some tracks as internal only to prevent situations of the chord machine being cut off.

A4 and M:C both start from 0 on Play, which is desired. Song mode isn’t required.

Regarding the MD, I think I’m going to split the difference and any patterns I’ve carefully p-locked are going to be turned into audio clips. It can be awkward to know what you’ve p-locked and live tweak a track “around” that. And maybe I can slice them to MIDI clips and hack some way of responding to tweaks done on MD and replicate some of the effects such as filter and decay. It’s just an idea and I’m kind of done with trying to solve everything perfectly. I’ve reached a level of power (and knowledge) that’s more than enough for anyone.

#51

OK OK

So I’ve been cutting down my beats on MD, making them much tighter, much more MD-like … and it’s crazy, how well the M:C and A4 slot in between the MD’s frequencies. Cold and Warm.

I am not even messing around with sequenced MD at all yet. Everything is still being sequenced on-board. All I’m doing with Ableton is experimenting with orchestrated pattern changes.

M:C provides enough unquantized stuff. MD is the time keeper. It’s a nice juxtaposition.

I’m now in the process of thinking about recording some junk.

Basically my plan is make some sense of my patterns, get them basically to all fit together in any combination, so far that’s going pretty well

Then I want to do some practice runs, multitracking the performance…

Through this I wanna decide what to leave as audio… but also develop the progression of the set. Some sense of structure.

And any channels I’d reserve for live play on MD and M:C, if at all. A4 track 2 is already unused. 3 and 4 reserved for input, but I’m shelving the M:C->A4 input processing for now.

Also I think I’m going to add some Nord Drum…

Whether or not it’s important to me to be live drumming during the set is a question

I know that I want the sound of live drumming in there either way. Synthetic hand drums, glitches, splashes what have you