I am drawn to strange, textural, abstract, etc. I like to organise chaos into strange funky territory.
It’s rarely intuitive to blend all this on a frequent basis though, and EVEYTHING I’ve tried has had barriers of some sort built in to the gear and process for me - I rarely get that sweet spot.
Having quite severe ADHD doesn’t help, because as soon as things get hard or barriers present themselves, it’s easy to quit.
Well… Elektron just makes total sense to me… I hyperfocused on learning the sequencer with my digitakt… I have NOT learnt it, but I am learning it at pace.
I’m squeezing out the weird funk now, and i basically just want to share my Elektron joy haha. My A4 arrived today, and i fucked shit up into some alien soundscapes and sampled that shit into the digi, and I’m on my way
I am just preaching to the choir, I know. But doesn’t it just kick ass?
It does kick ass. An Octatrack and a couple sources getting live (re)sampled and resequenced still consistently blows my mind all these years later. Really fun
I’m now very tired because it sucked me in until way too late last night.
Looking forward to sharing some music soon! I do some hip hop with my brother (MC) and i think he is going to have to adapt to the stranger sounds. There is still going to begroove the and boom bap vibes but it’s definitely going to be a bit more glitched out untraditonal!
I fucked up bjorks cameo in The Northman beyond recognition intona percussion loop, which was quite interesting.
I have ADD (among other things), too, and 22 years into my musical journey, I’ve finally accepted the fact that Elektron boxes are the best UI and interface for the way my brain works. I wish they were a bit deeper in some ways (especially sequencing options), but overall, there’s nothing else that works as well for me. I would like to try and Oxi One or Hapax, but it seems overkill when I only have 1 or 2 sequencerless synths at this point.
It still relies on me finding textures (sampling and resampling included). But the elektron sequencer and methods is starting to become intuitive.
For drums - with an MPC or Maschine i have always struggled to create interesting drum patterns and things always tended to come out similar - it that reliance on playing things in, and I’m not a finger drummer.
Going into the piano roll or step sequencet to lay the drums down and create fills quickly got confusing. But the way you can just experiment with trig conditions so easily quickly helps me get interesting grooves. I don’t feel like I’m using a step sequencer, even though it basically is. It just has its own system I click with.
The ease of modulating using parameter locks, and applying the global track parameters to control all, I frequently bend a beat spectacularly out of shape and all wonky like, and just reample the mess the and start worlong with it as a sample again… Rinse and repeat.
Especially with interesting samples (I like sampling from film, tv over classic tropes like soul for boombap), digitakt can be pushed to make weird and wonderful noise in next to no times just by twisting all the knobs… And then once I capture what I want, I snap or back to my more controlled groove. Experimenting with control is fascillitated
I feel like the pickup machine on the octatrack would make this much more quick but trying not to gas.
And the A4 I worked out I could make something simple and do the same tbing as on digitakt, messing it up to madness… Then see above process…
That is about as best as I can explain it. Hope it makes some sense.
I think 2 or 3 machines that fundamentally work the same way for the majority of functionality, is the best thing.
Also we are constantly craving novelty more than most. I sold a SH-01a to help me get my A4. I know that the SH-01a can make a lot of useful, fun noises, but it will never be that chaos machine to me.
Modular might be a thing that keeps on making novel sounds, but it’s too much of a rabbit hole for someone with impaired impulse control I think. I know would end badly for me in overwhelm and moneypit… A few elektrons kills the GAS and lets me focus.
Soon I’m trying not to share things until i complete them, because it is another psychological issue for me… Once I release a sketch, abd get affected by feedback and my own thoughts, it never gets finished.
Do you make music using samples in a similar way? Sampling media, field recordings etc, or would you rather make everything in synth engines?
Also - how much gear do you have already? Not much or at gear paralysis like I was?
I’ve shipped out or am shipping out 3 synths, 3 samplers, a mixer, effects pedals etc… Over 10 items, and replaced it all with 2 items. Now more focused, decluttered and more inspired.
The GAS can be a massive problem, or positive if you change things around… My last few weeks has been the first time I’ve harnessed GAS in a positive focused way.
TBH i do prefer to synthesise sounds myself (either in the computer or on the modular), but they do often end up getting resampled and messed around a fair bit. I like chopping up a synthline and rearranging / screwing around with the pitch and modulation to get something a bit weird and groovy going on.
I don’t have toooo much gear - an Ableton rig, TR-8S, modular and couple of synths that rarely get used. I also have a Polyend Tracker which can be fun, and it has potential (I like recording sounds into it and abusing them), but it’s not quite hands on / fun enough to get used a lot.
Really Ableton Live is the ultimate for me, it’s just that thing of wanting to disconnect from the computer screen and have a more tactile experience (at least in the early song stage) - and while I love the Push2; it’s not quite a muscle-memory sort of machine for me, and doesn’t replace the screen.
I would say whatever I use, it’s probably always going to have to be exported as stems for final messing about in Ableton Live
On holiday with friends in Wales, and I have been getting up early to really get to grips with the DT.
I will get round to sharing some sounds when I get back on Thursday - managed a beat a day for the last 3 days and started finding some performance tricks. So weird funk to come
I am glad my OT didn’t actually arrive before I left as I will be in a much better postion to be combining the having put in 10-20 hours on it over 5 days.
