Elektronauts Tribute Album: Silver Souls

[YloopZ]

Elektronauts Tribute Album: Silver Souls

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“The original Machinedrum was introduced in 2001.
The Monomachine in 2003…. Crispy, weird and gritty – Machinedrum beats and Monomachine soundscapes are instantly recognizable.
They have soul…. But all good things must come to an end.”

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To celebrate that these silver boxes live on within our veins and they are legendary classics, we, Elektronauts, decided to put a tribute album together.

Who can contribute?
Anyone who has an Elektron Monomachine and/or Machinedrum (UW) and is registered to this Elektronauts community. Age, experience, music taste, doesn’t matter.

If you want to contribute the criteria of submission are simple:

Use only one or a combination of the silver Elektron boxes, so ONLY Monomachine and/or Machinedrum (UW). Feel free to sample the Monomachine in your Machinedrum UW. No other sound source!

Use only the on board effects of the MnM and MD. No external effects are allowed.

You can mix or multitrack your song in any DAW. You are allowed to use little EQ and some compressing (outboard or ITB), DON’T OVERDUE! I think it will be nice to hear what the silver boxes are capable off and how different they sound within different hands and imagination. You make this happen, so think about that.

The track can not be longer then 6 minutes…

The file must be in .wav or .aiff format no more then 100mb

You send two (2) files to this dropboxfolder:

Dropbox Silver Souls

1: The track with your artist name and track title.
2: A text document with additional information. Artist name, track title, your forumname and your real name. If you want to share additional information like “I only used monomachine or this track is dedicated to…” etc. put it in this tekstdocument.

Submitting not later than 1 december 2016. No extensions on this date. All tracks will be mastered after that.

Collaboration is allowed and might be fun (if you have a MD non UW its recommended)

Submit just one song. If you do a collab, you can’t enter a solo song anymore (sorry, there are many of you who wants to contribute)

The release of the compilation will be shortly after 1 december 2016 on Bandcamp and will be free for everyone. All donations will go to charity.

Its you and your silver box that make it happen, think about that when you start composing!

I want to thank Elektron for these great already legendary classics, marcelvidela for this great idea, knobgoblin and Huno for helping me with mastering and artwork and to all Elektronauts for this awesome community and source of information.

If you have any questions. Feel free to shoot them in this new thread. Or send me a massage…

My aim is to put every entry on the compilation album, so please stay within these criteria. Other than that, I’m excited, hope you are to!

YloopZ

[ipassenger]

Still think it is pretty crappy how you have moved the goal posts on this after I had submitted my track…

Or you could just allow people to use the boxes to make the music any way they see fit, as long as only the boxes are making and processing the sounds (external multi-tracking/comp/eq excluded), as per the original spec.

[Ryan]

Was it the sampling rule?

[ipassenger]

Yeah, I have quite a few drum samples in the MDUW, I actually have a custom wav set in the Mono too. I am pretty sure the bassline is using them in the digi wave machine.

[Vorlis]

Were the rules even set before you submitted your track? If so I can understand why your pissed mate, I’d like to use the UW with some field recordings and I agree with you about using all the features as we see fit, but I thought the details where still getting fleshed out at the time.

[YloopZ]

Allright, Let me explain a bit how I came to these rules/boudaries/limits… First of all I just want to try to make this tribute album be a succes and everybody is welcome to participate. Second; We had a conversation/discussion in the previous thread before @ipassenger brought out a track and the majority of the elektronauts agreed with some things. Including the MnM and MD only part. Within these “limits” it encourage creativity and it will be a pure silver tribute. I found that a good idea because sampling means loads of different instruments that are coming to the album and the initial idea blurres out in my opinion.

I know that there are many Elektronauts and thus many opinions out there and no one is the same and everybody is unique in his or hers own way. We have to set the boudaries for now so everybody can begin composing.

@ipassenger I’m not trying to be negative to you, on the contrary, I challange you to do a remake or a new track within these “limits” I hope that you want to be a part of this compilation!

@Vorlis I like tracks with fieldrecordings so I definatly want to hear some music with that. But for this one song, sorry mate. I do singing (or at least I try to) in all my tracks, so I have to get around that either… See it as a challenge!

[Ryan]

That’s a shame, man. I’m sorry about that. I see the point of these extended rules though. But link me your song, I’d love to hear it!

[darenager]

Wait, so you can mix and multitrack in a DAW but not use the MDUW’s sampling capability? Seem kind of strange rules, I’m all for working within the limitations of the machines, but these rules go outside of just using the machines by allowing DAW multitracking, but do not allow us to use all the features of the machines themselves!

I hope that there will be some reconsideration.

[YloopZ]

Oke thats a good point… What I ment is that you can go outside the monomachines 6 monotracks or 3 stereotracks etc. Thats something different than using other instruments… Multitracking is not changing any sound. I have no hardware multritrackrocorder, I use my DAW for that…

[darenager]

With respect, if you are also saying that you can use more than the Monomachines 6 tracks by overdubbing then that is not technically working within the machines limitations either, is it?

Sampling is a function of the MDUW, by disallowing it then it is not fully permitting working within that machines limitations, and of course sampling is 1. A big part of the MDUW sound and 2. Not really like bringing external instruments in, we are only talking 2.5mb of sample ram after all, which in itself is a great limitation to work around, right?

[LyingDalai]

@darenager I think the idea of @marcelvidela was originally to focus on the Silver Sounds. Thus no external sample makes sense in this regard.
One can still resample the MD or the Mono so using the sampling capacities is still OK.

@YloopZ Not sure about multitracking, I believe one should try to focus on what the machine can do OTB…
Ideal thing would be to practice until one can record oneself straight to a recorder, I’d say.
Idea being also to know these boxes better.

If we open the door to DAW “cheating” (and I know it’s more comfortable) I’m afraid we expose ourselves to loose some connection to the boxes and miss the opportunity to dig deeper in the Silver Soul.

[elenacortes]

I think that the real silver spirit would be :

• live use of gear
• record at the out of them (only a stereo track, like the public would ear in live conditions)
• only uw sampling itself or mono.

That’s all. It’s a tribute to the silvers, not a compilation of elektronauts artists.

The silvers and your talent.

[bluewolfse7en]

Seams kinda weird to me not to allow the UW feature of the MD!
It’s hardly pristine sampling, it’s a 12 bit gritty 1980’s emulation, definitely an MD characteristic!
Does this mean no DigiPro waves on the Mono?

[LyingDalai]

You get a point.
I guess indeed it makes sense to let each Naut being its own judge of what Silver Soul means for such grey area. We’re not monks ^^

Still, would be cool to populate it only with sounds generated from one of the early Elektron, IMO.

[ipassenger]

@darenager and @bluewolfse7en Agreed.

Surely a tribute to the silver machines, should be a tribute to what they can do for you in your music… to disallow a whole section of their powers seems at odds with that. They are both very versatile machines, the monomachine is almost modular with its many lfos and routing options and the machinedrum is much more than a drum machine.

@Ryan

[YloopZ]

I agree with @LyingDalai about sampling other instruments. As its a tribute to silver I stick to the no sampling of other instruments than the MnM or MD.

@LyingDalai I like the idea for OTB so you can go deep into your silver box, deep to the soul of it, but…
As of multitracking I find that a difficult issue. Its a nice idea to stay within the limits of the MnM/MD track availability, but I want everyone what kind of music you make to contribute. So if you make deep ambient or filmisch music its hard to stay within six mono tracks (if you only got a MnM) And as its an Album and no live purposes I made the decision to go with multitracking.

Personally I don’t mind to stay OTB I make the kind of live purpose music. As of the meaning of silver souls I think multitracking is okay, but if a majority feels that multitracking is not something for this Silver Souls idea I am willing to reconsider that point.

[ipassenger]

Good to see that you have addressed the points made, by darenager, blue wolf and I!

I’m out.

[jikksfrikks]

What does ‘OTB’ mean?

[ipassenger]

Outside the box, meaning using gear without a computer as part of the composition or production process. ITB is the opposite meaning using only a computer.

[jikksfrikks]

Ah, ok.

A computer shouldn’t even be considered to be used when producing tracks in tribute to the silver boxes…

Only to record the finished result - to be able to upload the file. And even then maybe just use a simple program like Audacity. Too much temptation to mess around later on within a DAW.