For what are you using your creations on your Elektron gear?

The Lounge General Discussion
#14

I always have a goal in mind to make a full song. It starts with a pattern where I slowly build up layer after layer until I enjoy it enough to want think about song structure. If I don’t like the pattern enough, I move on to another idea.

I then copy/paste the pattern and create a b-section. That usually is enough to start to build out the full song. At a later point, I tend to add a bridge or break and start to think about the details more, how a sound might evolve across several patterns. Things like that.

Song mode makes finishing a track so easy. I just finished a new track today in a couple of hours. This is what I love about the Syntakt!

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#15

Perhaps the graceful way to take that would be as a compliment? Like maybe they’re interested in what you might do? I know I wouldn’t ask about the big bike race because I don’t care about bike races.

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#16

Had the same problem: so much expensive gear acquired and semi elaborated patterns on the machines. Solution: I published my jams on YouTube (where I also can track my personal development and can listen back to my old stuff).

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#17

never asked myself about that because the answer is obvious – gigs or at least jams.

and i have to say Elektron’s performance oriented features are really really massive.

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#18

I am happy if i manage to do 1-2 live shows a year. Otherwise i just play for myself and it’s really not more than that: “playing”. What i am doing is far away from art and nobody needs electronic music producer No. 20498602.

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#19

I want to make music and also create finished tracks and albums. Elektron gear helps me achieve my goals with useful limitations :smiley:

I don’t jam around a lot, I want to get ideas out of my head and present them to the world. A few people like it and the more tracks I make, the more I like my own works. It’s really awesome to see your own development over time. Which is something you’ll rarely notice if you don’t record your music and don’t try to bring it into a finished state.

I don’t care too much for technical perfection and mistakes are allowed. I won’t record something a second time because of some minor issue, the same goes for my mastering or mixing. I make tiny steps with each new track and this has been working perfectly for me for two years now.

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#20

money, sex and drugs.

but none of these things have ever materialised. so i’m not sure i’m doing it right.

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#21

Hah, good point. My natural response is to be a bit defensive, but responding with more grace is a good suggestion. :slightly_smiling_face:

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#22

I use it to battle here in the Mission Briefs.

Its a war, and these are my weapons.

…just kidding… I never win… but its fun.

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#23

To put it inversely, I care a lot about music and if I find out somebody I’ve met makes it, my immediate question Every. Single. Time. is “how can I hear it?”. It’s not because I’m grading them against any cornball standard I’ve invented, only because nobody in the world makes music quite like anybody else in the world and I’m genuinely curious.

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#24

Yes. At first I thought I should finish tracks. Like you, there was my other hobby (in my case photography) that gave me some perspective. So whatever fragments or full tracks I make are to have fun and document my present. Sometimes I record and archive them as I do with my photos, which are fun to look at without being commited to making a cohesive body of work. I find this very liberating and this ironically enough led to finishing more tracks.

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#25

With OB Elektrons you can just dump all your stems into a DAW and make a track from there. At least that’s what I used to do with them.

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#26

…the essential question…

consumer or creator…?

a consumer is having fun with the given tools in front of him/her…
a creator is getting fun out of the tools in front of him/her by making them become truu instruments at his/her free disposal to create something new and for real…
beyond all fun, beyond their comfortzones…

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#27

The same here. I am also very intrigued by the books people read or the music they listen to. I’d love to talk people through my collections but usually nobody cares enough :smiley:

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#28

HA! I know the feeling!

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#29

This. If it’s a necessity you will find a process to say what makes total sense to you. Experimenting is maybe a big part of that for you?

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#30

First of all, thanks everyone for taking the time and sharing your thoughts.

The “becoming better”-aspect is somehow something that I never thought about, but its of course true, there are definitely learnings after all the time in front of the machines and also result sound better (at least sometimes :D)

I also started to post things on YouTube, to give everything a meaning, but recording and putting the videos together often feel more stressful, than I wish it would.
Anyway, it is definitely nice to have this “private” album of past creations.

After posting the original post, I was thinking about the question a bit more myself and in the end got to the point, where I was saying to myself, that I might want to give it another try to bring things into Ableton and earn some knowledge on the arranging stuff, too.
There are of course (also to me) fun aspects in moving samples around and refine those with fx and other layers.
Just, when I was doing this in the past, I would have rather been dialing in another new 64 steps…
I’ll give it another try, I promise :smiley:

I think the biggest pain for me is, that I don’t want to do anything, which feels rather like work than fun. And that’s the point where I am holding off from the next logical step towards a finished track…
But moving to a new pattern and forgetting about the last one at a random point has as well something unfulfilling to me. This feeling caused my initial post.

ps. I might wanna search for someone, who hates being somewhat creative on synthesizers and just loves to arrange stuff…:smiley:

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#31

Publishing shouldn’t be stressful. It should rather be some kind of hygienic procedure.
It’s published, it’s out of your mind - start something new.

I am trying to prevent to run in any over optimization.

Eventually helpful: consider how other (serious) artists (John Frusciante) are dealing with this topic: RHCPeppers Guitarist John Frusciante Uses Two Elektron Boxes to make latest albums - #5 by waftlord

Music is art - and freedom to do what YOU want to do!

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#32

I use my Digitone to make samples. I’ll make a pattern or two. I’ll sequence my other synths from the MIDI tracks and I’ll record all that to my computer.

I use my Digitakt to actually put beats together. So I’ll take bits from the little jams that I recorded, chop them up, and put some drums under it. Sometimes I’ll sequence a bass or a lead line from the MIDI tracks.

I’ll also make beats the more old fashioned way. Chopping up samples from records. And I’ll do that with my Digitakt and sometimes my old Zoom Sampletrak.

I’ve got a little Novation Circuit Rhythm as well. I’ll also make beats with that but I tend to use it on its own. However, when I record it, I’ll record it through the Digitakt’s compressor.

So yeah, I feel like I underutilize my Digitone because I don’t understand FM synthesis nearly as well as I should by now. But otherwise I feel like I know what everything is for. And I’m having fun.

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#33

Hey haha

Today for example, I’m guilty of most of your football list, having travelled from York to Sheffield and back. But I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol all day!

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