Great Machine!

Elektron Gear Machinedrum
#1

Hey all

I’ve just bought a used MD SPS 1 UW+ Mk2 and I’m so pleased with it. I’ve never used one before and realise what all the hype is about now!

I’ve got an AR, AK and OT, which are all great, and thought MD might be a pain to learn, but within a few hours I’ve pretty much got it worked out.

The MD makes such a perfect companion to the AR - I’m super excited about the potential here. The MD seems to have so much more sound design potential than the AR. I especially like the fact that the UW+ functionality plugs the gaps on sampling that the AR sorely misses.

Does anyone have any gems of wisdom relating to AR and MD use that they can share?

Cheers :slight_smile:

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#2

Try to find Tarekith tips gathered from the former forum :totes:

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#3

Thanks so much mate, will have a look now :slight_smile:

#5

Think I’m inclined to agree with you, and that’s only after a few hours using it.

OT was the hardest to understand/longest to learn for me, although now I understand it, it’s hard to see why it was so difficult all this time! Haha.

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#6

There’s supposed to be a way you can love record into the MDUW and transfer that sample via midi to the AR. Try this and let me know the result! It would be the first thing I do if I reacquaint myself with the AR

#7

Wow, that sounds ace, will give it a try. I’m using Strom and a big library on my iPad to transfer the AR at the moment. Would be nice to go from MD to AR for sure.

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#8

I haven’t done it but you can have multiple machines on a single track, i.e. midi track on top of input a filter… any non-sound producing machine will still effect the track when another is put on top…just can’t edit those once you have put a another on…

#9

CTRL-ALL works independently for Sound producing machines, RAM record machines, and MIDI machines.

Like having three dedicated boxes all with CTRL-ALL

#10

I think you have to rig it to be that. You can trigger an input machine, but you need to switch the engine after triggering the input

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#11

Thanks for the tips, but to be honest it’s all a little over my head at the moment as I’m not really an advanced user yet, will certainly have a go though! Cheers

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#12

heres a simple fun one…
EFM-CY
On synth page: turn high pass down, turn fb down, pitch all the way down, long decay,play with mod freq/decay. On track effects page: LP filter about 1 or 2 o’clock.

gorgeous fm synth drone…

I stumbled across this in somewhere around month 8!

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#13

I’ve tried it and it works but transferring samples is very slow. It wasn’t worth it for me.

Machinedrum is such a great instrument. I rarely use mine these days but I just can’t get rid of it. I get something useable anytime I take it out, and it’s the perfect machine for when I want to go deep experimenting.

One thing that is pretty fun is taking a 1 or 2 bar loop (I usually use melodic sounds for this but percussive is fine too), set both LFO shapes to triangle, mix somewhere near the center, slow LFO rate, then apply a small amount to pitch. Copy and paste the track to another, change the LFO speed so it’s a little different from the other track, then pan the tracks hard left and right. It’s probably nothing special (just a flange kinda thing) and you can do it with AR as well, but I first discovered with the MD and it can sound really cool on certain things.

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#14

Thanks all, I’m using it to play out this weekend with the AR, nothing like jumping in at the deep end! :wink:

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#15

Oh! Another trick you can do with the Machinedrum! It’s a little complicated.

Get your machinedrum to play random patterns.

SIMPLE METHOD:

Loop the midi cable from out to in
Midi map the patterns to different notes
In your kit have one voice set as a midi machine
Using a midi merger, send an LFO from the OT to modulate the MIDI voice(you can try it internally, but the LFOs can’t modulate a midi track directly, you have to use a control track, and even then it’s not consistent and will jump in MIDI values)
Now, when ever you trigger that voice it will play a random pattern and return to the first pattern immediately without pause(this COULD lead you breaking the flow of time–which could be cool)

TO PERFORM THE PATTERNS RANDOMLY:

Do all of the above steps
Plug a cable from AKs CV out to a MD input
Set the MD input track for trigger in
Set the trigger to the midi track
Use the conditional tracks of the AK on the Cv track.

IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure the Machinedrum is either sending or receiving clock NOTE BOTH

You can also set the random midi tracks to voices, but you’ll only be able to have two random voices at once- but it could add a bit of variation in your patterns

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#16

Bloody 'ell mate, that sounds like a mad bit of routing! Thanks again, will check it out :slight_smile:

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#17

Here’s a video of me experimenting with the random triggering from the A4
Edit: the random patterns comes in last

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#18

Sounds dope mate, nice one for the share!

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#19

Have to say though, I am missing the conditional trig functionality that AK and AR have…would be amazing if MD could do that on its own. I guess I can do it via CV/MID machines etc. to a certain extent like you say Ryan.

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#20

There’s also a CV to midi converter, if it means that much to you. 4 gorgeous channels of random bliss. (Of course, there’s also the DT)

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#21

Don’t think I’m gonna go for the Digitakt, don’t believe I’ll have much use for it. I’m getting a Pyramid in a few weeks, so that’s probably all the control I’m ever likely to need, as I like to try and keep things reasonably simple.

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