How do you relate to Elektron's instruments, depending on your background?

I think those teachers feel their students already know how to break the world in half with their creative work. They try to prepare their students for the inevitable dismissals that plebs will be spewing their way, along the lines of “thousand monkeys with typewrites” etc nonsense.

IMO it is the same as with crafts artisans - only the one who is also making what you make truly appreciates everything that went into making the objects. Some people might appreciate the beauty/aesthetics, but that is only a part of the whole, But there’s always going to be someone who goes “yeh I bought a similar kit from IKEA, its noise”

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What i’m sure is today electronic music (dancefloor oriented) need to come back to a good balance between noise/sound design/minimalism to bring back happy things, good bass line and good melodies as well as good overall construction. I know it takes more time to make it and people are a lot after mass production to keep their name in top… But i feel like music is boring and more or less the same. Few things are very good but immerse in a lot of unfinished things…

i really hope things changes a bit for the sake of us, to bring back masterpieces of electronic music. instead of mass consumption beats.

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Maybe the reason for this is … people started to make noise, rhythms, harmonies etc. long before somebody started to think about it. Many cultures developed musical performances just by teaching the next generation by listen to the elders and play along with them. I think, this is the best method to generate music, also today.

But don’t think I decline the worth of music theory. It’s helpful, useful, it’s about recognising and understanding general and particular rules but at the end of the day …

music is not on paper … it’s also not in the gear … it’s in our souls, if this makes sense.

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I never had any interest in making my own music until my late teens in the late 80’s, when old synths were cheap and acid house first emerged in the UK. Funny enough my great aunt was a piano teacher and taught a few early 80’s synth pop star keyboard players, but I never had any interest in music theory or playing the piano, and to this day still do not, I can’t play a keyboard and never plan on learning to.

My first experience with Elektron was as a beta tester on the Sidstation, then later the Monomachine, and so on, I relate to them because of the step level control that they afford, it allows me to precisely express that which my lack of traditional music training and playing skill does not.

I see step grids as my sheet music, only a lot more resonating to me. I guess growing up with arcade games and 8 bit home computers made me naturally attracted to buttons, sliders and weird electronic noises, and Elektron gear has always felt fun like a video game too.

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It’s the same with every discipline … the tools don’t make good work, it’s the person, the artist.

If we ignore, how people perceive music, they just will ignore it. And there comes theory in hand. There are understandings, which kind of noise fits to which kind of emotion, which kind of rhythm is for dance and which for building up a climax.

I love to listen to classic music with the knowledge of todays genres and electronic gear and learn from the old masters, which is valid also today.

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With electronic music, I feel like clubbing culture is also responsible for a lot of this. You know the world I’m talking about? The cynical view of catering to “people just want to pop a pill, dance to fresh beats before they hookup and go home”, “DJing is just another way to be a bartender” etc… this sort of mindset propagates the idea of electronic music as a disposable form of entertainment, which in turn devalues certain things…

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Probably but again there’s club and club, there’s DJ and DJ… as well as bartender. (i mean popular oriented and music specialists) But i will stop there because if i move again on my mind thinking it’s OFF Topic clearly. But i understand what you say more people who consumes… but decades ago people priorities was music and have fun. Well things have changed a bit, But there are still young people who go to the club or event for music first.

yes, sorry for going off topic. back to it!

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YEAH, it’s linked anyway. Music take place somewhere, People listen to it so we can’t hide the linked side of Music Creation and how it’s received then…

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ive thought about this a bit and for me i think it comes more back to video games more than music. the feedback process, the buttons, the combos, the progression through a virtual space into more and more interesting and varied worlds - i’m sure there’s an academic paper about it somewhere but for me there’s not much difference between a ‘hadouken’ and jamming on a filter while throwing down a few trigs. so for me its old arcade games and nintendo. and while i dont play so many games anymore except a few select titles from time to time, i think electronic instruments are kindve my grown up form of console games (rather than FPS’s or whatever)

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Fascinating, never thought about that, but there’s certainly something familiar here !

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Now there’ s a question:)

How do I relate to Elektron gear? Well, I’ m one of those guys that has zero background in music theory. I never played piano or guitar and back in the days I never wanted to. In highschool pretty much everyone was listening to Nirvana and rage against the machine…and I was pretty much the only outsider that listened to house/techno/electronics which was not as advanced as it is today…Early 90’ s.

Then, a small piece of software came out: rebirth! Boy did I tweak that to death on a slow computer and a bunch of crappy speakers…

What I liked then is what I still like now: the ability to do things to sound and music that go way beyond “traditional” instruments. Wether it is the endless possibilities of synthesizers or combining all kinds of effects or re-re-resample-re-mangle-twist-bend <- insert undecidable recursive higher order function here ->

My first Elektron was a second hand mduw mk1, followed by an mnm and an ot. I still have them and that crazy mnm keeps delivering things I never thought of.

Everything I know about music and sound design is pretty much self taught. I remember reading a small book about the relation between maths and music theory…Suddenly the transpose functions and the arp on the mnm made sense and allowed me to target my experiments a lot more.

I still do this today. Fortunately there is no pressure on me to deliver commercial music or to be on a stage, although I spinned enough records in clubs to know what that is like.

Music and sound design is like an ever lasting journey to me, using what I know to explore what I do not and these Elektron boxes seem to offer the right combination of depth, build quality, etc. to keep being hooked. In the end I’ m a hobbyist and these boxes offer me a nice way of being creative. As an artist, I’ m not that good…and I don’ t need to :relaxed:

M.

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My whole family is playing instruments, my brothers and I taught ourselves to play guitar and played mostly beatles tunes back then. We played in various guitar bands for quite some time. I’m a big Radiohead fan, they introduced me to electronics in rock music. I realized Thom Yorke was using a machine drum. He mentioned Aphex and Autechre in an interview, I became quite obsessive with those and found great youtube demos of elektron gear featuring Warp style drums and tunes. Before that I was using Ableton only. My dream was to get an OT. My great family and friends alltogether bought one from ebay as a present for my 30th birthday! I spent the money I saved for the OT on an used A4, and here we go. Nowadays I found my favourite Warp style Demos in Eurorack, so I’m gasing mostly for that :wink: But still use the elektrons a lot. And I have a project with my brother which is heavy influenced by sample 90s trip hop, Ninja tune, Mowax etc with many of samples, where the OT gets used a lot for that. End of my bio :slight_smile:

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Interesting topic! I was never mad into music for a long time (listening or instruments) - my first single bought is shamefully the Tetris theme and my first album for some reason was Robert Miles 23am! God knows why.

Anyway, at about 15/16 I was asked if I wanted to play in a band. They pretty much only needed someone to do one finger keyboard leads and 3 finger chords haha. So I went for it. Had a great time, played some school concerts and a couple of local shows until the “creative differences” led us down separate paths. Went dormant for some years then on a whim I bought myself Maschine for my 30th and sort of haven’t looked back.

Christ, this is getting long, this led to huge productivity and me convincing myself that I needed to be all grown up with some hardware. Enter Elektron. I have a funny relationship with Elektron stuff - I have historically had a natural aversion to loop based music so a x step sequencer seems an odd purchase! But the Octatrack opened my eyes up to some serious possibilities and, in a round about way, Elektron gear helped to open loop based music to me.

I guess, in short, all that’s clear to me is that you learn and grow constantly. I’m progressively happier with being ITB but something like Digitakt (and you never know, maybe an OT down the line again…) allows to sort of instrumentalise (that even a word?) samples in a way that’s not widely possible and that’s very Elektron to me. I taught myself how to keyboard, Elektron (and a lot of you guys), in a way, taught me how to play with samples.

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Long story short:
I learned synthesis at the age of 13 primarily on a Juno 60. Created a few covers and sounds but after 12 months I lost interest mainly due to not having the patience to learn music theory.
At around 18 - 21 years age the summer of love happened and I turned my attention to what others were producing, going out, endless partying. I djed for small parties and became an expert in all things 90s techno, trance etc.
After the turn of the millenium I got married and drifted from the scene, but never lost the passion for electronic music, with most musical love still eminating from the 90s.
In 2015 Roland released the boutiques. As an old Juno player this raised the synth interest back. I bought all three but needed a decent sequencer, so decided on the octatrack. This started a flurry of furious buying into elektron gear. Still learning the gear, in fact most will be shipped across the world soon so I have packed them up. Looking forward to a studio environment to really get into them completely.
I do find elektrons a bit like programming, a chore at times to be honest but love the technical depth.

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Took piano lessons from ages 10-13, Jazz guitar between 14-17, then proceeded auto-didactically. At one point got a loop station, then the Roland SPS-X 404 pattern sequencer for beats. It eventually got replaced by the AR. Owned the OT for a while, but never had that aha effect, so resold it. Got the A4 then AK. I got to admit, it takes a long time for me to understand Elektron’s gear, since I’m more of a instrumentalist and lack some of the nerdiness, or motivation to dedicate sufficient time early on, plus procrestination is a thing. Of course you always get rewarded - big time, which made and will keep me a loyal customer!

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Fun topic! I love reading everyone’s stories… many similarities, even with individuals with vast differences!

I began playing saxophone at age 10. I was always a natural player and sat first / second chair (for the geeks!). I snagged a guitar at age 15 and really geeked out on “not high school band” music AKA “rock and or roll” …I quickly realized that I could play saxophone in this context and actually started practicing.

Somewhere around 20, I discovered the weird jazz scene that was happening in New York. I lived in Oklahoma, and it would be years before I was in proximity to anything like that. I played in several bands in my college years, doing original music. I got in to using harmonizers and effects on my horn. I learned play bass and sub-bass sounds out of my sax! Crazy jazz and use of effects led to electronic music… probably via Martin Medeski and Wood.

I’d get into Ableton 5 sometime around 24 years old thanks to Mike Bell of the Lymbyc Systym. To this day, I’ve never seen such great live integration of backing clips and live instruments. I wouldn’t get my first synth until 33. It was all soft synths due to $$… After that, I’d accumulate about 5 or 6 more solid pieces of gear.

I still use Ableton heavily – recording and mixing for myself and others. And, I still play some guitar. The Digitakt is my first real non-software sequencer if you don’t count the OP-1. But, everything comes back to the saxophone. I love putting it in next environments where it might not obviously belong. Using Eventide boxes, fuzz pedals, etc., made my horn fit in a lot of places.

Lot’s of typing! Fun chatter!

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I have no music background whatsoever.
My journey started on a Beastie Boys concert where I saw Mix Master Mike go ninja on the tables.
After three years of DJing I realized that while this is cool I simply wanted to make some music instead of playing everybody else’s tunes.

Got my first synth (N364 :smiley: ) and learned basics of sequencing and so on.
Gradually throughout the years I moved from hip hop towards electronic stuff as I simply find them more pleasant to my ears.
Now I’m here, still can’t read notes and I play keys by knowing which key sounds good with others haha.

Elektron stuff is different. I’m very new to this world and it definitely has a more engineer type of feel than musical. Everything needs to be programmed, dialed in. Sound wise the A4 doesn’t really kill it but the sequencer is extremely cool and I love working on patterns with it.
The feat I love the most though is the fact that it requires your constant input adding a lot of randomness in the process.

As a cubase user since the Atari ST days I simply wanted to disconnect from DAW as much as I can. The A4 and OT gave me just what I needed.

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My route into music making is kind of odd and even now I’m kinda uncomfortable calling myself a musician.

I bought a portable minidisc recorder an a Sony microphone to make field recordings back in the old days of minidisc and I used to record the seashore/woodlands/thunderstorms for home listening in the evenings, when I used to um, smoke.

Messing around with the minidisc recorder a lot I found I could insert track markers into my recordings to split them into tiny bits of sound, then rearrange the bits of sound, remove some of the track markers (so I just had one very short track made up of a number of small sounds) and then I’d set that track on repeat.

At this point I decided I needed to record this stuff somehow and so I bought a magazine called Sound on Sound and did some reading and ended up buying a BOSS BR8, which was a multitrack recorded that used zip disks. So music making for me began with looping tiny bits of field recordings on a minidisc recorder into a multitrack recorder and using waaaaay to much delay. (Hmm… still haven’t really got over that delay yet. My wife thinks it’s very funny when I stop a sequence I’m working on and get out of my chair and the sound keeps going for a few minutes afterwards.)

Then I ended up selling the multitrack recorder (I felt it was too guitar centric) and bought a second hand sampler called a Korg ES-1 and a sample CD called Abstract Hip-Hop. At this point my music became a lot more like music. Looking back I think maybe I should of stuck with the multitracking a bit more as I rarely ever make anything that I’d call a track, and ever since I’ve been reshuffling a very minimal amount of cheapish gear until I’m basically at the point now where I have a okay/meh i7 laptop with Ableton & Sunvox, Focusrite sound card, a tablet, various pocket music making things (Bhajis Loops anyone?) and a Digitakt. I’m kinda minimal/ruthless about stuff because my Dad is a proper serious horder of stuff/junk and growing up with that I get uncomfortable if I have too much stuff that I feel I can’t justify.

The funny thing is that last week while walking home I saw someone had left an old cassette multitrack recorder (Fostex XR-7) on the wall outside their house for free (we call this ‘wall swag’, happens a lot round my way, get some nice furniture sometimes…). The only problem with it was with the power supply, where one end of the cable had been torn out. It was an easy fix though and it seems to be working great, although I’m just using it as a mixer at the moment and I’ve not tried the tape.

So I’ve found myself enjoying feeding into the XR-7 it loads of looping and delayed bits of sound from various mobile devices at once (not all at the same BPM!), and bringing the levels of each in and out, fiddling with the EQ… and somehow I feel like I’m returning to something I’ve been missing. Kinda funny how my current favourite bit of gear was someone elses trash! Really should of bought a mixer already.

Anyway, Elektron stuff… The Digitakt. It’s my first bit of Elektron gear and in many ways it feels like the first professional bit of gear I’ve owned. I’m not using it for drums so much, more just looping tones and little bits of field recordings with lots of delay. I really wish it would allow me to play my samples polyphonically, but I knew about this limitation before I got it, and I can still midi sequence other stuff with it polyphonically, so I really can’t grumble. It does remind me of the old Electribe ES-1, but the Digitakt is just 3 million times better, like how you can apply effects etc individually to each trig etc. At the moment I’m barely scratching the surface of what it can do, but having spent a lot of time using ableton, I’m really enjoying the immediacy of the Digitakt. Turn it on, have a play, turn it off. Repeat.

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I started creating “Music” in the 90s :wink: For as long as i can remember i was always into Electronic Music. Techno was big in the 90s, the Rave’s were all over the place and i grew up in that time.

I started making Music on the Computer since i never had money as a Teen (and still not really have till date :smiley: ) Software could easily be copied back at that time. After noddlin around in Fasttracker II i copied Rebirth RB-338 from Propellerheads and was blown away :slight_smile: Finally the Tool for creating the Music i wanted. I moved to Reason later, went through a time with FL Studio and ended up in Ableton Live one day. In between i bought some Synths second hand (Roland JP8000 for example) but always struggled with the DAW, always Latency - always crap!

Years passed, DAWs were getting more complex and thanks to “Warez” my Plugin-List was bigger than my Screen Resolution. But i never got any real Track together - everything was always just a test - as soon as it was getting serious i had no clue how to progress.

Elektron Machines (more specifically the Machinedrum) changed all of this one day. I have one machine that does what i needed and its limitations allowed me to finally get something done - which also sounds great :slight_smile: No complex Workhorses with millions of features - just ONE machine that simply sounds good! Inspiration came back and i created one Track after the other, bought more Elektron machines over the years and today - you see the recent results on my YouTube Channel :wink:

So Elektron means for me: Im free from complicated and time consuming DAW Workflows and i can focus on my Electronic Music in a fast and very convenient way. The Sequencer, the Sound … everything just fits for Electronic Music! The Limitations force me to carve the most out of it and this leads to new Ideas - pretty much all the time! No DAW can offer this. Today, the DAW is only used for Recording - but without adding something in there.

Thats my Story in a nutshell :wink:

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