insane indeed. Everybody should get one 
More or less learned what little theory I know in the abstract. I donāt play any instruments, though I get by noodling on the keys if I need something recorded with a live feel.
Iāve always got on really well with Elektronās work flow (Monomachine, MD, A4 are some of my favorite boxes of all time). And personally I feel like all of them can be played liveābut I play the timbre live, not the melodies and harmonies. I think this is essential to getting on well with Elektron machines is understanding that changing timbre/texture is what these machines excel at. I think it is somewhat more obvious with the Octa and Digi because they are samplers.
Sequencing p-locks and live knob twisting is the top reason to own any Elektron box.
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I grew up playing piano, then violin, then ābandā in school playing trumpet but I wanted to play drums. At 16 a friend gave me a guitar. Took some acid and got deep into playing in psych rock bands for years. In spite of resisting computers for years, a friend talked me into using Ableton and Reaktor in 2000. At the time I had a Roland xp60 some Akai sampler and a Korg MS 2000.
I completely got lost in Ableton, Max, Reaktor and Controllers.
When the OT came out it seemed so limited to me. Like a mini Ableton in a box.
Eventually I got sick of being on the computer all the time. I do CG animation all day, so I was constantly looking at a computer screen.
Bought a Tempest and a Slim Phatty, then an OT. Been hooked on Elektrons since.
That said, as much as I like composing music on synths, I miss playing in a band with feedback and guitars. Gotta get back to that soon.
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if cheap AKs flood the us market, my christmas might come early. 
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My initial background was piano and trumpet as a kid but then I started playing slide guitar and harmonicaā¦ which are much more by feel instruments in my opinion and has you a bit more lost without too many easy guides on how to play them. I liked this more exploratory way of learning and playing. Kind of what brought me to the synth and more specifically groove box style instruments. New, weird, and interesting ways to interact with music is kind of what I crave. Still some very expensive controllers out there I would love to have but the elektron boxes with probability and interesting different ways to express and mutate sounds really makes them what I consider the best. Eigenharp is definitely on my list of things to try out. I do still have some traditional keys also I just do work that way as often.
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I played rhythm guitar in a thrash band when I was really young, but was generally just a pain in the arse co-ordinating jams etc. with 3 other people.
Took acid in the late 90ās at a full moon party in Brazil and danced for three days straight.
This was a revelation. I remember thinking to myself āwhat are these crazy sounds and how do I make them?ā I had no idea and had to find out more.
Electronic music was what I had been searching for all my life without even knowing it, and have been producing electronic music from that day onwards.
Sort of a love / hate relationship with Elektron instruments dating way back to the monomachine in early 2000ās. Great in some ways, but far from perfect in others for my workflow.
Still keep a close eye on Elektron products, as well as anything else that omits strange noise, in anticipation for the next big thing.
I am still fascinated by electronic sounds, generally the weirder the better, as it still keeps me interested and inspired to this day.
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This.
Elektronā boxes are the Konkami code of music. They give me 99 lives. They give me superpowers.
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I was a teenage indie guitarist in a band.
when I was about 22, another guitarist joined my band who was way better than me. So I stopped playing guitar and switched to keyboard. which I couldnāt really play, but found was much better for writing songs (for me).
I was mostly singer, a bit of Casiotone, playing in a reasonably successful (by the standards of the genre) art-punk band.
but listening increasingly to electronic music. So when the band stopped, I started making stuff with Reaper.
since then, itās been a search to find the right process. A big thing for me is live performance. I could make great music with Reaper, but thereās no practical way to perform it live in a meaningful way. Renoise was a little better in that regard, but still pretty clunky.
I gotta Electribe E2S about a year ago. Really fun but limited.
then I saw Digitakt, which is basically an Electribe with all the features whose absence had frustrated me.
so now Iām using that. I think it will be a happy marriage. Nice balance of simplicity and depth and control. I can use it and sing at the same time, or just play it. it does feel like an instrument, albeit one that I havenāt fully mastered yet.
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The AK prices have been low for some time now. Thatās both new and 2nd hand. Itās becoming increasingly unrealistic to expect >Ā£800 for one on the 2nd hand market now. I bought one new from DV24/7 for something like Ā£930 2 years ago or so.
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As an interesting coincidence, I picked up a Heat very cheap, just the other day. Since Iāve gear-purged myself while waiting for the Deluge (not the Moog, though, @Open_Mike - itās still here) Iāve not had much to try it on, so I brought back a Volca Sample from a friend, just to play with something and learn the Heat while the Deluge is on its way.
Apart from the fact that the Heat is great just for what it does, I could also quickly see that I came up with more ideas that I enjoyed, than during the brief time I had the Digitakt (perhaps brief being the key word here, though). But as much as I enjoyed the hands-on approach of the Volca Sample and the one knob per feature way of building something, I equally enjoyed the comparative complexity of the Heat in doing something with the output. Granted, for an Elektron device, the Heat isnāt particuarly menu-deep. But compare to other stuff, itās still a lot of double-pressing, click twice to access the deeper menus, this screen does that in this mode, and so on. But for sound shaping, that felt perfectly all right and even preferable. I wanted that depth.
But for composing and playing, it does not, for me.
So whle this micro rig, charming on its own, is what it is, it also says something about my ow relationshop with Elektronās stuff. As a player and composers, Iām starting to think theyāre just not for me. But as a place to work out ideas that came from somewhere else, theyāre very much for me. Which is why the Heat might just work perfectly.
The irony here is that while the Deluge is many things, hands-on one knob per feature is not one of them. Quite the contrary.
If Iām right in this preference of mine, then going for the Deluge will most likely be my last attempt at getting a piece of gear intended for song writing, that works with this kind of depth with this kind of interface.
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I wish we lived closer to each otherā¦ I could drop by and you could try out how composing with an MPC would feel like to you. I know you do not feel the MPC at all etc, but thereās a way to use them for composing with a MIDI keyboard and a foot pedal that is highly intuitive, you just playā¦
Have you ever tried something like an Alesis MMT8? I know its archaic by modern standards (and the battery can be quirky) but some of my friends swear by its simple efficiencyā¦
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Iād offer you coffee if you dropped by. If our jam
got long, Iād invite you to dinner with the family 
I havenāt tried that old steam roller, but have seen Sunshine Jones love letter to the instrument. He says the Pyramidās pretty close, though. And the Deluge crowd says the sequencer is quite something. So I guess I should try the less obvious options now. I believe Iāve had enough experience with the Elektrons to know theyāre not for me, anymore, for just the sitting down, playing and writing.
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You put things far more elegantly than I ever could. I think you and I share a similar pattern and view when it comes to the Elektron stuff - a deep appreciation of their capabilities but they always leave a scratch to itch. My relationship with Elektron gear is almost like how am I am with my beloved Falkirk Football Club (bare with me hereā¦). I love them to bits but boy do they wind me up something rotten on match day to the point that Iām turning up on a Saturday afternoon more out of a sense of duty than actually hoping for entertainment! But still, you canāt help returning.
Iām down to just the Digitakt now. Havenāt touched it in weeks now but thatās due to waiting on Juno replacing it. I think that plus the MPC Live will do me for hardware and I might even get that down to one box in time. Heat appeals though - I have some tracks I think it would do wonders on actually so maybe worth a try.
Iāve owned all the Elektronās bar the MD. I donāt really miss them as tools. I miss some of the fun and smiles I got from time to time but the GAS has waned significantly. I recently received a tax rebate - a ridiculous amount too come to think of it, Ā£1,200 - as well as the final small piece of inheritance from when my Gran passed some time ago. My first thought would usually be to splurge it on hardware and even up to 2 or 3 months ago thatās exactly where it would have gone, but nothing appeals! Might treat myself to a vst or something, one of the big expensive options, but that would be it.
Anyway, rambling a bit now. Like @tsutek says, might be worth considering the MPC one last time. I sat on the couch the other night with the Live, my XKey plugged straight in and had a lot of fun. Some of the synth parts I wrote sounded far better than they shouldāve too! I canāt remember if you ever gave ITB music a go or not - let me know as Iāve got a load of views on the obvious options out there. Still using Maschine and Ableton a fair bit. Having returned to Maschine after a 3 year hiatus it really is pretty much a dream to use and very, very quick.
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just fwiw - I only meant the MIDI sequencing side of the MPC hereā¦ Itās a wonderful sequencer for composing IMO.
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Ah yes, get you now. And yeah, very much agree. Much more intuitive to me than the Elektronās step sequencer.
The Deluge does seem to sit in the middle of both approaches though so may well tick enough of those boxes!
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- List item
I have an MPC 5k as the alternative centre of my studio, if I want no computer setup. Makes a pretty good job recording and playing back midi loops.
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My first instrument was piano, my first electronic instrument was buzz tracker.
I used it for years.
I was very worried I would get frustrated with elektron gear. I read so many times in many forums how frustrating elektron gear is to use and how itās like using a computer (what I donāt like in my hardware). I finally pulled the trigger and preordered a digitakt.
Itās like a hardware tracker and I feel very at home using it, I printed out the entire manual and only looked at it one to check what nei and fill mean in the conditional trigs, other than that itās all been very easy and intuitive
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Thanks, that all sounds very good (except for the Gran part, Iām sorry for your loss).
Given that both you and @tsutek recommend the Live, youāve now peaked my interest. If the Deluge goes out, the Live is next.
I should mention that I had a Circuit for a year, and despite its not-one-knob-per-ftr interface, I loved the sequencer. But the Circuit really is what Novation says it is - for starting something. And try as you might with the synth engineās editor, itās pretty dull even at its most extreme, even in the hands of the mighty Thavius Beck or Calc.
But as a tool for composition, Novationās got gold going with the Circuit franchise.
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Iām going to reply in two partsā¦
Part One: Background
Iām an improvisational guitar player that loves windy journey type jams over rockin dance beats, and enjoys all sorts of other styles. I come from playing in bands performing rock, funk, world music, acid jazz, and blending styles into extended psychedelic jams. Eventually I had moved from the towns I played with bands in and there werenāt so many musicians too close so I started looping from a computer and using it for beats, sounding like a band just by myself in the mountains, great fun! I also got my first synth, a Moog little phatty, which I loop mainly for bass but also whatever else. I really enjoyed the computer/synth/looping experience and all the sounds and options, but I felt like my music was to repetitive and boxy especially with drums. I had always been curious about hardware and had wanted a drum machine but had never took the leap, looked at the tempest several times. After about five years of itb, I finally decided I would love some dedicated hardware with realtime performance controls that I could just reach over and make variations happen easily, getting me out of my boxy grooves, I did have midi controllers to program but I just wasnāt feeling it. That was shortly after the Rytm came out. There was a Rytm drought for a bit and I called a shop in San Fransisco and found they had ordered some awhile back and they would get there soon, he also said there was an OT coming that nobody had claimed(OT had been in a longer drought), I had him hold the Rytm for me and started thinking about that OT. It really would be a crazy move to get that too as together it was a lot of money. Few days later called him back, OK, hold that OT too!
I didnāt even fully know what I was getting into but I was really exited, stoked to get a Rytm, and the OT was this new impulse move that I wasnāt expecting and wasnāt even exactly sure what all it did but knew it could probably replace my computer as the looping brains. Turns out thatās just what it did. One analog mixer later and I had an all hardware rig!
Stay tuned for part 2ā¦
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