I’m currently using a Digitakt and Digitone as the heart of my operation, with the Digitakt handling drum duties while Digitone is basically a preset machine for weird FX and leads (people have tried explaining FM synthesis to me 1,000 different ways, and it is just not a process I click with).
This works fine for the most part, but the thing I miss about my old Machinedrum is being able to hand sculpt my kick drums. Sure I have 1,000 lovely samples in my Digitakt, but they’re only so malleable. This has me considering three options:
Putting together a sort of kick template in my Digitone, which I can then shape using the envelopes, filters, LFOs and overdrive (without really having to engage with the SYN1 and SYN2 pages, because again just no)
Trading the Digitone in for a Syntakt
Adding a JOMOX MBase 11
Curious to hear which of these solutions make sense to people, both in terms of workflow and sheer sonic quality. The JOMOX sounds “the best” to my ears, but that workflow feels a little more clunky and desk space is limited. Syntakt is easier to hone in than the Digitone and has a wider palette with the analog machines, so maybe that’s the answer, but I just don’t know…The Kick 2 plugin was also considered, but I tried the demo and found the process of editing envelope points with a mouse to be downright miserable and not FUN.
I love the DNs kicks! I also have no idea how FM works so I use presets like thug kick and mess around with them till I find something that fits what I’m working on!
I’m not sure what style of music you’re making but it’s definitely not unreasonable to pick one or two kicks(presets or samples) and build a whole career out of them. Find what works for your style and use it in everything
I always say use what ya got so I’d stick it out with the digitone. I think starting with the presets is a great idea.
The syntakt has a million kicks in it, for better and for worse.
Yeah I did briefly own a Syntakt and found that scrolling through the many different “machines” felt like preset or sample surfing. I would have preferred one kick drum machine that could be bent and folded 1,000 different ways. I also found the sound engine to be somewhat flabby and mushy in general (hopefully I’m not stirring up controversy by saying this around here).
Upper pitch range is higher and the LFO’s are more accurate, driving them into audio rate sounds better than on OG. Sample reproduction sounds better overall* and having 3 LFO’s gives more sculpting options.
*Spent some more time with it and some samples do not sound good in the higher pitch range. If it’s a smooth waveform it’s okay. A digital saw wave sounds really bad. Hope Elektron improves it.
I used to have the ModBase 09 in my eurorack and overall Jomox still does my favorite kicks right out of the box, but I don’t own any of their products at the moment. Also love the kicks I got from an A4 and even the Model:Cycles. I don’t do techno or any sort of dance music, but I’m still a bit fussy about kicks for whatever reason. My live setup is just a Syntakt/Octatrack and sometimes I add in my EssesnceFM (which does lovely kicks, btw).
I remember cruising through the Syntakt presets once or twice when I first got the machine. Maybe I’ll revisit them at some point, but really I just forget they’re even there. It’s easy enough to build sounds from scratch on the ST, so I just do that and never load or save presets. And Syntakt does pretty darn good kicks
Love my Jomox bass drum eurorack module but it needs compression and distortion so I feed it to Mutant Hot Glue compressor/distortion mixer on my 4u case. Works great! I wonder if the new Jomox Alphabase will have a decent mixer on board with distortion and compression? That is secret to fatten up a kick drum in my experience.
I have the exact opposite problem, I find that the syntakt kicks are toooo hard and punchy and I’m often going out of my way to make them softer and woolier lol
My ultimate kick tool would be a self-contained euro system with:
• Jomox ModBase11
• Stereo sample playback x 2
• Befaco Noise Plethora
• 6-OP digital FM voice
• mixer with EQ per channel and voltage controlled volume and effect send per channel
• Geiger Counter
• Plasma Distortion
