M8 Tracker

hell yeah, loop selection is so nice to fine tune one little part of a phrase. remember elektron before trig+yes? “just hit rec+play and send it”

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That’s nuts. I can’t even find what that error is trying to say in regard to Ty Uploader.
Could the Ty install be corrupt? Are you able to install a newer version of Ty Uploader and try flashing different firmware to the Teensy? If that works it might be something with the headless firmware.
Oh - and you’re downloading the headless firmware that weird way listed in the Git instructions?

Got another compilation of M8 music, this one based loosely around Dungeon Synth:

Some usual-suspect Elektronauts on the comp, including @JackiesFridge and the dark adventure through “The Ossuary”

@solmare and late-PS1 jungle/dnb dungeon battle “FMEGA”

And my sad spooky melodic “Banshee of Asphodel Keep”

More about the comp

On this comp, we let people decide what “Dungeon Synth” meant.

Some went fairly traditional (Cavern of Heresy’s “Living under the shadow of Anaagoch,” Snail Gossip’s “Envious Trees,” gon pulvo’s “ternary pact,” atalhlla’s “Stormspawn,” and my own track).

Some brought a dungeon flavor to other genres (Barrett’s downtempo “SynthDungeon,” P4NTL3R’s neo-classical-with-bass-wobbles “Skagastoltin,” ddmm64’s chiptune “the dungeon was my soul,” solmare’s late-90s jungle/dnb “FMEGA,” and octopod’s melancholy hip hop-flavored “Falling”).

Many leaned into the TTRPG-ness of it all (Metro Grade Beats’ “Arachacha,” Distropolis’ generative “Tall Tales By the Fire,” ineffable-twaddle’s “One-Page Dungeon Synth,” glitchpop’s pitch-warping “Prismatic Polysloth,” MRDRCAT’s “The Ossuary,” jegasus’ “Bog Boy Barf”)

I’m kinda doing a hard sell here, but 1) It’s always free to listen/download 2) I’m really proud of how the crew came together on this one

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Model 02 made me want to revisit Model 01

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Anyone pair the M8 with Roland’s MC-101? I’m thinking it might be a good pairing to have MC-101 add some tracks with Roland traditional sounds, even if it’s to just add build some drum/synth sequences to sample into M8 on the go. Also, MC-101 could double up as a scale-locked MIDI controller to M8. Too bad MC-101 doesn’t have an Audio In, otherwise could also use Roland’s FX, scatter. Packing for a trip, initially was thinking just an M8, but now I’m going to grab both.

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I use my mc 101, the same way as you describe. But mostly stand alone as a sketch pad and record the midi in the m8. Also the full sound design options are nice to have on the 101 and that random patch generator is also a good way to get the inspiration going. I learned the effects per track, send effects and master effects last week, it opened up so much more.

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Well, here we go. Going for a 2 week trip to Europe, and got an entire studio packaged into a small bag which takes just 9x7x5 inch space in my carry on backpack. M8 Model 1, MC-101, & Zoom H1essential, and audio, MIDI, and USB cables to get it all connected and powered up. Even if I don’t finish any tracks, I will have a fun time exploring M8 along with its complimentary friends.

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The community jam did a listening party + artist commentary stream of the most recent compilation (#20: Dungeon Synth):

I did screw up the video due to changing program focus in OBS confusion, so you’re mostly seeing the top left corner of my desktop instead of the full m8.run screen, but audio is fully captured

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From the Discord:

M8 Meet-up this coming Saturday July 6th - Firmware Version 4.0 beta release party. Check the event listing here for more information and hit that interested button:

Discord

Joiiiin us. Let’s hit that threshold of too many users. Version 4 features will be announced at the meet-up in realtime… It is significant enough to skip past version 3.x :wink:

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Any heads-up about what’s in this new FW? :stuck_out_tongue:

wow - wonder what’s coming in V4.

Nope, nothing revealed until the meet up.

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I had an M8 mk1, would like to buy a mk2 (it fixes all my minor gripes with the mk1)
but it seems next to impossible to buy unless you’re dedicated to tracking when a window opens for ordering and get there before they sell out (especially for someone who doesn’t use discord).

I commend @trash80 for scaling really responsibly, it’s hard to stay reasonable and responsible in the face of so much of a product success.

That said, watching this thread and seeing new firmware dropping soon, I wish it was at least a little bit easier to get hands on one. Even if I could order and get in line that would be nice, but I constantly get pushed back because i’m not there at X:XX o’clock on a specific day. I would have ordered right at the announcement of MKII and i’d probably have one by now. :man_shrugging:

just a minor gripe, maybe some day things will align! The M8 is truly awesome.

Seems like a pretty solid strategy would be:

  • sign up to the mailing list or check in on this thread once a week
  • when the next drop is announced (usually weeks in advance), set a calendar alert
  • when the alert goes off, go to the store page and place an order within 24 hours.

That doesn’t feel particularly onerous to me, personally. But if it’s more work than you feel the M8 is worth, that’s reasonable. We all value things differently.

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Pretty sure I’m on the mailing list and have been since the pre-announcement of M8 and the only way I’ve found out about recent pre-sale rounds is through here. Don’t even know why there’s a mailing list to sign up to at this point, as the last mailout I got was in 2021. It’s possible I unsubbed, but no memory of having done so. It’s all discord discord discord. Might as well just be a Facebonk page considering how much use discord is to people like me.

There was an email that went out to the list on May 10th about the June 10th preorder. If you didn’t get it, check that you’re actually subscribed and then check to make sure whatever spam filter you use has an exception for dirtywave missives.

The post here that announced the june preorder actually referenced this email as its source, not the discord. And, anecdotally, I’m never on the discord and managed to get an :02 without issue. So while the discord group is very active and a fine source of information, it doesn’t seem to be exclusive.

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I expect my address wasn’t migrated over when the whole project became more official. Last e-mail I got was from a gmail address. The ‘manage subscription’ link in it is busted. Nice to know I’ve been missing out. No doubt if I had been on the discord I would have known about this issue years ago.

I could have gotten one too when I saw the info on here about the last round, I just hate feeling pressured into spending money on someone else’s schedule. Pretty wack way of selling shit TBH and I’m not down with it.

Wonder if any of you fine folks can share some wisdom re: gain staging on the M8.

Lately I’ve been trying to focus on adding new ideas to a single project rather than starting a new project, so my Song Mode grid is filling up with various ideas and clusters of song-like concepts. All is going well. But as I play back my creations and mix/match parts from one idea with another, I’m finding that I end up with inconsistent levels.

I tend to address volume issues at the Instrument level first — playing with the Dry level, clipping the signal for flavor/character but also to add volume, incorporating the effects sends. I like to use Velocity for more dynamic programming within a phrase, and I almost never touch the Track level in Mixer view (because each Track contains lots of patterns at this point and it wouldn’t make sense to adjust them all at once if I’m only trying to adjust the level on a particular pattern).

So I end up doing a lot of jumping around between specific phrases and specific instruments, making small tweaks to get specific parts to fit in the mix, but it feels like this is a pretty inefficient way to work. I feel like I should be making better use of FX — either to adjust Instrument parameters related to volume, or to set the overall Track volume — and also suspect there’s a more logical/consistent approach I could be using in general to help keep levels even as I work.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Maybe it’s just a matter of being more careful and catching volume issues early so I’m not working on correcting things after the fact? Maybe there’s a magical workflow tip that will make things easier?

Thanks for any help — I love you, M8.

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Are you playing with headphones or monitors?
I find it harder to play at consistent levels with headphones.
But yeah, I think you should not rely on the master level to bss as lance your sound, it should get tamed before hitting the final stage…
Maybe just balance the instrument volume on each track?

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It only takes a couple of minutes to sign up for Discord and then you can get alerts sent to your phone.

I resisted it for years, but signed up to get stock alerts during the pandemic, when computer hardware was scarce and selling out right away, to be scalped at ridiculous prices - and Discord made it really easy to buy what I was looking for without stressing about it.

There are some pretty nice communities on there too.

That’s fair, but it is a small company that produces these in small batches that sell out very quickly.

I actually ordered an original M8 last year and cancelled it, as I felt like I had been pressured to buy one just because they were available.
What swayed my decision was that I had broken my rule of only buying portable devices that use USB-C from now on.

Every few months after that, I’d think to myself “I wish I had just kept the order.”
But it’s paid off now that the model 02 is here.

This time around, I had set money aside for it and was waiting for the next batch to be available - rather than feeling like I had been ‘pressured’ into making a big purchase out of the blue.

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