Thanks! I re-read the manual’s tutorial on RAM machines carefully and followed it, and it ended up being really clear and everything started clicking for me. Spent a few hours getting fluent in setting up and manipulating everything on the fly, and preparing kits that I can load up.
In case it’s useful for anyone else, here’s some notes on what I’m doing:
-Setting up one internal looper: R1 device on a track, P1 device on the next track. R1 trig on the first step in the pattern. P1 trig after that, and I can set up multiple P1 trigs on the fly if desired to achieve rhythms. On R1, MLEV is set to 0 (this is sampling the internal sounds of the Machinedrum) and ILEV is all the way down (we don’t want any external sampling here). CUE1 can be turned up if I want the R1 device to play back the internal sounds as they’re coming in.
-Setting up two external loopers (this is where the meat of my setup is): R2 device on a track, P2 device on the next track. Same deal with R3 and P3. R trig on the first step in the pattern, P trigs after that, with multiple P trigs set up on the fly if desired. On R2/3, MLEV is all the way down (we don’t want internal sampling here), and ILEV is all the way up (we want external audio sounds to come in nice and loud). CUE2 can be turned up if I want the R device to play back the external audio signal as it comes in.
-Performing: Hit play and start playing external synths and creating melodies/drone/noise/fx/what-have-you. If you can MIDI sync external synths to the Machinedrum, great. If not, no worries, as you’re playing and tweaking things on the fly everything will cohere to the tempo, more likely than not, if you’re paying attention to the overarching rhythm you’re building. Introduce some Machinedrum kicks to get some beat structure if you like. Add snare, hi-hats, etc if you want for full-on beats, or just stick to beatless phantom rhythms if you prefer.
-At some points, you may want to cancel one of the R trigs so you’re not recording anymore. The associated P trigs will continue to play the last thing in the pattern you recorded up until you canceled the trig. Now you just have that looping melody, which is very rythmic. You can parameter lock P trigs, change the filter, pitch, retrigs, LFO, distortion - whatever you like. Bring the R trig back in when you want to get back to recording. If you have the CUE turned up, then you should start hear your input signal again.
-R machines can have their effects and routing messed around with too, not just P machines. If an R machine and P machine are playing the same thing, it sounds cool to have different filters and filter modulation on them. Introduces thickness/doubling of what you’re playing in interesting ways.
-Optional: set up a CTRL-ALL machine on a track for global mangling on all machines.
It’s really a very versatile looper device! This works for my needs more than any other options I was looking at, and is certainly more customizable. Pretty happy.
