I figured out a good way to do microtiming on the Machinedrum. It is a little bit more complicated than regular use, but most of it is just an adjustment in your way of thinking and it turns out it’s not bad way of working at all. I’m making this post mainly because I want to fast-track it solidifying in my mind, but I’ll be happy if it’s useful to others.
(I realize all this is probably obvious to people who already know the basic trick and have done stuff within that framework but for me the new workflow it implies and the tradeoffs of that are not immediately obvious so the details are worth writing down, in my opinion.)
Here’s the process:
- Whatever tempo you want for your beat/song, set it to double that. (so if you want 115, set it to 230)
- Create a new kit
- (Optional) Go through and clear out all the swing patterns - and enable per-track swing mode if you like
- (Optional) Set swing to 75%
- Set the scale speed to 2x and length to 64
- Now one page = 1 quarter note. If you are willing to devote the swing function to it, you can have a resolution of 32 microsteps per quarter note. Otherwise, it’s 16, which is probably adequate 9 times out of 10.
- (Optional) If for some reason you want a trig to be just a teensy bit later, you can, by entering Swing mode and lighting that trig.
- If you want a longer beat than 4 quarter notes, first decide how long you want it to be and, (before or after recording anything depending on your preference,) copy/paste the pattern out to that many patterns (remember 1 pattern = 1 bar)
- Now enter song mode and create the appropriate loop. Don’t forget to save!
- Workflow at this point: Navigate the rows of the song to go to the bar you want to edit step-by-step. Think of the Page button as stepping through each quarter note within a bar. Recording live is intuitive, just do it the normal way. If you want to zero in on a bar without stopping the sequencer, toggle to Pattern mode, then to hear the whole thing toggle back to Song. In a way, this way of working using Song mode is an advantage as normally you have to wait for the whole pattern to go around. A disadvantage is it’s awkward to try to edit steps while the entire loop is playing, as the trigs will change on you as it goes through the patterns. You just have to either adapt or give that up and use the Pattern/Song toggling method.
