Monomachine Love Thread

My love story with her is complex… :smile_cat:

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I may or may not have been using ‘cross mod’ accurately. It was just another way of saying LFOing the LFOs :wink:

But speaking of Buchlafying: earlier this year I gad mad gear-lust for some of the Ciat-Lonbarde stuff which is way out in that west-coast synthesis vein. In particular, I had my eyes on the Plumbutter 2 and watched way too many YouTube videos about the thing. But then one day I tripped over a video about using the Monomachine’s Arp with the BBOX drums machine and started experimenting with that and LFOs and bang! Pretty much eliminated my ‘crazy expensive psuedo-drum-machine’ lust.

I have some other patterns with the VO synth just whispering creepily away while a simple GND-SIN plays basic tones, but with an LFO randomizing the pitch on each trig. It’s another Buchla-esque west-coast synth generative bleeps’n’bloops kind of thing that I can just disappear into, using just a pair of MM tracks.

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Is this the ‘New Elektron Box 2016’ topic? :heart_eyes:

Just a hint: experimenting is the main bit. Load one kit onto another, reshape a bit - that is one of my weird techniques…

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This made me discover the SID arp, and how arp may be thought of as a subsequencer within the sequencer :smiley_cat:

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Indeed! I also love to have my ARPs pre-configured and just activate / change them on the go!

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There is so much I love about the monomachine. Its so unique… and it also made the biggest bassline I’ve ever recorded, on my track “Ratatat.”

When we tested that track on the big system, it was a jaw dropper. MNM FOREVA.

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:elmm: arp and chill.

It’s what I ended up doing late last night. Just sitting on the couch, letting the SID arp play a SID machine and I’d just let it run. I did that a lot when I was playing with the arp’d drums. It’s easy to just zone out on that thing.

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It’s such a shame I haven’t filmed that demo - I remember that sometimes hitting ‘pause’ and leaving the current machines playing to oscillate, could be fun! There is another interesting trick to do - you can play notes, using the trig buttons while the sequencer is running…

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OOOOh, very nice, this…
I only recently bought a Monomachine and have just started discovering things. This I gotta try…

Thought you meant that, thanks for the reply

Yeh, the sine is almost the nicest sine I have ever heard
Just so pure and full, I love just using it to be a kind of buchla easel
The srr is the timbre
Arp on Sid the easel keys
Hp and filters low pass gate
Lfos modular patching
Delay the spring reverb
Also run the sine into the reverb on the next track and set another delay time and filters

Here’s a trick for you all:
Program a bunch of plocks with any machine
Run sequencer
Wait until you hear a sound you like
Mute track and lock that sound
Now the sound is locked in , frozen in memory I think
On mute play the keys
Stop seq
If you like the locked sound
Then clear the track
Unmute and record in the sound
Alternatively You can have 64 steps of sounds - if you are quick ha
You can stop each sound and just play them by hand
Run the seq, to the next sound and freeze the next sound
In theory that’s a load of extra tracks
Pretty similar to the cntrl all on the md

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lfo controlling lfos is so great

mnm always gives me the most memorable sounds

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That’s straight-up Autechre level man, dig it!

So how do you hook up the OP-1 with the MnM? Do you use a Kenton or iConnect? Thanks! I too just fell in love again with the MnM, so unique.!

I use TE’s Oplab, which finally got a firmware update last year that made it a bit more stable and added a couple of modes. But any USB-Midi host should work.

I just reaquired a Monomachine. He first time I had one, I got really stingy with the voices, and processed the audio only through my A4 or OT or at best tried to emulate a spring reverb with the delay.

But I just recently tried playing around with the reverb and wow! The things you can do with those effects you can basically use the effects like a completely new voice! delay srr filter and LFOs on it? Pan that effect to a different spot from the source?! Brilliant!

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SRR + cranking up the resonance on filter gives interesting results.

I also like very much a touch of LFO on portamento and lots of other stuff (such as changing MULT or WAVE of LFO with another LFO).

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Oooh! LFO on port! I hadn’t thought of that! Thanks!

The LFO capabilities of the :elmm: continue to make me love it more and more. I just added Octatrack to my lineup and there’s a lot of niceties it can do in LFO (esp with the designer), but you can only P-Lock the depth and speed on the :elot:. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of P-Locking the LFO’s destinations and waves and everything.

I continue to love the :elmm:. Now I have it generating dusty BBC radiophonic workshop sounds (or at least such sounds as imagined by 90s artists such as Turn On and Broadcast) that warble and crackle and hiss; and then the VO synth comes in and starts singing sadly in the distance before turning into an ominous hissing whisper. :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

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Need to stop reading this thread. Maybe if monomachines ever drop back to the £600 range I’ll grab one!

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