Like most of us i was getting my knickers in a twist pre & post Model Cycles announcement.
After the demos appeared i found myself firmly in the camp of not liking what i was hearing. But i still wanted one. Why?
To quote @avantronica "i love tweaking and sound design and depth - but immediacy trumps all of that - playability live is key, being a guitar player it’s what i am used to - too much depth and it’s too easy to get lost - the magic is in setting the right amount of power with minimal parameters’
I continued reading all the related M:C posts, trying to convince myself that i’d make it my own. That the the above criteria was right for me. Back to the demos…felt deflated again. 10 mins later…i want one! Oh dear!
Anyway, just seeing new M:C posts pop up had my head in a confused spin.
So i decided to Mute the threads & i’m really surprised at the result. No exaggeration to say that i’m completely over the desire for one. Listening to demos alone doesn’t trigger GAS, as i’m not into the sonics. It was the discussion that was fuelling GAS.
Simply wanted to mention this as it might help someone else balance their own GAS urges.
This is so real. Whether with music gear or other stuff, the amount of times I’ve got myself really hyped for a thing based on others’ excitement only to realise ‘wait… I don’t actually like (or even care about!) this thing!’
Y’all try some meditation. It s really eye opening once you start seeing how your brain is firing thoughts, desires, cravings, emotions etc at you constantly. When you do it becomes easier to let them pass without getting entangled.
not trying to be negative, but when i see about all the gear related-threads and pictures that are posted here i can’t help but think that this forum is a huge self generated ad that i enjoy swimming in
It’s kind of genius
You’re not wrong. The funny thing is when somebody says something negative about the limitations of the M:C you get a bunch of people chiming in saying “so and so made this amazing music using insert limited gear here”. What they probably mean is you’re using the limitations as an excuse for your lack of talent or imagination, whereas what I’m hearing is don’t bother getting this because you should be able to make great music without it!
It can be said, one persons limitations is another persons possibilities. I guess it just depends on what angle you approach the instrument. I’ve been guilty of blaming gear in the past for my poor production skills. Now I find myself more open to possibilities and not let limitations get me bent.
In relation to this thread I agree self censorship is very wise. Who needs to fill their head with gas when there’s music to be made! Again count me guilty!
I’ve also been watching videos of the MC being like “it does sound nice”
But there’s been one thing that keeps me away from the Model series(the same reason that everyone likes it)
I’m not a person that gets their enjoyment from making tracks, or music for that point.
On Ess’s presentation, he offhandedly mentioned how the snare was very tonal, and everyone laughed like it was a joke “Which is good for music”. And it wasn’t a joke, I think, I saw exactly where he was coming from.
Songs/music is boring for me, I get my enjoyment exploring even if that means my tracks are spare(and not good).
But the GAS is real, I’ve been looking at those Zoia’s, even though it doesn’t jive with my setup and would in more ways than one be a hassle.
Still find myself shaking off the MC desires- marketing really does an excellent job of burrowing into your brain
I’m swimming in too much gear at the moment. So when I got excited about the Model:Cycles due to the huge buzz and positive reception it received, you know what I did? Went right to my Digitone and got to work. Their DNA is so similar that why would I need the M:C? I know there can be many arguments made for why I would, but why not just go deeper with my Digitone. Many are talking about the M:C distortion, well maybe I just need to try and work more on the DN master overdrive or see if I can internally clip the unit. Many love the Retrig feature, guess I’ll have to duplicate patches in the sound pool with different arp settings on the Digitone. Just say no to gas
The challenge on this forum is just how many posts there are to mute. I’ve muted about 75% of the categories in hopes to simplify and it is still overload. Thankfully I don’t feel a ton of interest in any other Elektron stuff than what I have right now, but muting is definitely a good approach to just filtering out whatever noise there is on these forums that doesn’t interest the reader.
Pretty sure 80-90 precent of peeps here, don’t really NEED a M:C.
Like if I was starting out and skink, M:C and M:S would absolutely be my jam. In fact if they were available when I first started getting into Elektron gear I would of likely gone down that route.
But there is way too much overlap with my current rig to need even seriously contemplate them.
Maybe that is a lesson learnt by buying and selling gear previously, but hey, the resale market for music technology is quite strong.
Right now I am moving house and all my gear is packed up so I doing some research on something that can streamline my workflow. Desk space, cash, what a unit adds to help me moving forward are all key considerations.
There are hundreds of Ableton Live guys making decent tracks (many on on youtube with tens of thousands of subscribers) without a single hardware synth. We all have a copy of live lite at least.
All my somewhat finished tracks done in live (or FastTracker2, haha), not a single hardware.
My favourite synth-heavy movie scores could have been done with one analog four, which I have.
Say it with me: "No, I don’t need more.
I need break from the promos/reviews.
I need a run and I need to sit down and turn the boxes on I have already."
I like the muted feature too and use it a lot in Slack for specific channels. On the Cycles, I’m just not a fan of the way Model Cycles sounds no matter how many times I hear how you can tweak it. And I also don’t like the Models hard plastic form factor. To each his own.
I went the complete opposite direction and loaded my iPad up with a few apps to de-GAS for awhile. I have a limited setup as it
is so toying around with Ableton, iPad and KeyStep will keep me occupied while I learn how to sync, link and route the apps. Kinda wish Elektron had an sequencer app I could play with so I could experience the workflow from a Probability perspective. Current apps I’m messing around with are: Korg Gadget 2, Beatmaker 3, Pure Acid, Synth One, GarageBand, and Touchable Pro (which is the bomb if you don’t have a Push).
I like the idea of buying things that nobody else wants and then making a great track out of the junk you bought… Sort of puts gearheads to shame. Ive yet to do it however
This is exactly was I was doing after watching the first M:C video. The DN is such a nice machine for programming drums and percussion (a bit of random trig LFO on wave shape, mod intensity/decay or amp decay, velocity to feedback, filter resonance or distortion, arp on and off you go). So many possibilities
