My Love for Elektron and SYNTAKT

[Noizeguerilla]

I just want to express my love for Elektron devices and the Syntakt in general.

Yesterday I received my SYNTAKT, I got it new for 850€ from rockshop.de (EU)which is great because I saved 150€ to the other competitors.

For the last 3 Weeks I was thinking about getting a RYTM MK2 mainly because of the sampling feature, but after hearing about the update OS1.4 I was sold.

I have not been into making music for the last 3 years as my son was born and a car crash, which luckily only cost me a car, but I had to sell around 20.000€ of gear, which was all of the gear I owned and accumulated over 15 years.

But I felt something missing after those 3 years and i found, it was music, sitting down and just tempering with sounddesign and beats, it is a mindstate where I don’t feel hate about the past and missed opportunities and have no fear of the future. I can be me.

My Elektron journey started, I think around 15 years ago, I had an rs7000 as my starting device, which was much too complicated for me being so young and having no experiences.

I had seen Elektron devices on Thomann long before buying them, they didn’t seem appealing to me because it was just a black box, nothing fancy as it seems and me being young and stubborn and not informing myself and not knowing what I am after, I ditched them.

Then one day I bought a used Machinedrum and it was mind opening.
Since then I have owned so so many gear, the most costly being a GRP A4, Elektrons, I even had a syntakt at one point and I didn’t udnerstand it, again.

Now being older and wiser and thinking about the palette and sound I want to make, I got one and after yesterday, I’m again blown away and eye opened.

What first struck me about Elektrons is, they are real heavy, they are robust, they are black.

The next thing, the trigger step locking paramters, no one, NO ONE, comes even close to Elektron when it comes to their sequencers. And for me it’s the strongest buy argument for their gear. And something that really struck me when I had the Rytm, the released their first or second update and suddenly there were more machines to make sound with! Wtf?!!

I was stting there yesterday, playing around, trying all the machines, which are so many! And after finishing 2 hours in, I kissed it goodnight, what an amazing integral holisticaly whole peace of gear. And now it just does sampling, eucledian sequencing, I’m so so so blown away.

It has everything I want, the lovely Analog Drums from the Rytm, the crunchy digital machines from the machinedrum, and samples (loopable! for wavetables) all I could wish for. Enough Synth engines to normally fill several devices.

One of the most memorable moments, was a Tekno party where I played a liveset, octatrack and rytm and other gear (I remember an OP-1 and a pocket-digeridoo). And as the party was coming to an end, people started freestyling with the microphone in front of the big PA System, someone said, can you do a beat for us to freestyle on, and after 30 seconds I was done, hiphop beat was playing, people freestyling while the sun came up. I was there you where there and Elektron was with us.

I just wanted to thank ELEKTRON, just because of all the reasons above and all the musical memories you give us and all the blown minds around the world.

[Noizeguerilla]

Memories: [grid]

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[Noizeguerilla]

After a weekend of jamming around on the SYNTAKT also in conjunction with other gear and trying out the Feedback Loop (Headphones out into the Input of the SYNTAKT). I can say it is everything I want it to be and a little bit more.

I have to add on more point on the list to why I love this gear:

It adds so so much to the gear you already own. Being able to parameter lock MIDI CC Data gives a whole new level of controll over the stuff someone already owns. And the Feedback trick on the Syntakt is just wild for heavy sounding/distorted stuff.

[jdn]

Dude thanks for clueing me in to the feedback trick. Did you have to make sure to pass it through completely wet delay and / or verb like a dub fx loop? Or did it also sound cool as like a feedback distortion? I guess I need to try, just curious what you found that you liked!

[Azzarole]

I enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing! Having an accident and then having to sell everything sounds brutal. Glad to hear you’re back now and ST is there for you!

It’s funny you posted this now btw. I was just thinking yesterday about a scenario like you’ve described, after I’ve disassembled most of my gear to just TV and a few pedals. I assume many of us started hoarding gear partly because these machines used to be more limited, so you needed several pieces to have a wider palette and enough tracks. But with the latest generation of Elektrons (as well as MPCs, Deluge etc.), that one machine can pretty much do everything in a really small box. ST being the standout now amongst Elektron’s lineup, with analog, FM and samples. So I was wondering: if all of your gear was stolen now, would you just buy an ST/TV/DN2 and call it a day? Sounds like the answer for you is yes.

[Noizeguerilla]

@jdn I took the Headphones out - Splitter Cable TRS to 2xTS (L/R) - and put it into an input (which is set to mono via ST menu) [ I have this from a youtube video ] and after that I went to the input section via the MIX-MENU (3/3 menu) and made sure the Input is routed to the FX Block. Thing is it takes the whole Signal (all tracks) and as far as I know there is no way to just send one or not all tracks to the headphone out (as i wanted to take the KICK into the FEEDBACK FX BLOCK LOOP). A workaround would be to use panning … just left or right or both on the panning to isolate tracks, but you sacrifice stereo doing this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E3xOMt_z1s)

[Noizeguerilla]

I think the ST it is my new lonely Island synth (the rytm was it before). And I have no experience with the DTakt2 or Dtone2 or TV … I would really like to add a Digitakt2 so I can sample (and use my huge library that still exists on my harddrive)

[dyskotek]

I recommend you dig deep into Syntakt’s sampling capabilities before looking at another box. Sure, its limited on the surface, but actually pretty darn neatly implemented once you get down and get your hands dirty with it

[Noizeguerilla]

Something I was thinking about, is a case filled with this: (but its just a prototype thinking thing) the digitakt would mainly act as an access possibility to use all the samples I have from old times. And it still needs some refinement and thinking and watching videos, but I’m more than fine with the SYNTAKT for now

[dyskotek]

I myself have a bunch of boxes that sample and can play back samples. Some of them have practically unlimited storage and RAM. Yet, I find there is something wonderfully simple and focusing in the Syntakt’s sample limitations.

Before the 1.40 update, I rarely created my own samples and tweaked them in an audio editor, content to just loading whatever sounds I had on my hard drives (gigs and gigs worth of stuff from all sorts of sources/themes), and then spending ages scrolling through the sample folders… Now? with 1.40 in my Syntakt, I find immense joy in recording, processing and curating samples and chops for it, one by one. In a way, its taking me back to the very beginning of my music making journey, to an age when samplers had very little RAM and you needed to think a bit how to best utilize it for maximum mileage…

I find this process very rewarding, creatively speaking… I also end up using every sample I upload to the box, which I cannot say for any of my other sample boxes

[JohnnyEgo]

@Noizeguerilla

and trying out the Feedback Loop (Headphones out into the Input of the SYNTAKT

wouldn’t it be better to route the mono output into the inputs, because then you can split up the feedback loop and decide which track will be panned into the abyss ^^

[jdn]

You basically just posted a fractal. The larger box you show / dreamed about is all the synthesis and distortion and sequencing of the Syntakt, just elaborated.

As someone who “started over” with just a Syntakt last year, I added an analog heat into the mix to use as a looper to do 4 beat transitions using the delay at 100 feedback, and then I could do a whole “DJ set” just from the Syntakt. Having a compressor, saturation, a highpass filter, and the EQ lets me be expressive with the mix on the fly. In other words, I use it like a one input DJ mixer with a hacky short looper.

I recently considered adding a Digitakt into the mix for the thought “oh I need samples” … but caution re: getting too big. Having the patterns in sync, song mode across two machines or more, backing all that up, and running out of hands, not to mention knobs on my midi controllers for CC 1 and CC 2 modulation setups …

That’s the beauty of the Syntakt. It’s all there.
But you have it sounds like a library of old material you’d like to play as samples. The 64 slots and 5 second sample length limit makes the Syntakt good for one hits, short chord stabs, and ROMpler style oscillator waveforms.

Thanks for the tips on the feedback, the mono panning trick to just get a kick is an interesting workaround. You could also resample: make your l feedback kick or whatever sound, sample it on a computer or whatever, and load that into the ST as a sample for Twinshot.

Dave Mech’s tutorials are amazing to get a feel for the Syntakt use, and Jan Cook has some smoking YouTube videos on writing hypnotic techno in it.

[Noizeguerilla]

@JohnnyEgo ouuuu I didn’t think about that. JEP great idea.

[Noizeguerilla]

@dyskotek you are absolutely right! That’s the point why I dropped working in Ableton, because the sheer unlimitedness was putting me in a state of decision/possibility paralysis. I was sitting a night and hearing thorugh my samples what to use and what to get the most use out of! You are absolutely right.

[Noizeguerilla]

@jdn ohh, the looping thing works on the heat+fx unit? I used this a lot on the octatrack back in the days to get a kind of “looping” / stutter fx. That’s really really nice! And look what @JohnnyEgo thought about, using the mono out on the syntakt to feedback into the in (instead of the headphone Y splitter) and use the headphone out out as a main-out.

[Noizeguerilla]

@jdn and about the fractal thing, jeah, it’s just my old (shiny toy) mind messing about other stuff I don’t have. And the fact that I built this app last week where I can live out my “shiny things” mind and connect everything and get an idea of it.(https://studio-planner.base44.app/) But something I really want again is the Sherman Filterbank, as I’m looking for Kicks that are like those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhS3KsH4KIc and I think I won’t get past a Sherman Filterbank for that…

[JohnnyEgo]

@Noizeguerilla

ohh, the looping thing works on the heat+fx unit

this works also on the ST and the open-loop behavior before the FX track makes it even possible to re-arrange the loop buffer because you can apply ratcheting, gating trigs, lfos and such. that means you can play in your acoustic piano (in time with a metronome), lower the delay input so the buffer is being a closed loop which ideally keeps looping forever and can be now trigged rhythmically with the rest of the machine.

[Noizeguerilla]

@JohnnyEgo thanks, that’s on my to-try list for tonight!!! Lovely!

[jdn]

@JohnnyEgo - Mind blown. How do you retrigger the delay in that closed-loop feedback scenario?

[JohnnyEgo]

@jdn

How do you retrigger the delay in that closed-loop feedback scenario?

basically you can‘t. you need to see it like a free open buffer machine which can be re-shaped into rhythmic content by chopping it with trigs on the FX track, therefore handling the incoming Audio from the looping delay buffer.

you can add of course anything into the open loop by simply sending a portion into it or by itself, basically any changes to the delay parameters do get soaked into it, if you’re gentle with the amount of modulation you can create endless amounts of different loops, Eurorack processing loves this behavior 🪏