How I’d use it
When it comes to synths, I mostly just jam at home in a completely DAWless setup. Just my hands, feet, and synths, bobbing my head out in the shed. I’ll use sequencers time to time but not in any complicated way… I usually just have my left hand on bass/backing whatever/pads etc, and right hand on leads. Between playing those, I keep a drum machine going, and manage to do filter sweeps, timbral changes, or anything else that I can manage.
What I’m wanting to upgrade from:
Home country setup: ARP Odyssey paired w/ Kimball combo organ. Organ has a nostalgic transistor drum machine that can combine beats just like vintage Ace-Tone/Roland drum machines. Sadly, I don’t expect to keep this cheapo organ all my life, so I want to have something that could at least somewhat bring me the same simplistic joys it has to offer.
Setup that’s with me: Prophet REV2 and Volca Beats… -the Volca’s 16 steps is exceedingly limited and I’m desperate for more variation and better sound quality. Volca Sample’s “song mode” wouldn’t cut it for me.
What I definitely know I want:
the ability to use my own samples. I’m very eager to go out with my Zoom H5, come back home, and utilize found sounds in creating a beat. Actually being able to sample on the hardware itself isn’t a big deal to me. I don’t mind using my laptop for that as long as it works.
I’m not sure if it would be possible or not but I’d love to make samples of my Kimball organ’s drum machine, so I could keep those warm cheesy beats forever.
straightforwardness and immediacy, but also something I can grow on. knob-per-function is important.
Something that can be left alone a bit during performance but still give me some variation. My hands are pretty occupied already when I jam.
Thanks all… Hope you didn’t mind my long noob post
The Model Samples is immediate and fun and would probably suit you. But it also sounds like Digitakt might be a nice buy also. No knob per function, but you could certainly grow into it as you say. Just be aware both are mono in terms of the samples themselves, so your fields will come in as such. But either is perfect for beat driven stuff.
the short answer is probably yes!
I think the simplicity and immediacy of the m:s is brilliant - it’s one of those machines that just loves to be played with. Whatever you load up you will find you can create great and original beats quite quickly. Loading your old samples is obviously great too - I’m sure you could preserve your Kimball and then develop it.
For hands on experience I think the model:samples is great and as it’s a sampler the versatility is endless. Of course the modification possibilities are less than other machines, but if you modify offline and then re-upload you can go along way!
Whatever you decide, definitely sample that Kimbal Organ and the Odyssey.
Welcome to the community!
Digitakt was my first Elektron device. I cant recommend it enough. its awesome.
You can sample directly into it. You can resample itself.
It can do all the things you want it to do. Not knob per function, but the user interface is very fast and intuitive. Its very easy to get around, and very easy to sample on.
Ok very cool… Since I’m a noob, I wanna ask how you would generally go about sampling that Kimball. Would you record it, and make every sound in the beat a separate sample? or would you record each possible beat and cut the sample at the point the pattern turns around so you could just repeat it and make a loop?
now that I type that, I’m gonna assume the latter is the way it would normally be done, right?
edit: and thanks for the welcome! seems like a good community. The site seems very streamlined. I’m impressed.
Thanks for the helpful response. I’m a little fuzzy one what you mean by poly midi sequencing. When you say poly midi sequencing, do you mean it can sequence multiple devices at once with different patterns each? I’m rather new to the various setups folks can have with this stuff
thanks! That’s the drift I’m feeling about the M:S. but then i hear about the Digitakt having XYZ more features etc, and I wonder “is it worth the extra money, long term?” -hard to know at this point. but just hearing what you are saying, it really echoes my thoughts that the Samples is a great choice more suited for what I want.
Just out of curiosity… when sampling the Kimball, would you record each pattern of the Kimball’s drum machine and cut them at “loopable” points? or is there a better way to do it? I imagined sampling each and every sound but that sounds really intense
They can both sequence multiple devices with different patterns
The M:S can sequence up to 6 midi tracks. But each midi track “steals” a sample track. And each midi track can only send one note per trig. (monophonic).
The DT has 8 dedicated midi tracks - so it doesn’t “steal” any sample tracks. And on each track can send up to 4 notes per trig (so polyphonic)
I would just grab a loop of the pattern. then you can edit the sample and lock different start points into the sequencer. sampling the individual notes from the drum machine is totally do-able as well and worth it. you can also just sort of chop the loop down into separate samples. its fun.
I cant speak for the M:S, i have never used it and im not really trying to sell you one way or the other. I know that people speak highly of it. Either way youre in for a treat. wrapping your brain around these machines and making music with them is really fun.
As far a variations go without having to be there manually tweaking things, it’s perfectly possible on both M:S and DT, so no worries there. You can set as many conditional trigs as you wish, so that (for example) some drum hits only happen a certain percentage of the time, or only on the fourth repetition of the pattern, and so on. It’s great!
Ok cool… that’s helpful to know. Ive had my choices boiled down to DT and MS for while now and it’s a little hard to see which one is best. It helps to see both have this feature down pat.
I would start with the Model and if you need more step up to the Digitakt. If you are new to Elektron all the other devices besides the Models have quite the learning curve.
man… living in South Korea is no good for getting any good deals. Shipping costs, import costs, lack of a used market for them here… I’ll have to wait until next year when I’m back home to make a purchase. Thanks everyone for the solid advice!
