So there is one very specific feature that I want in a drum machine, and I think that the machine drum can do it but I am not sure, so I wonder if the experts here could weigh in. Basically what I want is for one drum track to have an envelope controlling some aspect of another drum track. For instance have a hi hat whose decay shortens when the kick drum hits. I know that the LFOs are freely assignable. Can you set up the LFO like an envelope, triggered by one track, and effecting another track? Looking at the manual it seems like there is no one shot LFO mode like on the other elektron devices. What do y’all think?
I’m new to the MD too and don’t have it in front of me… but if it doesn’t do one-shot mode, can’t you just have the LFO retriggered with note on, with a downward ramp shape that you then assign to another track? Seems that could work.
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That is also pretty easy to do with plain ol’ parameter-locking.
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Yes, but I want my drums to react to each other dynamically, with the ability for me to perform new drum rythms off the cuff, and still maintain all the drums interacting with each other. I love what you can do with elektrons but I don’t love always having to think three steps ahead with plocking and what steps to plock, etc, when I just want to duck a track with the bass drum.
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I would try the first suggestion then 
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I don’t actually have one, but am considering it, and this functionality is a pretty significant reason why.
i think the simple answer is yes you can do that, i will often used unused channels lfo’s to mess with more important sounds for instance
-the trigger mode in the lfo is a one shot for certain envelopes, hold is s/h and works well with random lfo to add humanizing/random automations
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You could also use the trig grouping to trig a shorter hat track from the kick, but it would hit every time you played that kick track, so depends if that’s what you’d want or not. You have 16 tracks to play with so you can easily double up certain sounds to make trig groups without running out of space.
Or you could have the kick trig an unused track and route that track’s LFO to the hat, that’s if you needed the kick track to keep its own LFO for some reason. I think that would work.
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There is an audio input trigger that would allow that I think.
(kick would trigger default hihat decay setting, or a Neighbor machine)
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I think with the input machine and envelope follower something like that could be achieved.
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You could actually. You’d need the unofficial firmware x.04 onwards I guess.
You would use a NFX-CO (compressor) on let’s say track 3 and let track 1 (for ex. kick) sidechain compress a neighbour track 2. You could also use assign individual outs to one of 2 input machines and do the same with triggers as mentioned above. Also possible with an envelope follower, but then it’s not one track that triggers the ducking for the other.
The Machinedrum is a very powerful machine with all the firmware updates. But be mindful, it’s a difficult beast to tame. And I’m not talking about complexity, but about it’s quirks, like midi jitter and freezes due to its old age.
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Wait, I thought the LFOs could be routed to any track, and there’d be no need to play with envelope followers, input routing etc., and the kick could have a one-shot LFO assigned to hihat decay?
edit: read the post properly this time haha. Forgot that it doesn’t have a one-shot LFO
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You definitely can do exactly what OP is proposing. Use a oneshot LFO from one track to change a parameter on another track. No shenanigans needed.
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Yep this is very possible. One track’s LFO can control another track, and it can be set to one-shot mode so it acts as an envelope.
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Yep.
The issue is that it doesn’t have a ONCE mode.
Ah, just checked and so it doesn’t. You get regular, s+h, and trig. But I believe there are a few LFO shapes that have hard-wired one-shot behavior (and the X firmware added a few).
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Yes this is correct, I think they’re the exponential and ramp waveforms but it is mentioned in the manual if someone wants to check.