Monomachine DigiPRO Chord Banks [DOWNLOAD]

Elektron Gear Monomachine
#1

Hello all, building on @lucianon’s original Single Cycle Chord generator, I’ve created a set of DigiPRO waveform banks that yield chord machine like functionality similar to that of the Model:Cycles using only 1 track on the Monomachine. This means you not only have quick access to a large list of complex & interesting chords without having to input notes manually, but also higher polyphony than normally possible from a single MnM track, an idea originally explored by @Veets in this video.

These banks can lead to a lot of very interesting sounds & happy accidents that the MnM isn’t originally capable of. Due to how the DigiPRO machines work, some of chord types get their pitch adjusted such that the single cycled loaded on the MnM is played relative to middle So really none of the chords besides the major chords correspond to their pitch input. But this leads to other oddities that I think are really interesting. For example the minor chord input as a C note is played back as E minor. So all of the chords so far are just named with their harmonic information, for the user to figure out their root note by ear.

Download the 24 Bank Sysex Pack

The packs are separated into two variants:
Inversions Pack: This pack focuses on fewer chords types, but includes all of their inversions for the most part. Yields the most flexibility from a tradition music composition perspective, but with less direct options for polyphony & extended chords.
Extension Pack: This pack focuses on more chords of 5+ notes (extended chords) but offers fewer inversions per chord. This is narrows options for chord variations, but increases the polyphony of each chord and allows for larger, more jazzy & deep sounding chords. These were maticulously hand picked by myself for maximum coolness.

Each set of 12 banks in the 2 packs all have the same chord contents & mapping, with their differences being the wave type (sine, saw, etc). This means you can hotswap them on the fly to change their tambre and maintain any programmed chord progression. The names of each .syx bank in the zip below are my suggested naming for each bank using the 8 character limit of the banks on the Monomachine. You unfortunately have to name all 24 banks by hand if you plan on using them this way on a +Drive unit.

A quick step by step guide to using these packs:

  1. Using a compatible Sysex transfer tool (C6, SysexLibrarian, etc.) transfer a pack of chords to a regular Monomachine SFX-60 MKII or a Digibank on a +Drive unit
  2. Load either a DDRW or DENS DigiPRO machine onto a desired Monomachine track
  3. (Optional but suggested) Pitch the track down -36 semi tones in the Transpose menu to match the relative octave of the chords to the Monomachines keyboard input. This makes composing while switching between multiple tracks much easier. Due to limitations of the Monomachine, you cannot play the chord tones lower than the “3” octave page, but this is thankfully low enough for most regular chord sequencing needs.

Lastly, here is the full GitHub with the latest revision of the code if you’d like to generate them yourself or tinker with my code:

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Single-Cycle Chords
Cycle Chord Pack
#2

had a glitch when importing and it froze after 652 when writing, but the waves before that were fine.
could try again, as may have been import issue.

in terms of the waveforms, sound great, not sure if the octaves are right though, to get low end i had to transpose down from C0 (great that the mono allows this!).

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#3

Yeah you have to transpose the track you import them into down 12 steps to get the most out of the banks, it’s an unfortunate limitation of including minor chords. Thanks for testing them! And let me know if you have any ideas on how to order/generate the chords

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#4

no tips except: go microtonal, non western bizzaro to my ears, or at least 24 48 tet stuff

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#5

Unfortunately microtonal will not be possible due to how just intonation works haha. You can barely fit a Minor 11th chord in 2 cycles. If you do want to try microtonal chords though you could maybe cook something up with the DDRW machine’s WID parameter or just by parameter locking the detune on some of the simpler chords between two machines and stacking them. But overall I don’t think the mnm is your machine for microtonal music

edit: made a mistake here, I should’ve said you can barely fit a minor 11th chord in the C5-C6 octave range. You can fit a minor 11th chord in a single cycle as I explain in my reply to
bibenu below

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#6

using the key tracking feature with the various pitch and fine tuning params you can get a weird spread of tones, albeit not quite a defined tuning system.

but thanks for explaining, i guess irrational numbers will never perfectly 0 cross, or would the audio have to be fairly long to loop?

#7

I’m struggling to see how something as complex as a minor 11th could be accurately rendered in just two cycles. Obviously we’re not talking equal temperament here, but equally a minor 3rd at a ratio of 6/5 is (I think ?) not near the end of a cycle after two cycles of the root note. I’d love to know more about how you’re squeezing this into 2 cycles.

#8

@waftlord

using the key tracking feature with the various pitch and fine tuning params you can get a weird spread of tones, albeit not quite a defined tuning system.

but thanks for explaining, i guess irrational numbers will never perfectly 0 cross, or would the audio have to be fairly long to loop?

I believe it would take a comically long time for two waves a few cents different from each other to cross zero at the same time. Definitely not anything the mnm could handle, two cycles is about as long as they can be on the mnm before you starting making a lot of compromises on usability/sound quality.

#9

Right…. So that means it’s not really a minor 11th then ?

EDIT: Ooops replied to wrong poster, but the question still stands.

#10

No sorry my last reply was only in reference to waftlords last post. I’m writing up one to yours now.

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#11

Using justintonate.com:

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Above is the just intonal representation of an Amin11 chord relative to 440hz yielding the tonal ratios 20:24:30:36:45:53. To answer your question directly, These ratios themselves yield a single cycle but it is too long for the monomachine. for every single cycle who’s base ratio is above 8, they play some root note 1 octave above middle C on the mnm. For a regular sampler like the OT, this is irrelevant as the samplerate will tell the sampler what speed to play the sample back but the mnm does not care about sample rate and will normalize all waves around a common playback based on middle C. So within the boundaries of the mnm, chords one octave above middle C (any chords whos base ratio is between 8 & 15) are about the longest single cycles you want to use to avoid things playing back too high pitch.

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With that, you could say in the above screenshot here I’ve “technically” generated what is a Amin11 chord with an F added as a bass with ratios: 8:10:12:15:18:23:27. The justintonate.com calculator will autoseek (within reason) to find the most accurate ratios between two notes so just inputting a true a min 11 chord will yield ratios too large for the mnm as pointed out above. You can fudge the numbers a bit by finding more simply rooted ratios (Fmaj is technically the base chord here) and then removing any ratios you don’t want. So I can remove the 8 here and get 10:12:15:18:23:27, which will yeld emin11 1 octave above middle C when played on the mnm, rather than 2 octaves in the example above. The trade off here is that as you can see, the B5 in this diagram is pretty out of tune since the ratios are not relative to a base note that yields a minor chord. But since the chord is so dense already, it’s not noticable on the mnm.

Here is a graph of the 10:12:15:18:23:27 emin11 chord my program generates as well showing it is a single cycle: (Sample Rate 10005 Hz relative to 440 tuning middle C)
image

Like I said, if you were using a regular sampler, things would be a lot simpler and hopefully the first photo alone attached will answer your question as simply as possible, the rest of this post just details how the issue you pointed out plays into monomachine’s functionality.

EDIT: To make a correction too, for my application of this math on the monomachine, I’m actually representing the eminor series of chords in just 1 cycle (NOT 2) and the major series or chords in 2 cycles to match their relative pitch.

#12

I had no idea (not owning one) … I’m out of my depth … bye (and thanks for all the fish)

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#13

Ha I didn’t mean to scare you off, I actually made a mistake in my earlier post. you CAN fit a min11 chord in even just a single cycle, not 2 ( you can fit any chord in a single cycle if it’s long enough). It’s all relative to base ratio of the just intonal harmony you’re generating.

I concede though this math is kind of complicated/unintuitive. I’m just a regular code monkey & I’ve had to stare at it for a few weeks to wrap my head around how it all works.

#14

I’m still struggling with that (monomachine weirdness aside), but I was reading ‘single cycle’ as ‘a single cycle of the root note’ … as I see you say ‘if it’s long enough’ I guess you don’t mean that.

#15

basically the ratios as I’ve come to understand them is that they represent how many cycle of a given note you’d need/can fit in a single cycle of the root note.

So for example, relative to middle C (261.625) the ratios 1:2 would generate a 261.625Hz tone with a 523.25 Hz tone on top of it, looking like this:

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does this diagram help?

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#16

That’s all fine … I think it’s down to my misunderstanding what you meant by a single cycle.

#17

that is what I mean by single cycle though. As you can see in my diagram, the ratios are relative to a single cycle of the root note. Unless I’m misunderstanding what YOU’RE saying hahaha. I don’t think I’m smart enough for all this

#18

Okay. If you have a single cycle based on the root note, then the only thing you’re going to get is harmonics. I.e. you will get ratios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … etc. You will not get perfect 5ths (3/2), major 3rds (5/4) minor 3rds (6/5) etc. All you get is whole numbers.

#19

I think I understand what you’re saying, but if you take the root note out of the ratio you remain with ratios that make up chord tones. Give justintonate.com a try, my python program generates exactly the same tones as this site does and they are definitely chord tones, not harmonics. Like I said I don’t fully understand how all of this works but it does work.

Octasynth
#20

While you’re thinking too hard about these :laughing:, here are a few samples, each is one MnM track:


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