Those of you who still have Machinedrum and Monomachine, other reasons than sentimental?

I case if you don’t already know it, you can trigger a track from another one, and layer several machines pressing one trig. Great for quick sound settings. I plan to use it this way with A4.

You can even trigger chords with AR this way I guess…

Yeah, I know. sadly you can only layer one track with another, otherwise you could build monster stacks! But even with just one layer trig you can combine two separate boxes under the same seq tracks, assuming layer trigs also work with MIDI machines.

I tested once and succeeded to layer several tracks…:wink:
99% sure. I have to test again ! :smile:
Or it was Mutes… :ooh:
Yeah, just tested, you can “chain” mutes, but you can’t stack tracks.
1% I’m wrong, my bad. Sorry I thought it was possible.:slightly_frowning_face:

Maybe with midi loopback…:sketchy:

If I had to pare my setup down to just one item (which I kindof want to do right now as I feel burnt out and uncreative), I would keep the Monomachine. It’s just too damn interesting and unusual and rich. No lie, favorite synth.

Some things about it that I’m not sure were mentioned here:

The per-track effects on Monomachine tracks, particularly delay, are a powerful additional synthesis tool. Darenager’s video on Karplus Strong synthesis on Monomachine made me realize this possibility and now I just love that kind of short-time, high feedback, ‘tuned delay’ synthesis. And when you combine that with the LFOs and parameter locks (especially the deeply p-lockable LFOs), it opened up a marvelous new world to me.

You can get similar on the Octatrack with its delay effect. But the p-lockable LFOs aren’t as rich on the OT (you can’t suddenly change LFO targets on individual steps on OT). The LFO implementation on Monomachine is my favorite across all Elektron devices. (I think that A4’s probably got even more powerful LFOs, but the UI on the tiny MK1 screen just isn’t quite as fun; and the A4 doesn’t have the per-track delay option).

There’s a lot of sound design options in the SID engine alone on Monomachine.

Using FX machines on the tracks can yield some really fun sound design. You get sequenceable effects (can’t do this on Digitone without MIDI loopback) and some creative routing possibilities (absent on A4). I had a lot of fun routing everything to a compressor track and then playing with the AMP envelope trigs to give sudden gating and stuttering effects while also adding a bit of dirt to the overall sound.

I dunno, there’s just a lot that is really unique to this box.

Machinedrum (MK2 UW+) brought me into the Elektron world, but if I had to pare down to only two boxes, it would be Monomachine + Octatrack. (Machinedrum would be box 3 on my to-keep list, so it’s not far off, I really do love it immensely). A4 would be quite a ways down that list (earlier to go), and I’m just not connecting with Digitone at all (but I think it came into my life at the wrong time).

I don’t keep my MDUW and MnM for sentimental reasons. I keep them because they are beasts!
Just because there is new stuff doesn’t at all mean that the old stuff is obsolete. On the contrary, I feel that my MDUW and MnM compliment the newer machines. Right now I have the Octatrack, Analog RTYM, Analog four, Monomachine, Machinedrum UW and they all complement each other very well. I feel like there is very little sonic overlap. Those machines are the heart of my studio and to be honest I actually prefer the sound of the Machinedrum to the Analog RTYM…They are both amazing but they are very different in terms of the sounds that they can create, Having both is best in my opinion. When the 909 came out people didn’t sell their 808s :wink:

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So I’ve spent a couple of days with MD and totally loving it. It’s a unique piece of art in terms of design and possibilities. There are many cool features that didn’t make it to subsequent Elektron machines that make it a keeper: ctrl-al, p-lockable Pg-Change on mid machines, delay with mod, LFO-shape mix.
Sound wise it’s sooo clear compared to black boxes (I am looking at you, Analog “Beautiful Soap” Reverb).
There will be a learning curve in terms of making melodic sounds with it, but it’s also the most immediate Elektron I ever touched – you can have cool beat in 30 seconds, without it sounding like you are trying to be mr. dataline. MnM was on the opposite site of the scale. You need to meticulously craft every aspect of the kit and pattern to feel you are creating. I’ll give it another try later of course :slight_smile:

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Maybe be nobody would want to do this but with 1 midi track with midi loopback you can trigger up to 7 tracks. :wink:

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