Great clean amp with such a small footprint!
Edit: I got mine new $100 off retail as the local Guitar Center had the wrong price on it! Should have bought more and hit eBay.
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JS Bach apparently improvised first, then wrote down his improvisations as compositions. Thereās a story of another organist challenging the organist of Bachās church to a improvisation contest, then fleeing in the dead of night when he learned that the organist was JS Bach himself - apparently Bach was well known in his time as one of the very best improvisers around.
As late as the 19th century, composers such as Liszt and Beethoven were still also known as great improvisers. Sometime after their lifetimes, improvisation started to fall out of fashion in classical music, with even cadenza started to get fully written out instead of improvised. Lately though some musicians have brought back the improvised cadenza. According to Derek Baileyās book āOn Improvisationā the French organists never stopped improvising.
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My top 3:
- Digitakt
- Digitakt
- Digitakt
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Indeed, you make good points re. improvisation. Organists are a particularly interesting breed in that regard! I could talk for hours about this stuff, but I suspect it wouldnāt be that well received here, cos yāknow, Messiaen wasnāt using a Model Samples.
Butā¦ there is a fun story Iāll share: this story goes, that someone bet Shostakovich he couldnāt produce an orchestral arrangement of Tea for Two in one hour (and I think he may have only heard a record of it once, too). Not only did he succeed in doing it in that time, but iirc, he did it on a train ride to a rehearsal - no piano or anything. Presumably, with a pencil! Itās a good listen for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/05jtSVUVp6E
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this is more of a concept, not gear- but randomization inspires me the mostā¦ putting together something relatively basic with a set of sounds then randomizing the sounds, random tempo, random transposition, etc - always sends me into interesting territoryā¦
Itās one reason I like Maschine because you can keep the pattern data but load a totally different Group over it and get a totally different vibe.
I wish they would explicitly implement RANDOM choice for the browsing though. Would be great for both groups and instrument patches.
Elektron has included some randomization features.
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Most inspiring was analog 4. Showed me what can be done with only 4 tracks, little band in a box.
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Piano ( digital). Even though I canāt play properly.
Thereās a reason so many songwriters/ composers use it to write on.
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Damn you Shostakovich!
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Creativity? OT for sure!
Banana Kush
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The Casio CTK-611 my mom gave me when I was 16. You could record 2 multitrack songs and it had some small drum pads. Before that I had to use a double cassette radio to multitrack myself 
I composed a lot of songs with it, even if I recorded them with other instruments afterwards, most of them were never recorded though. The last song I composed with it before giving it away to my friendās kids is:
Something funny or sad happened to it when I was in university: I left it upside down over my bed and when I picked it up the sheets got into the first C and it broke, so I used it for years with one key less.
I donāt have any pics of it but hereās one from another unit:
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An app on my phone called āFigureā
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Musically - Digitone Keys.
Non musical - a skateboard. pure freedom. simple. opens yr mind when you rollā¦ when you hit a stone or a hill it wakes and sharpens you. shakes yer mind and opens it all up. Very calmingā¦ aids creativity.
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I would say groove boxes and drum machines in general.
DT and Maschine are my favorite so far.
Maschine because it is kinda cheap, has a very cool sound browser and is very flexible.
DT because it the perfect sampler for control freaks like me.
Once I have pattern, I love using reaper creating with audio directly. I donāt like midi programming in a daw but I love using a daw to slice, edit, add effects etc.
Probably the '72 Thinline telecaster that I got around 15 years ago. The sound in that guitar is just super inspiring to me, especially with a touch of reverb through a loud, clean amp.
Oh and delay pedals. My first one was an Ibanez DE7, tried a shitload of different pedals but stuck with my El Capistan after I got it in 2014 and didnāt really look at all the fancy delays that came out since. Still a really dope pedal and I love the sound on sound mode.
This thread had me thinking about buying a Maschine. It seems that itās a very appreciated piece of equipment.
Letās be clear, I donāt need a Maschine, Iāve a DN+DT+A4, and a bitwig license, and all this is enough for making a lot of music. But Iāve never owned a controller like a push, mpc or maschine, and Iām intrigued about them, and I can afford a second hand Maschine mk3 easily, sooooā¦
Those of you who said it was such a creative stimulating tool, can you elaborate on this?
what do you want to know?
I know many people disliked maschine, or even any software controller.
I think I already mentioned it here. If you want to do a lot of sound design from scratch and if you want something step sequencer focussed I would stay with your elektrons.
For me it was the best purchase in recent years. But I accept to use and only modify presets from Komplete or Arturia Analog Lab, or I use just simple synths for creating sounds from scratch.
For me the big benefits are:
- Interface and workflow, is super immediate. Everyting laid out very logically, easy to reach, easy to remember.
- The best pads I ever touched make this feel like a instrument, that I want to play. No need for a fancy step sequencer for me, I want to play everything in realtime with these pads. And I record much longer phrases, which would need workarounds with the elektrons.
Quantising, undo, redo, copy etc super easy shift functions with the pads. - I can use the best vsts within maschine, all combined, all in reach, many with nice NKS integration, preset browsing, hands on on the most important parameters. Mapping them yourself is super immediate as well. The NI stuff alone is great imo, combined with my Uhe and Tal stuff it just is an unbeatable sound arsenal compared to any standalone groovebox I tried.
- I struggled a lot with the realization of a hybrid setup in the past. Elektrons where ok with Overbridge but still a lot of hassle and source of frustration. Connecting other hardware to laptops can be such a struggle. Latency can be such a pain. And cool things like audio over usb was always full of glitches etc.
Hardware only setups can feel limiting and frustrating as well. You usually add multiple stuff to get it working. There a few machines with good and fun song modes especially if you want other boxes to follow. Better suited for jamming imho.
Maschine hast its flaws for sure, midi with external hardware seems to be quite weak tbh, but using it just with its software it works flawlessly for me. I plug in a USB cable to my laptop and shit just works. I jam out patterns with these nice pads and great sound sources, I lay out some scenes, I twiddle some knobs for automations, order my scenes super fast in the arranger (which is very straight forward), mix and eq my tracks all from the hardware itself. Song finished, audio export on the software, job done
As said it has flaws, there are missed opportunities where the hardware integration could be improved etc.
But for me itās easier to sing praises. Best groovebox(controller) I touched, should have bought it way earlier
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Uau! You just explained what I wanted to know.
In the last months Iām following a hybrid approach to try to get advantage of the sounds and design possibilities of hardware, and the flexible sequencer of software. While I love my elektron gear, and I get along very well with bitwig, itās not easy to have all working flawlessly without losing the flow in the meanwhile.
My style is very pop oriented, with relatively long chords progressions and melodic lines, so the elektron sequencer is limiting in that sense, in spite of being very powerful in other aspects.
Iāve some beginner questions regarding the maschine workflow. Is it convenient to use Komplete to work with Maschine? Iām quite happy with bitwig and would like to avoid buying another DAW license for the moment.
Komplete is just a big sound library with NI synths and sample libraries. Maschine comes with Komplete select (the most basic Komplete version) and many many sounds already.
Komplete is still great, but can be overkill for many. Itās just tons of vsts and sounds. There is 50% summer sale every year.
Maschine controller comes with its own software called Maschineā¦ It works standalone or as vst in any DAW, so bitwig as well. I prefer it standalone though.
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