I’m about to go on holiday to Austin, Texas for Christmas / New Year. I can only take one piece of gear and I’ve automatically reached for my DN above my OT and DT. It seems the most complete for quick and dirty tracks (drums and synths) and experimentations amongst having to spend time with my girlfriend’s parents. So I thought it would be interesting to see what one piece of gear is the most complete yet also portable enough for you to spend weeks away from your studio?
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If it had to be an instrument, I think the obvious answer for me would be my MPC Live. However, I’d likely just take my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, since I’d probably want to make music and do a bit of drawing/painting.
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Digitakt and a mic to do a Christmas album.
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Yep, a laptop or tablet would be the most obvious choice. I remember an Autechre interview saying if they had to a laptop and a mic would be all they needed. Might have misquoted them and it was actually Thom Yorke. Either way!
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MPC Live!!! No question about it.
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Im seeing a lot of love for the MPC Love more recently (amongst posts of people not enjoying the work flow and selling it almost instantly). I’m going to check it out in the US. Some things might be cheaper there than in Europe.
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My Custom X 150cm!
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Yea, I don’t get all the hate. I guess it’s a perspective thing going on? It has a piano roll, which I rarely use but it is capable of a lot more. Seriously it’s dead simple to chop samples and even easier to bang out beats!!! Now you can do plocking on it, although it’s not as intuitive as Elektron. I love it as a drum machine in my setup that includes the OT, DN, MD and modular.
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I don’t actually know if I’m going to love it or not. I bought it months ago, but have no time to give it more than a cursory poke. However, a nice vacation with nothing else but the MPC Live would probably give me the time and initiative to dive into it.
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Nice, it appeals to me a lot but at the same time, I’m not sure if I just need a laptop for mobile Ableton use away from the iMac. If the MPC could load up third party plug-ins, I would be all over it. But for pure music creation before the arranging, mixing and master phase (where I would switch to Ableton), it could be worth its weight in gold. Right, back to YouTube reviews for me 
Yes, it probably deserves at least a couple of nights in isolation. Perhaps you’ll find some time over the holidays
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Either my laptop with Ableton and the Novation Launchpad, or the Digitone. That one is fun and compact and with the 4 tracks you can have a lot of fun. 
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Precisely my thoughts. I’ve done some of my best recent work with that little box of joy alone. Admittedly I would probably replace my drum patterns with samples on the DT to fill out a proper track but I just love 8 voice limit and the way it steals voices and wipes some out during busier sequences 
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Digitone. Love that thing!
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It has an option called explode tracks or something. The way it works is you load your program which is a kit, you record your performance on one track, then you can “explode it” so each element gets its own track (kick track 1, snare track 2 and so on). After that there’s an option to export your sequence as a Ableton file, all the individual elements load in Ableton as separate tracks!!! Super efficient and simple for when you are ready to master. Plug your thumb drive and transfer files, it’s that easy.
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I used to travel with my OP 1, but never really did anything with it. I have the mpc live and am part of the “not convinced” team. Reason being it feels very much like working on a laptop and I feel I can work faster on ableton. My laptop is also much more portable. (mpc is big and heavy)
Lately though, my digitakt has become my favorite portable gear. It’s tiny, it’s cool, it doesn’t draw as much attention as the mpc, and since I always travel with my laptop anyway, having the digitakt and an almost limitless supply of sample generators (my vsts) is my personal portable killer combo. Cheers!
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Have OP-1 will travel. It’s been to Europe, Central America, and New Zealand with me. I can’t say I’ve done much with it musically worth sharing, but I’ve gotten hours of enjoyment out of it while on the road.
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One thing I noticed today that was super interesting to me is the two powered USB ports. I recently bought a Fishman Triple Play midi pickup system that relies on a USB dongle to transmit the notes from my guitar into midi within a DAW. If it works with the MPC Live, it could be ideas heaven for me
DN for me as well. However…I have been having a blast with my 1010music blackbox and sampling random stuff and turning it into something is becoming a lot more fun than I realized. Granular synth/beat count modification on original WAV makes for some interesting results!
But something about creating sounds from scratch and using the encoders while sequences are playing is so satisfying with the DN.
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I considered the DT instead but the stuff I make with it (compared to DN at least) tends to be solely rhythmical and dark bassy stuff with little melodic content. Not a bad thing in itself, but I would miss that FM nastiness
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