Machinedrum User Appreciation

[awepittance]

i think 'simmm' off quaristice is supposed to be 100% machinedrum + monomachine. remember some ae insider dude with a postcount of 1 showed up in a thread years ago and just dropped a bunch of knowledge. he said the clue to what was used to make that track was in the song title. i didn't get it at first but then later it hit me: simmm = machinedrum + monomachine.

 

not 100% proof i guess but a good theory considering the sound of that track & the gear they used to make that album.

interesting, I seem to remember something slightly different, that the user claimed that the Simmm was a more direct reference to an obscure synth, the same synth they used in Fermium. Something about those very crunchy sharp FM sounds don't sound like either Elektron box to me, but I have no i idea what they actually are. If i were to guess I'd say they came off some Yamaha TX fm rack unit

[Guest]

not monomachine?!?!?

 

*gasp for air*

*world view collapse*

*embrionic body stance*

Edited August 17, 2013 by Guest

[xox]

simmm = Propellerhead Reason

Edited August 17, 2013 by xox

[soundwave]

 

i think 'simmm' off quaristice is supposed to be 100% machinedrum + monomachine. remember some ae insider dude with a postcount of 1 showed up in a thread years ago and just dropped a bunch of knowledge. he said the clue to what was used to make that track was in the song title. i didn't get it at first but then later it hit me: simmm = machinedrum + monomachine.

 

not 100% proof i guess but a good theory considering the sound of that track & the gear they used to make that album.

interesting, I seem to remember something slightly different, that the user claimed that the Simmm was a more direct reference to an obscure synth, the same synth they used in Fermium. Something about those very crunchy sharp FM sounds don't sound like either Elektron box to me, but I have no i idea what they actually are. If i were to guess I'd say they came off some Yamaha TX fm rack unit

 

 

now this has been said I can totally hear it albeit with some very nice post production mastering

[futureimage]

BIt of a cross-post bananza, but hopefully relevant:

[youtubehd]WV65dIXMMXs[/youtubehd]

[DorkingtonPugsly]

That was nice.

[Guest]

yes, nice jammy

[jeyemusik]

Agreed, any thoughts of making it available via BandCamp or similar?

[DorkingtonPugsly]

Now I kinda regret getting the a4 and not the mm even more... I think I'm gona cry over my stupidity.

[futureimage]

Agreed, any thoughts of making it available via BandCamp or similar?

It's coming out Monday, links soon :)

 

Cheers for the feedback guys!

[Guest]

Now I kinda regret getting the a4 and not the mm even more... I think I'm gona cry over my stupidity.

 

you serious? don't like the A4?

yeah the MnM can sound like a completely mental SNES, but there's a many lush stuffs you can do with the A4 which are not possible with a MnM, especially on the performance side of things.

 

I'm really hard for the MnM myself, but never as a replacement for the A4. you gotta pry this thing from my cold dead hands, it's very awesome.

[futureimage]

I agree that they're two very different synths - I had a quick play on an A4 recently and approached it like a 4-channel analogue MonoMachine. That was a mistake. I had to forget about that before I wrangled anything good out of it.

[DorkingtonPugsly]

 

Now I kinda regret getting the a4 and not the mm even more... I think I'm gona cry over my stupidity.

 

you serious? don't like the A4?

yeah the MnM can sound like a completely mental SNES, but there's a many lush stuffs you can do with the A4 which are not possible with a MnM, especially on the performance side of things.

 

I'm really hard for the MnM myself, but never as a replacement for the A4. you gotta pry this thing from my cold dead hands, it's very awesome.

 

It's definitely because I haven't been able to get anything good out of it yet. But then again I've been spending more time on the MD and learning that. I'm gona go in to see my teacher/friend next week to get some lessons and tips on the A4.

I don't know I just really like the sounds coming form the mnm but like I said I gotta play around with the A4 more.

[encym]

Anybody else out there love their Machinedrum?

 

 

Yes I do indeed.

To do stuff like this: https://soundcloud.com/encym/fly-float

 

Excellent sound-mangling machine, endless inspiration.

[xox]

Nice work, futureimage!

[futureimage]

Nice work, futureimage!

Cheers dude! You can download the set now.

[DorkingtonPugsly]

 

Nice work, futureimage!

Cheers dude! You can download the set now.

 

Yeeeees! Thank you.

[DorkingtonPugsly]

So I'm making a lot of progress on the MD. But I'm still not sure about the A4. Kinda bothers me that's it's not a polysynth.

[Guest]

Give it some time & love.. imho it's not an instant gratification machine.... :]

 

I've made a little iPad thing for the Analog Four which gives it polyphhony.. it's currently in the App Store review queue but should be available soon (i hope)... if you have a Mac with 10.7 or higher, it also runs on that, I could post it here if you're interested.

 

It takes MIDI notes from some external MIDI source (MD sequencer, a keyboard....) and does a poly dispatch into the synth tracks of the Analog Four. You can select which tracks are used for polyphony, on unused tracks you can have sequences playing unaffected... so e.g. you can have your drums/bassline on track 1, and intuitively play pad chords on tracks 2-4.. It also (optionally) mirrors any sound parameter tweaks you do on any polyphonic track on the A4 back to the other poly tracks... so the sounds in your tracks 2-4 are always the same, like you would expect from a polysynth. the only downside is that it's near impossible to record polyphonically from the keyboard, as the A4 only records on the selected track...

 

lots of fun playing it with the keyboard though, the Analog Four can be a really nice polysynth imho. I too hope Elektron will implement a cool poly mode which is well integrated with the sequencer, it would be such a missed opportunity if they didn't.

[awepittance]

agreed, i used an old poly-stacker reaktor patch i had made to do this very thing and it sounds great. I like it even better than the way my polyevolver sounds (which is also only 4 voices). If i had a midi interface for my ipad i'd check it out, can you recommend a decent low priced one?

[Guest]

This is not the only thing you did with Reaktor and the A4 is it?

I remember you posted a screenshot of a programmer panel for it i think..

 

For the iPad, what you need is a USB camera adapter from Apple (ca. 30$), this gives you one USB-MIDI port. For the app you'll also need a powered USB hub (aka one which provides its own juice to connected devices). Works without a hitch on my old iPad 1.

Actually the iPad is a pretty good hub for multiple USB-MIDI instruments / controllers. Should work with anything that is USB class compliant MIDI.

The Elektron TM-1 that came with the MDUW works well, using it to connect an old full size MIDI keyboard. Analog Four plugs in via its own USB plug.

There's some apps which allow you to set up routings between MIDI devices that way..

 

I think we should get together and talk about doing things with the A4 + external controllers some time.

[awepittance]

yes I did, i'll attach it to this post. And yes let's combine forces in some fashion. The poly-chain mode is not included in this but it's a more general patch i made to poly-chain 2 Yamaha Vl-1 together (since its only duophonic)

thanks for the ipad USB advice

Analog4Spread.ens.zip

the cool thing about the Reaktor patch is mainly the ability to do stuff like patch morphing, full or semi patch randomization and also more complex automation than you'd be able to do with the LFOs on the A4 alone. That audio example i posted a while back of the FM droning stuff was just a lucky random patch using this Reaktor ensemble

all the stuff you're doing on the Ipad is generally how I use Reaktor, as a midi filter. You're approach is more high level than mine though since I don't even touch Sysex, in fact I don't even think Reaktor can do proper sysex. Max/msp would be the way to go to delve into that territory without actual programming


quick instructions on the Analog4Spread patch

- each 'window' is assigned to one of the 4 voices on the A4. They are labeled _ , 2, 3, 4 the _ one being in reality 1.
- your 'info' window has to be open on the left side, click the title / label of whichever voice you want to use on the main ensemble window and it's info will show up on the pane to the left
- in the info pane, click on 'connect' , scroll down to 'midi out'
- assign the midi out device to the hardware midi device sending midi out to the A4, assign the channel to the proper voice you want to control
- if you want to do random or preset morphing, click the little camera/snapshot icon on the top middle of the pane

- from here you have to re-select the voice in which you want to control, right underneath the camera icon there is a drop-down menu which lets you select any voice you want
- once you select the voice you want click the little > arrow next to where it says 'snapshort morphing and random', from here you have access to those features

Edited August 31, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

[Guest]

btw you can then also connect a USB audio interface to the iPad this way, it's good stuff. With a USB hub, it'll handle the audio interface plus multiple MIDI devices like a pro... it's weird Apple doesn't even mention this anywhere on its website. i hope they don't arbitrarily axe this feature some day because Apple.

 

edit: i need something like the reaktor player for this, right? ok d/ling

Edited August 31, 2013 by Guest

[awepittance]

yes you do, but for a tinkerer like yourself you might get a lot of mileage out of a proper Reaktor version. Basically any midi 'functions' that are not sysex based are very easy to setup on reaktor if you have basic programming knowledge already. It's probably not a bad place to prototype some of these ideas even before the real development stage.

[Guest]

thanks for the patch, it works and does turn drums into really cool subtle droney things magic.

i now clearly see the appeal for a randomizer for this synth.

using this with existing patterns with sound locks, there's always recognizable elements, and really interesting drones from the randomizer.

 

a dedicated clever randomizer / morpher app with nice animated graphics which does sort of stuff will be pretty nice.