I’ve been tempted to get a Machinedrum due to the price drop. I don’t want to blow the extra cash on the UW as I have an OT (even though it samples differently etc). If the UW was a similar price, I’d probably buy it outright for the convenience of an all in one box.
Does the MD have a global tempo like the A4 or can you save different tempos with each pattern like the Tempest?
I’m assuming it can do odd time signatures but not polytime like the OT?
Do I really need one if I have an A4, OT, Tempest, Nord Drum, etc? I’m not a techno person. More ambient/experimental/idm.
You can vary the length of a pattern between 2 and 64 steps, but you can’t have each track have a different number of steps.
You can set a tempo multiplier for the pattern, but each track can’t have its own tempo multiplier.
What is missing from your music? What do you think the MD can do that can’t do with your existing gear?
The Machinedrum is great for those styles, but I think it would be redundant with everything else you already have. After the price drop, I thought the MD was very competitive with all of the other $400-$700 USD machines as it offered more forms of synthesis like physical modeling and EFM but between the Tempest and Nord Drum you have similar sonic territory covered. I imagine you could use the OT’s midi sequencer on the Nord and get pretty close to the kind of p-locking fun of the MD.
If you want some good FM drum synthesis fun, you could probably get someone to build a Sonic Portions LXR for less than a Machinedrum.
Thanks for the info. I really do wish the tempo was independent. It’s the one thing I don’t like about my A4. The lack of poly time signatures is not a massive issue though.
As for lacking, nothing really but I like the idea of an all in one drum synth capable of great tweakability. Essentially p locks and realtime recording tweaks. The actual sounds I can create elsewhere. Elektron have the sequenced tweaking options down.
Totally agreed regarding the sonic territory. The Tempest is amazing but lacks some of the Elektron sequencing tricks such as p locks and realtime recording tweaks. This is the main attraction to get a MD also. I’ve never used the midi outs of the OT or A4 though. How powerful are p locks on external gear? Can it control external parameters? If so, you may have given me some seriously awesome options. If external p locking isn’t as awesome as in the box, I can always sample into the OT I guess from my modular created beats.
I’ve looked at that LXR before. Would be a cool build project. I might grab one in the future to build. Looks like it’d take a bit of time with all those switches!
The P-Locks on external gear are pretty good. I only have Machinedrum and Monomachine but my understanding of the Octatrack is that it’s similar to the Monomachine. You basically assign MIDI CC values to the knobs of the Midi machine, so on top of the basic note/velocity stuff you can control the values for a filter cutoff, etc, whatever is offered by a target synth/machine. And all of that is p-lockable. I believe you can also use the designer LFOs of the OT for MIDI.
In fact, a good Octatrack trick (from the Youth Code talk on this site) is to combine p-locking control changes to external gear with the OT’s sampling to get a lot of new samples at once from external gear.
If you really want poly time signatures, maybe consider a sequencer like the Squarp Pyramid. That thing is built around poly time signatures, and the newest OS adds some new MIDI effects like BPM automation and ‘Chance’ (like the new A4 / Analog Rytm sequencer features). The Pyramid with your existing gear could be a pretty killer combo.
But then again, there is something wonderful about everything being inside the one MD box. But MD also has the oldest Elektron Sequencer out of the whole lineup so more advanced timing, tricks, and other features like Chance are just not going to be there. (and man, I wish Chance/probability was in it because it’s easy to create some truly great metallic alien sounds on the MD but then you start hearing that sound repeat too much while your hands are busy with other instruments).
I reckon I’ve been nicely talked out of buying a MD. Awesome. I’ll probably go buy some more eurorack now.
I’ve got a lot of experimenting to do tonight with the OT midi side of things. I’ve always just used it for audio and a lot of real time sampling/manipulating live of real instruments etc. Time for some midi action it seems. Octatrack… please meet Nord Drum.
First experiment using the OT for midi sequencing (and with p locks). Then sampling the live beats and manipulating. The sequencing/p-locks works well! Thanks for the suggestion.
