Am I the only one? [Machinedrum love]

Does someone have a machinedrum AND a Digitone? How do you compare them regarding synthesized drum sounds?

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i don’t have the digitone long enough to make a direct comparison.
sound wise the DN can make very good FM Percussion (one of the best rides i ever heard) and to my surprise its the easiest synth to make really great and complex fm sounds (and i have a little history with fm) but of course its limited to 4 tracks.
the md is a drum machine capable to make also very nice SYNTH sounds but of course it is a little limited in that regard.

if you want to stick with drums i would stay with the MD - but the DN is really fantastic in many ways.
if you can afford it, have both

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Ok you won, I keep my gorgeous black MD ! :slight_smile:

DN have soundlocks, TRC and 8 voices polyphony so I think you can make complex drums with it.

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congratulations! but don’t blame me :slight_smile:
i have never seen a reverse MD. is it a UW?
(btw, stuffing myself with salt caramels from quiberon )

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I have both, but just got the DN and haven’t really had the time to program it much. Just kind of learning the architecture through the presets. I think they’ll make an awesome digital duo though.

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It’s a UW+Drive, excellent condition, bought 600€. I bought a 2nd hand faceplate at the same time, 150€.

You went to Quiberon ? A guy was selling a MD there.

Mad cheap for a + model.

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Mint !

Here is my yesterday night first MD recording. Should I keep it or it’s too bad and I should sell it ? :content:
https://soundcloud.com/user-475861059/md-saturday-night-swing

One bar loop, 15 lfos with CTR AL machine dest, 2 ram rec, 2 ram play.
Just muting tracks.
Recorded with OT, no fx / processing.

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So you bought it !

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Can you tell me a bit more about the particularity of the gate box reverb ? Will gate locks will be particulary efficient ? Or is it something else ?

Thanks :slight_smile:

usually i don’t like audible reverb on drums - with the gate box reverb its a bit different, cause you can set a gate (cut off the reverb tail) so you can use lots of reverb in very unsubtle ways for sound design, without loosing the rhythm.
it has early 80s charm in it… think about “in the air tonight” very useful on snares, toms cause the OFF of the reverb can set a second accent in the rhythmic structure. i also use it a lot as master effect for a 606 or a cr78 which i route trough the inputs of the MD.
i don’t use Plocks very often on the effects. i prefer to twist them manually (and i am to lazy for plocking)
but after you mentioned it, i should experiment wth that again ;))

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I love my MD. I bought my first one in 2003 when they were virtually unheard of and still use it every day. I much prefer it over my RYTM for all the unusual sounds you can get, control-all machine and multiple LFO’s per sound

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if you had fun doing it (sounds like) you should really keep it. sounds fantastic!

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Just was lucky enough to grab a MD uw again (this time it will stay til the end).
Reloaded my old backup files and again fully blown away. Don’t get me wrong the other machines are nice (had them all except digitone). But now back with only MD and OT from Elektron feels like home. The essence of what made this company great.

Just had to say.

Cheers

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+1

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well said, eminently elucidated, bravo!

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recently just got this pairing, absolutely mindboggling

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I’ve had my MD UW mk I for around a week now, and I’m digging it quite alot. i kinda feel like MD UW is for people who like the rytm and the octatrack, but don’t feel like owning both. It has elements from both.

Not sure I dig the reverb though… its harder to fit into a mix than rytm’s reverb for example.

The MD loves analog nonlinearity btw! Run it through some nice transformers or the heat to get the lowend bloom nicely.

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it’s great although if you want to have more than three very basic Swing settings on the Machinedrum, then the MD needs to be Master Tempo, or the Octatrack needs to send transport to the MD, whilst the MD has its own tempo manually set to the same tempo as the Octatrack.

if the Machinedrum is Master Tempo, then about 15% of the time, there will be a recording bpm recognition anomaly on the OT of just a few percent of a bpm.

as in, if a 4 bar loop is captured (either from the MD to the OT, a resampling scenario on the OT, or another source to the OT) whilst the OT is slaved to the midi clock of the Machinedrum, then the tempo might read 130.04 bpm or 129.95 bpm … viewable in the Attributes section.

if this happens then i always recapture the sample.

i’ve done a few months work with the Machinedrum as Master Tempo, capturing rhythm grooves to the OT, and now the OT is not slaved to the MD as i am working on other content.

at some stage soon i might actually sequencing more content on the Machinedrum, and as regards midi clock, will try just sending Transport start/stop from the OT to the Machinedrum, with the MD having its own tempo set manually.

in such a scenario the Machinedrum seems to lag behind ever so slightly, this could be my imagination but i don’t think so. but in fact this could be cool, for a funky swung laid back hihat feel.

or, after capturing the loop to the Octatrack, i could just go to the Trim menu and set the Trim start point forwards very subtly to account for the slightly behind time beats.

the reason i mention all this is due to how amazing the Machinedrum’s different swing settings are, and how important it is to have access to those subtle different Swing adjustments between say 52-56.

when the MD is bpm slaved to another source, although the Swing settings still show the same numbers, there is in fact only three different Swing settings available in such a scenario, essentially referring to the three mathematically divisible ratios. Not sure how it works but then the Swing becomes much less subtle.

for those who do not use Swing in their tracks then this information is irrelevant. :joy:

and any pattern that is only playing notes on straight 8th notes (on the-odd numbered Trigs) will not have any influence from any Swing setting. The Swing only effects the even-numbered Trigged notes.

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Have you tried manual beatmatching, as in, setting identical BPM values, syncing the transports with the aid of BPM nudges, and then resampling across the two? IME elektron boxes usually exhibit very little drift and can be easily beatmatched to be in perfect sync manually… This also opens up a whole new world of groove possibilities as you can slightly offset the pattns against each other :diddly:

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