How Did They Do That? (Chromatic Question on MD)

Elektron Gear Machinedrum
#1

This may be silly, but I’d appreciate the answers. I looked at an MD a while ago and decided against it as it didn’t have a chromatic mode that I could find. I just listened to the demos again and they have two of them (specifically “Sarspborg”) that have chromatic parts in them.

How do you do that with an MD? Can you play the parts in or do you have to program them via the sequencer or can you set each key to be a specific note and play them live or … ?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

#2

Have a read of the manual . Theres P locks, you can adjust any of the settings per step. So you can change the pitch how you like, per step .

#3

I’ve seen a video where they just load a different pitched sin machine for each track and play it like that.(further tweaking use p-lock. With 16 voices, you could easily do a scale octave and a good drum kit.

#4

It’s possible, but not user friendly in the sense that the rytm is with its chromatic mode. Pitch on samples is adjusted by numbers that don’t relate to anything specific. Their actually is a chart somewhere in the files section here that list the pitch numbers for actual notes.

You won’t get everything in perfect 440 tune and it’s not easy going, but there is a lot you can do here.

#5

Memories are short around here.

You cannot play melodic parts into the MD from a keyboard. You could set up each trig to play a different pitch of a different track but the MD is not easy to set up to play semitone intervals.

Here is what forum member Nils wrote about how he made melodic demo pieces on the Machinedrum:

Anyway, I just used the EFM hihat (with tremolo and filter enveloping), which is simply the best machine for melodic sounds on the MD. Its tonal range is limited enough for fine tuning of melodic sounds, unlike eg the sine signal. It is also used in the “Sarpsborg” demo on the MD site (strings and melodies). Also, try the E12 toms with retrig and filtering. Retrigged E12 machines do not cover the 12 tone scale, only selected notes. But I once managed to make a realy piano-like timbre out of it.

…

As for the sounds, there are no “magic tricks”, except for not thinking of the MD as a DRUM ONLY machine. I spend a lot of time on each demo, to get it all right. AND I use 95% EFM sounds. They are the best, the most flexible, the most punchy sounds by far. Take the “Sarpsborg” demo; The strings, the melody sounds are all EFM hi-hats. The rest is basically EFM bass drums (and a P-I hi-hat). The “Rhodes” sound in the last demo is also an EFM sound.

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#6

Thanks everyone - that helps a lot!

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