How to warm-up the sound of the MD?

Elektron Gear Machinedrum
#21

Hello secretmusic.

The suggestion to separate the individual drum sounds is interesting. I’ve never done this with elektron products. In my mind, I didn’t see the point if you could process each sound within each machine, but perhaps there’s something I’m missing.

Since your tutorials and music is quite impressive, I’d be curious to know how you separate your drums on the MD, to help with a better mix:)

Cheers,

Mike[/quote]
Hi Mike !
It’s a tricky question, as it largely depends on the rest of your set up. I’m going to assume you own a reasonable quality mixer.
There are several reasons why using separate outputs will (usually) give better results :

  • more headroom
    instead of mixing the kick with the snare and toms internally, the kick has its own channel, and can utilize the full headroom of your mixer, without anything else taking up space.

  • better EQ
    the MD only offers 1 band of EQ with fixed Q, plus a filter which could potentially be used as a secondary EQ. Furthermore, I am not a big fan of the sound of the internal EQ, it’s really digital sounding to my ears, and most times, makes the sound flat when boosting. I do use it to cut frequencies out, however. A mixer will give you more EQ options, and quite possibly, a much better sound, if your mixer is decent. And again, boosting on an analog mixer means you can take advantage of the additional headroom provided for each sound.

  • more separation
    with each sound running through its own channel, with its own EQ, you will find the sounds a lot easier to distinguish. It is probably due to the same reasons as why a mix sounds better when running through a summing amp. And again, it has to do with headroom, and how your mixer will sum all the channels together.

You do miss out on some features of the MD when using multiple outs, but you gain a lot, as well. Think about it this way : would you rather have a sound compressed by an average compressor, or just leave it uncompressed, and treat it later ? Would you rather have a snare in MD reverb, or a dry snare, that you can run through any reverb you’d like ?

Also, using multiple outs does not mean that you cannot use the stereo outs. You could have for example 4 sounds coming out of separate outs, and a few more from the main out. Any kind of separation is better than none.

Hope this helps, the best way to test this though is to write a simple pattern, run it through the stereo out, and then try running it through separate outs. Trust your ears, and see if you can experience the difference :slight_smile:

#22

Hello Secretmusic. Thank you for the reply. I actually don’t have a mixer, I only record the stereo out of my A4 & MDUW into my audio interface. As a matter of fact, that is the only hardware I own. I do not have any effect pedals, mixers etc… just the two boxes. I’ve been relatively happy with the sounds I can squeeze out, but I’ve been listening to my music on different systems, and my mixes are in sure need of some improvement. So perhaps separating the drum sounds and trying to treat them on their own might be what is needed. Cheers:)
Now… to figure out what mixer to buy… hmmmmmm my wife is going to kill me:(

#23

Here is an old tip from JSRockit I believe. You need a MD-UW. Prepare your pattern and reserve some RAM record machines to sample it and some RAM play machines to play it back. Record it to the RAM machines and then set it up to play back and resample. Let your MD run for a while (several hours?) just playing and resampling the same thing over and over again. When you come back, you should find that all those trips through the DAC have a warming effect on the sound.

#24

uuuh…this certainly deserves a try!!

#25

I have been trying to this but since Im not that familiar with sampling/resampling on MD I keep getting feedback when I try to play back and resample. Obviously Im doing something wrong.
Could you please enlighten me how you would set this up.

cheers
:slight_smile:

#26

^ I don’t have the MD in front of me but there is a page where you can set the levels. The manual has some more details over at Elektron.se. There are two sets of levels as I recall. I guess start by turning them both all the way down and then gradually turning them up.

#27

I don’t use this directly on the MD (don’t have one), but it works great on other drum machines: the Sherman/Rodec Restyler.

I’ve had it for a while, and had struggled to find the best way to use it. It can do nice filter sweeps, and I was using it to warm up loops as I recorded them into my DAW.

But strapping it in front of a drum machine is a revelation. You can use the left frequency knob to home in on a single frequency (i.e., a single drum), and use that to trigger filter motion on the rest of the signal. So you could get the frequency of a low pass filter ducking every time the kick drum hits, only to creep back after. But you can do this on any drum/frequency with all different results. It’s pretty amazing. Working on a live set now with Tanzbar+Restyler at the core.

Anyway, I know it’s an expensive solution, but I think that this could be really useful to warm up the MD…the filter has a way of making anything that goes through it sound organic. And the distortion you can get out of it is really nice too…just a touch can really transform kick drums.

#28

DaCaVa - i noticed you referencing CTL ALL & CTL 8P could you give me a quick definition or point me where in the manual i can read more.

DaCaVa & MK7 - is there anything available like this for the 808 like the 909 as specified here - http://www.elektron-users.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=28&func=view&id=232672&catid=9&limit=10&limitstart=0

i’m also curious if i’m better of purchasing goldbaby’s samples for octatrack and using here, is it simpler to integrate?

#29

moritz template (moritze = mk7, correct?)

Track number, instrument type, mute position, trig position, panning
1, BD (in my case a midi machine, jomox mbase), - , 2, 0
2, BD (hp-filtered), - , - , 0
3, SD, - , 4 , 0
4, SD, - , - , 0
5, LT, - , 6 , -15
6, LT, - , - , -15
7, MT, - , 8 , -5
8, MT, - , - , +5
9, HT, - , 10 , +15
10, HT, - , - , +15
11, RS, - , - , 0
12, CP, - , - , 0
13, CH, 14, - , -7
14, OH, - , - , -7
15, RC, 14 (ok this deviates from the 909, but sounds nicer), - , +5
16, CC, - , - , +10

#30

golden age project compressor is gold when warming up the elektrons
the missing link in my opinion

#31

But it’s mono, right ? Do you have two stereo linked ?

#32

i use an “alembic FX1” clone from trace elliot
its an all valve bass preamp with passive tonecontrol.

its perfect to make kicks fatter deeper crispier whatever you want it to do

its mono though, but i have MDs output C connected to it, so whatever i route to output C goes into the preamp and back to my mixer.

i had a basspodXT and tried to hook it up to the MD because it hast MIDI in but its so noisy that its pointless … sadly because it would be a great “acoustic sounding” multieffects

#33

I remember that some guy on elektron-users had a great experience running MD thru EL Distressors. Not surprising, though, they sound very nice on everything.

#34

The mighty MD sounds fantastic through the Eventide Omnipressor . . . rather expensive in hardware, but Eventide now make it in software. Yeah, you gotta use a computer, but . . .