I have a DT, DN, Bluebox1010, Microcosm and Typhon Dreadbox in my DAWless setup, I’ve only started a couple of years ago.
I love this gear. The Typhon Dreadbox is the only bit of kit I’m still not sure about as it sometimes sounds ‘off’ with the rest off the gear. I mostly like making ambient or IDM music for myself and it’s quite a powerful bass box (great for Techno/DnB) and I find it hard to fit in, so I may sell it one day, but it does sound amazing at times if used in the right music genre .
I guess I’m looking for something to add to the mix that allows for happy accidents and good for ambient and IDM. I see there is a lot of semi modular devices that sound amazing, what are you experiences with any of these and any recommendations? Or something else.
I was also thinking do you use the Elektron sequencers (which I love) or use something similar but more powerful to control them over Midi?
An Organelle might suit you. A lot of the patches are well into the “happy accident” territory.
Main cons would be:
patches are programmed in Pd. (That is also a pro, but it might be too tedious.)
lots of quirky patches available, but not as much bread and butter
istr something about ~20ms latency but I can’t find a reference. (it’s Linux, not an RTOS)
The first two points sort of conspire to put up some friction if you’re trying to get it to do something specific.
Warnings out of the way, it is geared for colouring outside the lines and might just be what you’re looking for. If you’re up for writing patches in Pd it is potentially quite powerful.
I’ve been getting on well with the DN’s sequencer, but lately I usually just sample the thing and sequence on the blackbox. That mostly has more to do with wanting to keep the project contained, but part of it is µ-time related crowding.
Do you have any dedicated FX units? Because a good delay/reverb/modulation/glitch type pedal or desktop unit could augment what you have and give you a lot of fun times and happy accidents.
The A4/Ak comes to mind because of probability trigs and the feedback routing.
Plus you can plug in external gear to use the effects on.
Also you can sequence external gear from it, and it has midi out utilizing the perf macros.
Only draw back is you cant sequence the perf macros when they are used to control external gear, you can only get pitch, velocity, length.
Still mad fun.
Of course the OT comes to mind.
The scenes and the effects alone make it a super fun happy accidents machine.
I love staking 4 Thru machines so I can create Scenes for external gear and have almost every effect at once for mangling sounds.
Again the probability trigs offer endless entertainment.
That’s a reasonably good set of gear for ambient and IDM for personal pleasure. What do you feel you are missing from the sounds and capabilities of what you have?
I think I’d like some sort of randomiser for the DN or midi randomiser, it’s arp is great, but no randomiser. I can manually do arp on the steps and add probability I guess.
The probability you have is note on/off. If you want probability in pitch, @Tchu mentioned some choices; there’s also SIG in modular (like meloDICER), Torso T-1, OXI One. There are probably cheaper choices that will just get you uniform probability over selected scales (major, minor, pentatonic) which can go a long way, or less fine-grained control (like a [misnamed] Turing machine).
Also, if you have an iPad or iPhone, there is a boatload of apps to add a little spice to your setup through generative sequencing or sound mangling, without going over the “DAWless” line. I don’t have any personal experience with other smartphones or tablets, but I imagine this is true for the Android ecosystem as well.
USB MIDI! And maybe audio as well. Get the AUM app to manage and connect everything else, and start with the Rozeta Sequencer suite for some easy-to-use and quality options.
Use usb for audio and midi, this way you get both audio and midi in and out. You can sequence synths/samplers/whatever from Digitakt for example, but also sample anything from you iPad to Digitakt etc. If you are planning on using iPhone, then get that camera connection kit adapter or whatever it’s called, if you have usb c iPad then you either get the proper cable, or use usb hub.
Edit: Highly recommend on getting AUM for your iOS device, as rooting all the midi and audio things is very easy on it.
