Today i hooked up my brandnew Arturia Beatstep to my Monomachine.
Boy, that is such a great combination, and the sounds the Monomachine suddenly can do…just great! Refreshing the love to my Mnm.
Whats your Monomachine love story?
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How are you using the beatstep?
As random sequencer, and i record the incoming notes with the Mnm, as well as Clock source and as keyboard substitute to record manually a track. Works very well, especially since you can choose different scales, as well as using clock divider and muting/unmuting tracks. In this way you get half random/half realtime recorded pattern, which can be very refreshing. Also you can use the Beatstep knobs to change synth parameters, or transpose a sequence.
Refreshing from the standard keyboard midi controller hooked up to it. If i can find some time i will make a short vid.
A vid would be interesting to see. Sounds an interesting combination.
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sounds interesssting 
i’m kind of looking forward to the mpx16 as well so it’s a beatstep vs mpx16 type of ‘battle’ for me, it would be nice to see how the beatstep works with the MnM. personally, i haven’t hooked many external controllers to the MnM (apart from those i build 
) but it surely gives even more with external MIDI gears…
Beatstep with MNM sounds interesting.
I hooked my Akai MPD26 pad controller up to my MD, and that was kind of fun. Not a huge leap forward though. You can assign the knobs and faders of the MPD26 to params on the MD, and in combination withe a CTRL-8 machine, you could have lots of hands on tweaking options. I haven’t tried the MPD26 with my MNM yet, one of these I want to. I think it will be great way to give the MNM more tactile controls (more knobs, faders, etc).
I just got my Juno-60 outfitted with MIDI (which also added a bunch of other features - very rad!). The Juno is a classic because the sound is amazing, but since I’m not a keyboardist, it was always hard to work the Juno into my setup, unless of course I sampled it. But that doesn’t really appeal to me much. I’ve been using my MNM to sequence the Juno-60, which has given it a completely new life! The MNM makes controlling MIDI gear very easy and very fun. P-lock controlling the Juno (from the MNM) is mind blowing. The MNM gives a huge brain to a lady that used to only have a sweet voice and a pretty face!
where did you get it from? i just checked on thomann and it won’t be available until end of may 
I bought it s/h from some guy off ebay “Kleinanzeigen”. I am sure more will pop up s/h. Btw. i use my iPad AC adaptor to power it. Works great.
My main niggles…why no battery power and the usual pro/con of encoder vs. potis. When you turn a knob on the BStp you cant see which parameter it changes on the Mnm, bc the Mnm gives you no feedback via display. If you accept this as the random part of this creative tool combo, you ll be fine. I got quite interesting results in this way, different from what i would tweak via Mnm UI itself or via Mnm+standart midi keybrdcntrl.
This is not Beatstep related though - i made some controllers for the MnM using some iPad App and it’s the same issue. not a deal breaker but somewhat annoying
That is not true. I have my Mono controlled by an external controller, and the parameter values update in real time as I turn knobs on the controller.
Yes updating in realtime for sure, but if you are on the Mnm not on the specific page, and you dont remember which knob on the Beatstep is controlling which parameter, its a random thing.
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I just have to praise the Monomachine and preach to the choir about it. I’m making sounds with the Monomachine that are like the sounds I’ve dreamed of for years. Just about every other synth I’ve had in the past has let me down in some way. Most were because they seemed made more for keyboard players. Many were too hard to program, even if they had a good sound engine, and seemed built to keep preset-programmers who spend most of their days dedicated to synth arcana busy. Some are a bit in the middle.
But the Monomachine. Holy cow. How do I love thee in my six short months of knowing thee? Let me count the ways. At least, some of the big ones off the top of my head.
- The different synth engines. I’m so bored of (virtual) analog at the moment. It’s great having FM and SID alongside the DigiPro and Superwave engines.
- Great starting points and usable synth controls. One problem I’ve had with other synths is they have all these elaborate presets, and then a very boring plain ‘init’ program that’s just a triangle wave doing nothing, which discouraged me from wanting to program them. It’s very easy on Monomachine to find an engine/machine and start going with a good starting point, and then good controls catered to that machine.
- Really, those different synth engines! I love them. Then you start sequencing them together and they play off each other and it’s all too beautiful. One of the things that was drawing me to Eurorack was some of the different sound sources (Make Noise Telharmonic and Mysteron, Pittsburgh Modular Generator) more than plain analog VCOs. I don’t feel that draw any more.
- LFOs modulating LFOs
- That sequencer and those parameter locks. I’ve always liked the concept of Native Instruments “Absynth” which could have very long and interesting envelopes that could control various parts of the sound. But I found programming it to be tedious. Elektron’s whole “sound engine tightly coupled with the sequencer” design … well, you all should know what it opens up for sound creativity. Between this, the LFO cross-mod capability, and the different machines, almost all of my Eurorack lust is gone (and that goodness - it would cost many times the MM’s price to get its equal in modules).
- Just having a good sequencer on board and so tied in. I think I haven’t connected with some of my other hardware synths because they were either tied to the keyboard or required setting up a sequencer / tying into a DAW. It made all of my sound design attempts just be sounds, not rich patterns.
- Knowledge that if there’s anything it can’t do, or that can be augmented by another synth, it just requires some MIDI setup and then switch to a MIDI track. (This has started a new symbiotic relationship with the OP-1 where the OP-1 provides even more cool machines like their Pluck string physical modeler and the OP-1s funky FX, but I still get to use the Monomachine’s sequencer and P-Locks to really monkey with the OP-1’s sounds - 4 CC midi controls on the OP-1, 4 CC control options on Monomachine. Deadly symbiosis. And can then route back into sequenced MM FX.)
- A real printed manual instead of a “here’s a two page quickstart and a link to a PDF download. Good luck!” wish. And MIDI Thru. Both are increasingly rare things, it seems.
Also: man I love the Swedes. Much of the above applies to the OP-1: multiple sound engines, fun starting points, good UIs for building your own sounds. These are the first deep synths I think I’ve had where I pretty quickly felt like “this is mine!” instead of “someday I’ll sit down and learn this thing for real and make more than two custom sounds with it and then it will be mine!”
I ordered my Monomachine on the day of the price drop (so I got one of the ‘sitting on the shelf for too long’ ones) and so have only had it for a few months. It took me a little while to warm up to it, partially because I was having so much fun with Machinedrum which I also got early this year, partially because I really hadn’t experienced a synth like this before. There’s still much more to learn and do with it!
My only real regret is not having bought one earlier. But maybe I had to go through some bad relationships to appreciate the good.
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Hah, be quiet so the prices go down again! Definitely know what you mean about getting away from analog, recently got an OP1 and it’s really satisfying having all these odd sound engines at your disposal.
Post some tracks, there aren’t enough MNM bids on YouTube!
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I hooked up my Pyramid to my MnM and it refresh the original sequencer.
It brings midi fx, and one of them consist in change the tempo. So you can on the step(s) you want have great tempo changes. So, this way I discover a way I didn’t explore in my MnM : in the song mode I never tried the tempo change witch procure drastic modulation of the pattern.
I’m very found of that.
So I needed a new sequencer to make me understand that my MnM was really already well equipped.
So much fun with that
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Thanks for the lfo lfo tip:bomb:
I jumped out of bed and tired this
Never thought of doing it before
Certainly adds more to my buchlafying monomachine ideas
What do you mean by cross mod Lfos?
My love story with her is complex… 
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I may or may not have been using ‘cross mod’ accurately. It was just another way of saying LFOing the LFOs 
But speaking of Buchlafying: earlier this year I gad mad gear-lust for some of the Ciat-Lonbarde stuff which is way out in that west-coast synthesis vein. In particular, I had my eyes on the Plumbutter 2 and watched way too many YouTube videos about the thing. But then one day I tripped over a video about using the Monomachine’s Arp with the BBOX drums machine and started experimenting with that and LFOs and bang! Pretty much eliminated my ‘crazy expensive psuedo-drum-machine’ lust.
I have some other patterns with the VO synth just whispering creepily away while a simple GND-SIN plays basic tones, but with an LFO randomizing the pitch on each trig. It’s another Buchla-esque west-coast synth generative bleeps’n’bloops kind of thing that I can just disappear into, using just a pair of MM tracks.
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Is this the ‘New Elektron Box 2016’ topic? 
Just a hint: experimenting is the main bit. Load one kit onto another, reshape a bit - that is one of my weird techniques…
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This made me discover the SID arp, and how arp may be thought of as a subsequencer within the sequencer 
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