I am new here, so hello. And darn, what a lovely site you’ve got going. OK, so down to business: I think I have been bitten by an Elektron bug. So I want myself a Machinedrum.
I need for it to do glitchy, electronic-sounding beats that will fit well into a non-electronic environment; of this I’m certain that it won’t fail. I am, however, also looking for a drum machine with a more acoustic, human expression - mostly because I’m no drummer, and my apartment doesn’t lend itself towards drum recording - and I’d like to be able to sketch something down on my own.
Many samplers allow you to assign multiple samples to a single voice, say, 10 different hi hat samples. It will then cycle through the samples, randomly or numerically. What I would like to know is: does the Machinedrum allow you to cycle through samples in such a manner, or are you limited to variations of a single sample on a voice?
The MD uses several different types of synthesis, and samples (but mostly synthesis), to create it’s sounds. All of the percussion machines within the MD are extremely flexible and can create sounds far beyond what you expect, so don’t worry about being limited to having only a few variations of a sample to play with. You can twist the shit out of a sample on the MD!
As for cycling samples, the MD can do that, but it’s probably a lot less straight forward than you hope. On the MD, you could load a long sample that contains several versions of a hit (sample chain) and the adjust the START and END points for that sample, per step, to get the cycling of samples you are looking for. But you could also just do some per step parameter tweaks to achieve lots of variation of sound on a single drum voice.
I’d say that if you’re looking to use mostly samples, you may want to get an Octatrack. It is much more adept and doing the sort of thing your are asking about, and can also mangle the hell out of sounds. But if you like to create original synthesized sounds, the MD can’t be beat. It will blow your mind with how much more it can do than just percussion sounds.
An LFO set to change the start and end points can have a similar effect and make it more random and glitchy without all of the pre-programming.
You may even find that a single sample with p-locked or LFO changing pitch variations will have the same effect to the multiple samples. You can even set more than one LFO to a track by setting additional track LFO’s to manipulate that track. There are more options than it first appears.
Thanks a lot for the informative answers. I’ll look into it - seems as if there are plenty of options, also rather obvious ones that I just hadn’t thought about.
Jeffe - in the end, I probably wouldn’t get anything other than a better acoustic drum set to replace an acoustic drum set
I’d say the Octatrack with sample chain is probably going to be more suitable - sure the MD could do it with a long sample and adjusting the start point but changing samples / have lots in reserve isn’t as plentiful as the Octa which is near on limitless and easy to upload & access.
Another option would be the RYTM and randomly choosing samples from the Audio Pool (or the start point using a chain). You get (almost) limitless memory and a Drum machine piece of kit… but uploading is still slightly awkward.
