i have been messing around with jungle breakbeat techniques using elektron machinedrum and have some tips to share, possibly some video and audio examples will be coming when i can get something setup.
the first step is to get a break recorded into a ram/rom slot, for this you can sample a break you create on the machinedrum itself if you please, or load one into the rom or just sample a loop via external input (just make sure tempo is matched). I get great results making my own beats as well as classic breaks like amen, think, etc… make sure to add some distortion and BRR to make it sound like it came from a studio in the 90’s if so desired ;). also, ideally you use a sample that is 32 steps long to maximize the capability of the machinedrum.
retriggering (with the sequencer, the RTRG function isnt always suitable) this loop alone is enough to get you started, but what about pitch shifting? if you change the pitch of the loop the timing will go with it and get messy quick, you can simulate pitches using amp mod or filter res but its not always desired results and often sounds shabby.
…an important concept to understand when sampling with the machinedrum is that a full 32 step sample will have 128 divisions (starting on 0) and the start time of the sample can move around the divisions to line up with certain drum hits. you can visualize a grid over the 32 steps to help figure out where each drum hit will be.
<for example, for a 32 step sample:
step 1 will have start 0,
step 2 will have start 4,
and so on until
step 32 will have start 127>
this info itself will add tons of variation to breaks because now you can start the break from different times, letting you retrigger from different starting points in the break will pretty much give you all the variation you need to keep it interesting.
<protip: copy the track you have made and paste onto different channels to add variation/transitions live (choke each other out )>
now using this info, a cool trick is to fill the sequencer with steps and progress the start times of each step up 2 notches using p-locks (or every other step up 4 notches), without any other changes it will sound exactly the same! now the cool part here is you can change the pitches and it will mostly stay in time, now you can explore the loop in different pitches with this pseudo-pitch shifting, changing the hold and decay times will be necessary in the extreme pitches to stop any messiness.
this trick is useful for all sorts of time/rhythm sensitive sounds, and there are many more experimental sounds to be found out there. with 4 different ram machines the resampling possibilities are vast.
ill end on a simple trick thats unrelated to most of the prior discussed technique. start with a full break in a ram/rom slot, send that channels output back into one of the inputs using the global routing menu to set the channel output and a audio cable to patch the output back to the input. now you can play the loop using an INP machine like the EA/EB and some cool filter effects with env modulation for fills or extra variation. this also works great on pretty much any sound source you throw at it.
well hopefully you learned something from this, machinedrum really is a beast at sampling/resampling breaks when you spend the time to delve into it, cheers