I got a machinedrum a couple of months back, and although I’m having a blast with it, it’s still pretty new to me, so please forgive the noob questions.
I’m trying to load some of Elektron’s freely available sound packs just to check them out, and having some difficulty. I’m using a machinedrum UW MKII, no +drive, with OS 1.63 (it’s connected to my Mac with the TM-1). The primary issue is that the transfer instructions for the sound pack don’t match what I’m seeing on the machinedrum. For the Arcadix sound pack, for example, the instructions say to go to the FILE --> SNAPSHOTS menu after you’ve navigated to a slot, but there is no SNAPSHOTS menu on my machinedrum. Is that something only seen when a +drive is installed? Is there any way to load these packs without the +drive? It looks like the memory is only 39% full so there should be room for something. Is there some other way to get the packs loaded for units without the +drive?
Snapshots are featured in MD mkII UW+ (i.e. + drive).
In your MD it’s like you have only one snapshot. If you do want to check soundpacks you may want to do a complete backup of your sounds, otherwise you’re most likely going to loose all your kits and patterns. Just read the manual from page 63.
Just a slight clarification: What ram says above is true, but you need to be concerned not only about your kits and patterns, but your samples as well.
Back up all your kits and patterns with a SYSEX dump, then save all your samples with sample send. Both can be done with C6. (I’d also recommend making notes of which ROM slot each sample occupied, though C6 might remember this for you … luckily I’ve never had occasion to find out.)
…After you do that, you can load up a soundpack without worry.
Yeah, I was forgetting that part, thanks dubathonic. I’d also add (forgive for repeating myself), do read the manual, elektron are great but peculiar instruments in some respects, and it is quite common to loose your work sometimes, especially at the beginning.
At least, it was for me.
Many thanks to you both for the replies – this all makes sense. And ram – yes, reading the manual is essential. Actually, so far I’ve found the manual and the operation of the machinedrum to be pretty clear – definitely incredibly deep and complex, but unlike some other gear I’ve owned in the past, I’ve been able to make sense out of a lot of it. Thanks to your and dubathonic’s suggestions I can go back to it with a better sense of how the file storage piece works.