They don’t seem to have any music in them to me.
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This is great. I know the first one, his tracks are great. The second video truly showcases what I wanted to hear from Digitone. Powerful. Thank you!
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I agree that making yt videos takes effort too, wasn’t thinking about that. But yeah, their music is also really good, and I definitely don’t expect everyone to have the similar sensibility as mine.
It was just weird to me that I’ve seen many more Mnm tutorials and videos that i like, while Digitone is actually capable of recreating lots of those in my opinion, in a different way, and way more clean/polished, yeah, but still… But at the same time, Mnm is way older and many artists paved the way already (Autechre, Sophie etc…).
Thank you for the motivation, needed it. Especially for making pads and synths, cause they are hardest to make on this little beast.
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This question would work better if you backed it up with some examples.
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I did after someone asked me to do it.
Can you point to where? I don’t see any in the thread
Check the response I gave to @hrrld
There’s probably a more witty way to quote that comment, but I’m still getting used to this platform. Sorry!
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Why do most people make similar music on a Minimoog?
This question could be asked for almost anything, and you’d get a similar answer. Yes, it has a signature sound, no not everyone uses it like that. Why does piano music sound the same? What about Ferneyhough? 
Secondly, I think another factor is that a ton of music is released without making a point of what was used to make it. I assure you that the Digitone and Minimoog is present on a lot of records without it being its obvious use case. On the flip side, these YouTube videos etc emphasize the use of said instrument, and I think when isolated in that way a certain sound becomes more prevalent.
My two cents!
(EDIT: maybe modular systems would have been a better comparison. “It’s all fart sounds”, while in reality you could make anything. At the end of the day, it’s not the instrument that makes the music, it’s you. However there are of course trends and graviations within an instrument, areas which you easily fall into when using it - e.g Elektron = techno, or IDM as it were once!)
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Interesting discussion. I have sometimes thought that since you can make such a huge array of sounds so much more is possible. With careful/skilful sound design any style should be possible with the Digitone. I can’t say if it’s possible to make very realistic instrument sounds like convincing guitars, pianos etc. but it may be. If you were able to spend every day in 10 years working with the DN what sounds would you be able to make?
I’ve just begun making dub - classic dub included and the DN is great for that. Not that it’s hard, but maybe it’s not the most often heard genre on the DN.
Nevertheless it’s an incredibly capable instrument!
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You made a great point. I’m still in the process of studying the FM synthesis + Digitone, so I just wanted to hear different opinions from people who are more experienced than me. I love the machine do far and I can’t wait to get more comfortable with it.
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Honestly I feel this way about most gear jams/demos. It’s all the same techno, ambient, lo fi hip hop, or ~occasionally~ IDM stuff. The former three are the most common though and it’s super stale. It’s really hard to get a good idea of what gear is capable of on YouTube since 95% of the jams sound basically the same and cover the same exact sonic territory. I think it comes down to the fact that a lot of people just use these devices to unwind and don’t necessarily take originality all that seriously (which is fine) but man does it make it difficult to get a good idea of the real character of a unit sometimes. I also think it’s due to the fact that a lot of gear sales are driven by influencers now; it’s increasingly a consumption driven hobby as a result, so of course people are going to be making a lot of the same stuff they’re seeing from the boxes they buy.
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FM is hard to wrap your head around and a lot of people try to emulate subtractive synthesis style techniques with the DN because there is this excellent digital filter with it’s own parameter page.
So I think a lot of people just go crazy on the fm side of their patch and create really strange overtones and timbres and then de-weird them with the filter.
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I’m knew on the DN, but I’d say there are four factors :
- this machine is so deep it’s difficult to master
- on the opposite, it’s quite limited with ‘only’ 4 tracks (that tension between the deepness of the tonal palette and the limitations is fascinating)
- it has its own logic, which can be hard to overtake (I don’t know if this is the right verb)
- it’s a complete production box, and any box has it own sound. By my experience, you can can only sound original by mixing tools. In other words, you have to build your tool.
I’ve only scratched the surface of the DN, and I’m just starting to get the sounds I have in my head from this box. I’m hesitating between going deeper with the DN only, or adding either one analog voice for the lead, or a groove box (Model:Samples certainly) which could add a complete drum kit and some samples to breath a bit in the ‘FM haze’ 
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Yeah, I was really happy when I stumbled across this Guy - awesome showcase of what this machine is capable of.
So many weird and harsh sounds, hope to find more like it.
I frequently try to get some harsh electro stuff out of it, but it ain´t easy.
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I love the fact that people take the time to do demos of gear and post on YouTube, they are great at explaining stuff but not many of them actually make music that I like eg bobeats, red means recording, Andrew huang etc and a lot of the tracks sound kind of samey using the same gear. I think the best ones are the novation guys Ricky Tinez and Calc.
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There is also this tendency to “do it all” with any given box in jams, while I’d also like to hear the gear in the works, meaning how it sits in the mix, how it communicates with other gear, how much headroom it offers, how I can introduce it in the composition etc. Trying to play all the elements to make it sound more capable usually backfires and I feel like I am listening to a poor commercial song.
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Blush response made a kinda noisy dn video.
Not his most interesting. I just got a kawai k1m inspired by his noise video of k1 with ot…
Sadly the soft ah pad preset everyone used isnt on and no factory reset possible, but there is a tutorial for slowed down midi sysex…
I have some trouble getting nice clean pads out of dn ( for acidtrance hehe, thanks to microtribe acid tutorial etc) more than with dexed for example.
Clicking Parameter random many times on one track adding aggro kick and some nice fm snare is what i do mostly for a quick jam.
Ah yes the master distortion, it mostly doesnt sound nice for me somehow…
I think ‘why do most people make similar music on Digitone?’ is a very generalised/Ki guided statement to point at the DN.
What you are referring to is a very small section of people (mainly YouTubers) who you can SEE using a Digitone…and most of these people are better video makers than music makers.
I often find myself doing the ‘don’t look just listen’ test and it’s not often I find music on these videos that I like personally, it’s generally soulless fast food music IMO… but, for people who make music the focus of what they do the Digitone is just another instrument/sound source to be used as part of THEIR thing, the DN is not the focus. There must be a sh*t load of people out there using the DN to make music that you’re/we’re unaware of.
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Beware of generalization.