Elektron Musical Instruments

Thanks everyone for your comments.  A couple of more questions:

The fact that you can load patterns into a different bank than it 
was originally located, but the song can't automatically find the 
correct patterns seems a little irritating.  This seems like 
something that could be fixed with an OS update, though.  Do you 
think Elektron is able to make those sorts of improvements to their 
instrument?  (Access would, for sure...)

Another thing: 

One of the things that I like in the manual is the fact that you can 
define any of the 16 machines to be a MIDI trigger for an external 
device.  Also the ability to trigger chords (by defining the root 
and up to 2 other notes)...very neat.  My question is, can the LFO's 
modulate the MIDI parameters (i.e., MIDI note, or chord note, or 
velocity, or whatever)?  Also does the "parameter lock" method of 
recording changes  to the machine also apply to all of the MIDI 
parameters?  (I.e. could you manually program in a melodic part to 
be triggered in an external MIDI device with one machine by using 
the parameter lock system on the MIDI note parameter?)

Thanks again for all you wrote, it was read with interest...





--- In elektron-users@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Melnyk <jmelnyk@c...> 
wrote:
> On Jun 11, 2004, at 4:58 AM, andyklug wrote:
> 
> > I'm thinking about getting a machinedrum for myself.  My primary
> >  concern is about how easy or difficult it is to save and recall
> >  projects (songs, patterns and kits) at the drop of a hat.
> 
> songs, patterns and kits are somewhat separate entities, but they
> can be linked together as well. if you're in extended mode (and
> most people are 99% of the time), then a pattern has a kit
> associated with it. if you've created a song, then you've
> constructed it out of patterns (which have kits associated with
> them). so if yo load a song and press play, it will play your
> song with the appropriate patterns and kits - you don't have
> to load these separately once you've loaded the song. so
> there's no fuss, really.
> 
> there is one large caveat, however: if you do a sysex dump
> of a song/pattern/kit and then plan on reloading and playing
> it later, you may have some work to do before you can play it.
> for example, suppose that prior to the sysex dump your
> patterns resided in locations A01 through A08. so you
> programmed a song based on those pattern locations. then
> you did a sysex dump of the song, patterns and the kit(s)
> used.  you then erased patterns A01 through A08 and
> wrote a new song there.  now when you do a sysex dump
> of the old song *back* to the MD, you can choose which
> location to move the kit, patterns and song to.  so now
> suppose you move the patterns to C04 through C11.  when
> you load the song, it will try to play the patterns in locations
> A01 through A08, instead of C04 through C11.  so you now
> have to either erase what's in A01-A08 and copy your
> C04-C11 patterns there or you have to edit the song and
> change the pattern numbers (which can be time consuming
> if your song is complicated).
> 
> needless to say, this can be a tedious situation if you have
> to deal with this problem a lot.  if you seldom dump the
> memory of your MD (or you dump and reload the entire
> memory at once) then you won't run into this problem.  or
> you may just have to deal with it on rare occasions, like
> when your pattern memory's full.
> 
> that said, you should keep in mind that while this may
> detract from the "quick on its feet" aspect of the MD, the very
> nature of the MD when writing songs more than makes up
> for this.  you can work *very* quickly with its interface to
> create and sequence excellent sounds - quickly enough
> that I've improvised with it and live musicians and had no
> problem keeping up. and while software (and particularly
> "all in one" software studios like Reason, which you are
> used to) may be able to recall all of your settings at the
> click of a virtual button, their manner of working
> is not nearly as enjoyable or inspiring as the MD's is (or
> the Monomachine for that matter).
> 
> I hope that this ridiculously long email answers your
> questions :-)
> Joe
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]