Anyone use a Machinedrum to trigger analogue synths?

[AK]

Some of you may or may not know this but there's a way to sync up pre Midi gear via the Elektron Machinedrum. I can only speak in my case about the Roland SH-101 but I have it jamming along nicely being triggered by the Machinedrum.

For those that don't know this, here's what I've tried so far ( yet to experiment more ) And for anyone who does know, anything else to add would be cool as I'm still experimenting.

1/ First, connect a 1/4" jack lead from a spare output on the MD to the EXT Clock in on the 101 ( maybe other analogue synths too? )

2/ You need pulse of some sort, so on the MD, pick one of the sounds and edit it to be a GND - IM

3/ Go in global editing and set the GND-IM output to whatever you used in step 1.

3/. Program a pattern and ( in my case the 101 ) gets triggered. Well, I say that because what I've done is drop some random notes in the 101's step sequencer and then programmed some events on various steps using the trigger GND machine on the MD and it's triggerring the 101in a very inspiring way. I also tried activating the arppegiator, holding down a chord/notes and doing it that way but I'm getting much more interesting results via the 101's step sequencer being triggered.

Anyway, if anyone else does this, got any neat tips to try? On the 101, I'm experimenting with the various gate and envelopes to see how it affects the sound but it's really cool whatever you do, it's impossible to fck up into a sh!t soud.

[hydrogen]

i've been trying to do this on the JP6 for the arpeggio but its kind of sparatic... At first i found sometimes it triggers sometimes it doesn't and it doesn't work in hold mode. i tweaked some of the impulse settings and i got it working but.... while running the arpeggio I have to keep a key pressed all the time or the next time i press a new set of keys it will sometimes lag for a varied amount of beats and then finally the new keys will start to arpeggio. weird.

[AK]

It's a bit quirky what I was trying earlier as well. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, I can't seem to control what's happening note-wise with any degree of certainty, it's almost polyrhythmic and some events on the MD aren't always triggerring the 101, with a simple bar looping over, the events may or may not get triggered each time . Even so, I might use it in the future for some sparse effects. I switched in portamento on the 101 and entered some notes/rests and holds in its sequencer with low and high values and it spat out these incredibly odd but sometimes cool sequences. I haven't even figured out precisely how the step sequencer works on the 101 though. It's been yrs since I had a previous one. Whatever I enter seems to get played back in anything but 4/4 when I'm wanting 4/4. Whether this has anything to do with the seemingly random sequences I get when triggering it from the MD is anybody's guess.

Tomorrow I want to try and sequence the Bass Station from the MD midi machines which in turn is using CV to sequence the 101. No idea how that works yet so I might be up on here pestering people. I don't even know what the leads are for that? Are they just standard 1/4 inch jack to 3.5mm? That's the connection type size required ( 3.5mm on the 101 and 1/4 on the BS )

I also want to try and do it using Propellerhead Reason. I read a blog where a guy called Peff did it:

some quotes

After wiring everything up, it took about 90 seconds to find the right calibration settings and I had Reason sending Note CV and Gate CV signals out through the MOTU 896HD into an old Oberheim CPS-1 / S.E.M. module. A bit of tweaking was required to get the note cv scaling set, but after finding the right settings, I had Thor acting as a MIDI to CV converter.

With this Thor patch, it’s possible to control analog synthesizer systems (in this case the Oberheim S.E.M.) from the Reason MIDI Sequencer, Thor Pattern Sequencer, Matrix Pattern Sequencer, any LFO source in Reason, and the RPG-8 Monophonic Arpeggiator. It should also be noted that because the Reason 4.0 sequencer is sample accurate, theoretically, the synchronization should be very solid when sending CV signals through the MOTU audio interface.

[steevio]

couple of things, clock inputs on analogue synths usually respond to the rising edge of a waveform, so a pulse or squarewave is a good choice. in other words if you send a simple Low Frequency squarewave to your 101 it will synch up without any problems. - or send it a rimshot / click or something with a very short attack - or of course a dedicated trigger if you have one.

101 sequencer - when loading the sequence, just count the notes (a rest or hold counts as a note) and if its divisable by 4 your in 4/4. odd numbers or anything divisable by 3 will give you polymeters.