AK wrote:No mate, we decided in the end to go with the strength of the MD and mix electronic with Live Punk/Ska,
So it was kinda gated drum sounds all round to give em presence and a heavy compressed feel to cut through the guitars with a lot of top end ramped up from what I can recall ( I was a bit out of it on weed )
It was kinda pre planned like I said co's they didn't want to lose the gig ( some battle of the band thing? ) . The vocalist is an Icelandic girl and she has a really croaky/low voice that was getting in the way of the sound a lot but yeah, drums came through great. I put the time and effort in though
[EDIT] No, I made the kit. Had to be hard hitting co's of the music
Now, icelandic punk/ska meets the machinedrum is worthy of recognition. You should sample some of that give it a techno massage
AK wrote:No mate, we decided in the end to go with the strength of the MD and mix electronic with Live Punk/Ska,
So it was kinda gated drum sounds all round to give em presence and a heavy compressed feel to cut through the guitars with a lot of top end ramped up from what I can recall ( I was a bit out of it on weed )
It was kinda pre planned like I said co's they didn't want to lose the gig ( some battle of the band thing? ) . The vocalist is an Icelandic girl and she has a really croaky/low voice that was getting in the way of the sound a lot but yeah, drums came through great. I put the time and effort in though
[EDIT] No, I made the kit. Had to be hard hitting co's of the music
Now, icelandic punk/ska meets the machinedrum is worthy of recognition. You should sample some of that give it a techno massage
Haha!
I'm not on Facebook anymore because I think it violates privacy but I know we had a recording and some direct HD recording for that gig so I will try to get back to that and get you a listen.
I've got a Machinedrum, not of the UW variety though.
I don't really like its "sound" for the sort of techno and house I make, although it's cool for more glitchy and digital sounds... then again I've only had it for 2 years which according to the "power users" is still very much n00b territory.
If it helps, I really like the workflow and sequencing for spontaneous jamming and often wish I'd gone for the UW for the sampling capabilities. Thinking of upgrading when I've got the cash, although I'm still not convinced by the sound so might just end up getting something else like an MPC instead.
simonb wrote:I've got a Machinedrum, not of the UW variety though.
I don't really like its "sound" for the sort of techno and house I make, although it's cool for more glitchy and digital sounds... then again I've only had it for 2 years which according to the "power users" is still very much n00b territory.
If it helps, I really like the workflow and sequencing for spontaneous jamming and often wish I'd gone for the UW for the sampling capabilities. Thinking of upgrading when I've got the cash, although I'm still not convinced by the sound so might just end up getting something else like an MPC instead.
Was it the digital sound of the box? 2 years is more than enough time imho , I bet you know quite a bit about the box.
Mine should arrive the end of the week, I am considering getting that mfb modular drum synth too.
simonb wrote:I've got a Machinedrum, not of the UW variety though.
I don't really like its "sound" for the sort of techno and house I make, although it's cool for more glitchy and digital sounds... then again I've only had it for 2 years which according to the "power users" is still very much n00b territory.
If it helps, I really like the workflow and sequencing for spontaneous jamming and often wish I'd gone for the UW for the sampling capabilities. Thinking of upgrading when I've got the cash, although I'm still not convinced by the sound so might just end up getting something else like an MPC instead.
Why did you buy it if you don't like the sounds? Yeah, it certainly doesn't want to sound analogue and that's the attraction to it in my book. I wouldn't use it as my ONLY source of drums. I like more rougher kicks - almost underproduced kicks but I absolutely love the percussive sounds I make on the MD, really blow me away sometimes and that's the reason I got it. You can get these really wierd FM percussion tones and create almost chords by layering sounds and using the parameter locks on pitch. Add efx and some sequencer magic and I'm sold. Never getting rid of mine but like I say, it wouldn't be my only source of drum type tones.
I also got a MD recently and understand where people are coming from when they talk about its bad sound.
Here are my groans:
-Its very easy to get too much going and create mush.
-It seems hard to fine tune a single sound so it fits in the mix, unless you take off all the lower end away using the high pass filter.
-It's very easy to switch on and make the clichéd plinky plonky minimal sound, and to make something a bit fatter you have to work at it. It's not like say a 909 that would give you results in no time.
-It doesn't handle lower frequencies very well as they sometimes click. Resampling lower frequencies also results in clicks. Is this due to its 12 bit engine?
-It's expensive and for the price, I think more features could have been included. I have only had it for a month and find myself thinking often already, 'I wish it could do this, or this, or this etc etc.' Surely firmware updates could solve these wishlists.
Nevertheless, I will not give up on the MD as I know some of my favourite tracks have been made on it.
On the plus side, I think it's really fun to use and to get ideas going really fast, and I know that I really need to work and work on it until I can get it purring like it should. It does have lots of potential so I just need to realise that. I do not regret buying it one bit.
I could go on about the plus points but thought I would get my gripes out first to see if anybody out there wants to contest, discuss or agree with them.
The HPF stuff is all good tho, I usually do this anyways for most sounds. Helps with the low end.
One other thing is the sequencer is ridged. It would be nice to shift notes around like you can on the octatrack. Or make custom swing patterns/amounts per channel. I'm constantly thinking I should just sequence from the daw. But then u lose parameter locks and then at that point u might as well be in the box with microtonic or some other vsti drum machine.
AK wrote:
Why did you buy it if you don't like the sounds? Yeah, it certainly doesn't want to sound analogue and that's the attraction to it in my book.
When I tried it a couple of times I got pretty excited by the hands-on sequencing, tweaking, etc. as I'd been pretty gear-starved til then. It was only after that that I started to feel a bit let down by the sound of it. I posted a thread on the Elektron forums and a lot of people were recommending a shedload of hardware and outboard gear to make it sound better, which isn't really what you want to hear a couple of years after spending a grand on the machine itself.
I'm not gonna give up on it just yet - I'm still keen to spend some more quality time with it (was messing about with a glitchy hip-hoppy thing the other day for example), and it could be a good complement to other bits of hardware/software. I've made a few decent tracks with it but I can't really see it being my principal techno drum machine.
