Tips for Using the Monomachine (Using Information from the Elektron-Users Forum) Compiled by tIB
Tips for Using the Monomachine Version 1.01 This document has been compiled using posts from the Elektron-Users website. Apologies for not listing names, it proved to be too time consuming. If you have any suggestions for things that are missing, have spotted any glaring mistakes or you have something you would like to add then PM me at the Elektron-Users forum and I’ll update. Happy tweaking, tIB www.virb.
Contents: Basics …………………………………………... 4 Synth………………………………………………………………….. Seq……………………………………………………………………. Song Mode…………………………………………………………… External seq………………………………………………………….. 4 4 4 5 Advanced Sequencer ………………………… 6 Recording modes……………………………………………………. P-locks………………………………………………………………... Trigless trigs…………………………………………………………. Kits/patches………………………………………………………….. LFO…………………………………………………………………… Swing…………………………………………………………………. Arp……………………………………………………………………. Transpose…………………………………………………………....
MONOMACHINE SYNTH BASICS Basic Monomachine vocabulary: Machines = Synthesis ie. SWave, SID, DIGIPro, FM+, VCO and FX Tracks (1-6) = host your desired Machines and Patterns Patterns = the total or whole of the 6 track parts. Kits contain all of these...Machines, Tracks, Patterns and Midi data. Think of Kit's as the equivalent to the MPC's Programs…Just remember that its all integrated. Machines > Tracks > Patterns (you don't need a pattern to hear the machines though.....
You can change the start point and length of a pattern from within songmode. What this means is you can literally remix and rehash patterns from within songmode. This is also possible with the MD. So, for example: Instead of your pattern starting on its first beat, it starts on the third beat and comes in off-beat, you can use this to create stutters and that feeling that the beat has just fallen in on itself before you right it a couple of bars later etc.. ...
ADVANCED SEQUENCER FUNCTIONS REAL TIME AND STEP RECORDING Step recording is done by pressing the record button. Realtime recording can be accessed without stopping the pattern by holding rec and play together: 1. Put your gear playing 2. if you now just press the record-button you enter into grid programming 3. If you press record and while pressing the record also press play, you enter to live record more (which is of course quantised to grid). RECORDING MELODY LINES BY PRESSING THE TRIG KEYS 1.
PARAMETER LOCKS Perhaps the most important aspect of the monomachine sequencer is the concept of parameter locks. Experiment with them as much as you can and you will soon discover just how powerful they really are. Choose track 1. Make sure the record led is firmly lit and not flashing by pressing the RECORD key. Press the DATA PAGE keys and choose the filter page. Press and hold a TRIG key containing a note trig. A note trig is indicated by a firmly lit led above the TRIG key.
The trigless trigs feature on the Monomachne seems too cool to be under-utilized given that it seems unique and really extends the grid sequencing paradigm as far as hardware sequencers go. Trigless trigs mean that you can change parameters without having to launch certain other parameters: For instance, let's say you have a sequence and would like to retrigger the LFO without retriggering the amp envelope or some other parameters, you can with trigless trigs. You could do the same with notes.
Go into edit (almost like you are setting up or changing the current machine) but don't select a machine. When you are in the machine selection window (IE. saw, sid, vo, etc) press function and copy Select the track you want to copy to (1 through 6 on the right side of the MnM) then press function and paste. You just exit out of the machine window and you are done. If you want to save your change then save the kit as normal.
SWING The swing percentage amount is for all tracks. You can’t have individual track swing amounts. But whats is possible is to change where in the 16 step it should swing and where not: You can set the grid steps that have swing applied for each individual track AND a global swing track. The global swing amount is applied to every step on every track which you specify.
Parameter lock one of the LFO's on the note that has to slide to the second one. The waveform I use is saw up ( /| )for slide up and saw down ( |\) for a slide down. You have to play a little with the speed and amount etc to make the slide work, and MOST IMPORTANT you have to transpose the note you're sliding because it's really out of tune because of the LFO you apply. Use parameter locks on the portamento feature Turn portamento up and just let the the notes overlap on a internal sequencer.
MULTITRIG Multi trig mode basically means you can play all 6 machines on 1 midi ch, so you have to set the multi trig ch on the mnm to the same as what you are playing it from. Mine is set 1-6 machines 7 multi trig ch etc. This is set in the global section Multi trig responds to midi track 11 or 10 only, though I believe you can change this in the global settings menu. Play some keys at it from MIDI ch 11, should work.
MACHINES BEATBOX: The MnM has 6 internal tracks, each of which is monophonic. In the case of using the beatbox, you can only trigger one sample per step on a single track. You can change the sample over the course of a sequence, so you could have: Kick - Hat - Kick Snare Hat Hat However, you can't trigger two samples at the same time with just one track. The MNM beatbox’s monophony is a major limitation; you can't layer drum sounds within a track, so you need to use multiple tracks, i.e.
FM To understand more about FM synthesis in general try this article. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may00/articles/synth.
The MKII 1.20 update brings the new functionality of the Digi Ensemble and Draw machines and included are waveforms. The waveforms are preloaded by default. So you can replace them with your own sound but can't delete them from memory. Confused? Ok, so the defaults are always there. You can overwrite a waveform by uploading your own, but if you delete your uploaded waveform the default will take it's place. The slots are never empty essentially.
A wikipedia wavetable explantion: To begin the process, the sound of an existing instrument (a single note) is sampled and processed using a spectrum analyzer, producing a graph of overtones contained in the sample. This graph is then parsed into a sequence of samples or wavetables, each having one period or cycle per table, generated by adding together the partials at each parse point. A set of wavetables with user specified harmonic content can also be generated mathematically.
SOUND PROGRAMMING BASS FM+ is always my first port of call for basslines (im a big fan of sega megadrive sounds), just experimenting with the envelopes on simple FM ratio settings can give wild bass sounds. The filter works like a band pass filter with double resonance. Lots of resonance on the HPF will result in a resonant peak at the lower end of the audio spectra, whereas resonance on the LPF gives more empahsis to the top end of the spectra. There is infact only one filter envelope.
Add just a little distorsion to the sound, barely audible. Combined with a fast filter envelope adds a bit more definition to the attack phase of the sound. Distorsion could also be controlled by a triggered single shot ramp LFO. Here are some bass related observations and tests: 1. Bigger range of usefull bass-tones MnM can deliver a loads of bass, no prblem with that. Most of the time I end up creating too bassy or too low tones for being anything usefull.
303 style/Acid Bass: 303 basses cant be done accurately because: a) There's no 303-like saw oscillator - SID saw will do just fine though. b) No filter like in 303 available (MnM has 24dB/oct, 303 has 18dB/oct) However, 303ish or ‘acid’ sounds are possible; Just use saw oscillator and disable envelope tracking in settings. If you want slides use p-locked portamento.
Dubstep bass: The wobble= Sine, Distortion, LFO to pitch and/or filter, parameter lock LFO speed. You could also try that on the fm machines. DRUMS Note: before drum programming with mono read this: MNM oscillator properties: When VA appears in 1995 this was the ultimate feature to have ina synth, because "each notes sounds different than the other, like in a real analog" I checked it and found that even true the change isn´t that bad as you can´t use the mono for drums...
I tried from the beginnig messing with the filter, as I do on my MS20, get the Q to the top and play with the env amount. The result was a good powerful "909style" kick but with a kind of oscillation that turns every kick a bit different... quite unstable. Try some layering to get some attack, thats the classic way to create a full drum hit. Maybe add some filternoise, and or some fm attacky to the sin.
something like the synthetic drums in some early digital home organs, like casio VL-1, SK-1 and the like. So I use the classic model of a short tuned spike attack followd by a noise burst with longer decay If you use an exponential decayed LFO in on-shot mode to modulate the wave of the SID you get a sound that could go from the triangle wave to the noise one very quicly, so this makes a really close aproximation of the model I described...
Try using the EQ as a notch filter for phasing effects: set gain negative and sweep frequency slowly with an LFO. You can get shimmering tones with the high pass filter: Start with the cut off high and sweep slowly into the mids, with some LFO for extra movement. Slow values of the interlace parameter on the LFO can also add sparkling effects. Sweeping SRR can also give sparkling tones, especially into a delay.
F +3 +6 +8 and vary last 2 steps with D +3+7+ +10 C# +3 +7 +11 ORGAN TONES Start with a supersaw set the three pitches to taste automate filter sweeps with lfo a very common thing to get organs in analog synths is to use a sub oscillator TWO octaves below the main oscillator....then choose a square wave for the main oscillator; you can get such oscillator arranges by using the superwqve square or ensemble In ensemble you can also get some intermediate harmonics by setting notes to specific intervals...
Distortion on the MnM is very crude and digital so maybe it not suited for dub organs, you´ll go better with an external analog devise, a tube one ore a modelling thing like the some of the POD models. Organ patch: IMPORTANT : FIRST turn OFF the keyboard tracking of both filters. KIT > ASSIGN > KEY > HPF and LPF has to be in OFF.
PAGE = PITCH DEST = 1/12 TRIG = FREE WAVE = TRI MULT = 32x SPEED = 64 INTL = 0 DEPTH = 33 -------------------------------------------------------------LFO 2 PAGE = AMP DEST = VOL TRIG = FREE WAVE = TRI MULT = 32x SPEED = 50 INTL = 0 DEPTH = 12 -------------------------------------------------------------LFO 3 PAGE = AMP DEST = PAN TRIG = FREE WAVE = TRI MULT = 16x SPEED = 64 INTL = 0 DEPTH = 55 Go to octave 6...
You can get some nice ensemble/string sounds in with the Superwave-ENS. The biggest difficulty is doing those sounds in mono. Consider putting the Mono in poly mode while you're making those sounds. Pseudo Karplus Strong synthesis with the FM engine that has feedback. Though that sounds closer to real strings, rather than analogue strings... I'll have a fiddle when I get home to my gear.
PAGE = SYNT DEST = PW TRIG = FREE WAVE = TRI MULT = 1x SPEED = 8 INTL = 0 DEPTH = 36 -------------------------------------------------------------LFO 2 PAGE = FILT DEST = WDTH TRIG = FREE WAVE = TRI MULT = 1x SPEED = 57 INTL = 0 DEPTH = 2 or 3 -------------------------------------------------------------LFO 3 PAGE = SYN DEST = TUN TRIG = FREE WAVE = TRI MULT = 32x SPEED = 44 INTL = 0 DEPTH = 10 Try it in multi mode from trigger octave 4 and up the low notes sounds closer to the ARP machines, if you can get
Copy a pattern and then switch off the trigs of the track I want to fade out slowly into the next pattern so it should work during various patterns provided Hold/Dec parameters are set high enough. This could also be good for creating less subtle walls of sound, especially in combination with setting the delay feedback parameter to a high setting to add another layer. Make sure not to overlook the trigless trigs on the Mono, perfect for changing the sound without retriggering envelopes (unless you want).
INPUTS: The monomachine inputs open up many possibilities for external sound processing. If you are suffering a low level or noise loss make sure you turn off Filtertracking. See the joystick-menu and turn both lpf- and hpf-tracking off. You can run an external audio signal through the monomachines filter section and the entire env, SRR, dist., etc. block, though you may have to trigger the filter using the sequencer.
I use the 6 Mono outs constantly as well as the input (mainly processing NL2x). Don’t forget to route your mixers send back into the monos inputs for more onboard processing. You can also route out to do frequency cuts.
Factory Reset/Pattern Nuke: Turn off. Power up while holding 'Function'. Presto Sysex: press: Function + Global (pattern/song) go to: File then: Sysex Receive Cases: Pelican Cases Model 1500 this model can hold one MM SFX-60 or MD series Model 1550 capable of holding two units Model 1700 cable of holding two units lengthwise Model 1720 works excellent for the Monomachine SFX-6 Misc. Options Old trumpet cases. Photography stores have nice hard plastic flight cases for cheap.
