Elektron-Users

Here goes...

Came across Daren Ager's video where he sequences his Korg MS 20 with the Machinedrum and it blew my mind. Read up on it and gave it a shot last night with my Arp Axxe.

I created the 2 GND machines etc...
IMP going to the Trig In
SIN to the CV In

It worked (sort of...) and am wondering if anyone has any ideas for me.

Basically, the only way I get sound is to turn up the VCA gain on my Arp all the way. At that point I can hear the "notes" being triggered but there is a continous underlying drone, which is a pretty cool effect but I want to be able trigger single notes.

Everything seems routed correctly as per Daren's instrcutions

Any ideas on how to do this.

The Arp has CV I/O
Trig I/O
and Gate I/O (not in use)

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

If you plug a loose cable into the gate input of CV gear, it typically will just open the gate creating a drone (useful little trick). My guess is that you're droning because the Axxe isn't getting a strong enough gate trigger from the impulse machine, so it's basically thinking a cable is plugged in with nothing coming through.

Another cause could be that the impulse isn't long enough for the Axxe to open the gate. Instead of an impulse machine, you could try a rimshot, clap, or some other perc sound that's loud and sharp.

Both great ideas. Will try this evening. Thanks for the quick reply.

Hello! I just saw your PM but thought I'd reply here to help others maybe in the future.

I think the Arp stuff is V-Trig meaning that you will need to set the IMP machine to positive pulse, from the top of my head you should leave the DOWN and DVAL around the centre or at the default values, and the UP and UVAL quite high, you might also need to ensure the volume is as high as possible and try accents too. If it does not work with these settings on the trig in, try the gate in. You could also try turning DOWN and DVAL all the way down.

Good luck, and reply back in this thread to let us know how you get on

Thanks to both of you for the ideas. I spent a while last night monkeying around. I apologize if some of this doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense but being a novice to all of this everything has been a bit of trial and error. Hopefully I don't blow anything up while I'm at it.

A note for anyone else trying to do this: The first mistake on my part was not setting the Accent on all of the tracks as per Daren’s instructions. I set it for the machines but didn't realize I had to do this manually for tracks. I mistakenly thought that on that first accent screen when I selected all and cranked it up that was all I needed to do. Stupid. You actually have to go in and engage each step on the sequencer.

I actually tried all of the suggestions with varying results.

The loose cable in the Gate didn't work for me with the Arp.

Routing to the Gate instead of the Trig was a definite improvement and all of a sudden I had a lot of juice without turning the VCA gain up and was generating single hits. Still couldn't pitch them all that well.

I tried a more percussive sound and wound up with a totally different sound which was cool. Claps worked well. I also tried a BD which sounded crazy.

I tried many variations with the values on the IMP machine ... though I had no idea what I was actually doing. I even read the manual! Still can’t wrap my head around the values there. It actually seemed to work fine with Daren's initial settings. Will experiment more with this in the future.

Struggled to get anything where I could control the “notes” very much. One thing I found that helped with this somewhat was to mess with the decay a bit. I put in some parameter locks with longer decays and it kind of started to sound a little bit like 303.

Still looking for ideas on how to better control the notes I'm playing. I came across a pitch chart someone came up with and plan to see how that works out.

Made a few weird and wonderful discoveries... I ran one of the MD outputs, sorry but can't remember if it was E or F into the Arp's external input. All of a sudden I had two "layers" playing at once. It sounded radical but only one of the sounds had any pitch control. Wondering if I ran a Y cable of some sort or set up a third machine with identical settings and an output what would happen. Also noticed that by unplugging one of the MD outs (again can't remember which one E or F) I could switch notes using the Arp's keyboard.

Also wondering if I could incorporate an Electrix Filter Factory that is collecting dust in my closet with this set-up. One thing at a time…

Thanks again for the help.