Elektron-Users

You really don't need big chords to make good music. Listen to anything from Bach's the French suites. You have some great interweaving melodic lines that play off one another. Some find Baroque to mathematical, so if you're not into baroque, how about any string quartet ever written? You're mainly dealing with 4 monophonic melodic lines (2 violins, a cello and a viola) If your not into classical in general, how about jazz (sans the piano or guitar). Once again... interweaving melodic lines. I personally shy away from using chords, as I find the progressions to predictable. If you feel you need to make chords, how about using an arp and setting the delay at a 3/16 repeat, and you'll create the illusion of chords.
L8r,
M.

its always to challenge yourself, it is a way to get better i think,,, but i don't think chords are cheating, they are a real musical technique, one of basic ones,

cheating is using vengeance sample and making a track where its all loops, that's just pathetic,

chords have a lot more feeling i think then just mono sounds, mono sounds are more rhythmic i find, that's why bass n stuff is all mono, i think a lot of the time chords, can direct things very well, the pace, the feeling, ,,, but if you can make a rad sound with monos nothing wrong with it,, its a choice that's fine, i like huge chord of strings, sometimes leads,

I definitely recommend the Blofeld, sequencing it from the MnM with a midi keyboard is pretty nice.. sequencing it from the OT is even nicer since the OT actually records velocity and note length.

It is easy to start from scratch and make wonderful evolving sounds, the sound engine in that bad boy is really nice.

Yes, I could - and up until recently, kind of did in one way or another.

However, I have now fallen face first in love with the Novation Ultranova, so I definiately don't want to be without it.

Monosynths, however, do offer something so rewarding and immediate - and it's so easy to write tracks with them, provided you have a few (or more).

I like duophony for overlapping voices/ "notes" ....or two monos! When you have multiple oscs in a single voice that you can tune differently I don't often feel the need to use multiple notes at once.

A lot of times I think it sounds more "out of tune" to play the chords than when I tune and stack oscillators by ear? I think it might also be why I prefer the sound of sampling chords and adjusting the pitch, even if it slows them down.

I think what's challenging or immediately rewarding is up to each one, and it depends greatly where one comes from.

I'm from rock bands, keyboards and pianos. Monophony, or even melody is not as immediate to me as is harmony. Yet it's true sometimes I feel tired of some chords progressions I've played and played and overplayed, as Xmit said.

I like monosynths since they allow 1-to increase my melody capacities 2-to have the second hand expressing on knobs rather than bass notes. But I could definitely not live without any piano or say Wurly, or even a guitar in th house.

Chords can evoke certain emotions that mono lead lines have trouble achieving I think...

I do a lot fo chord work on the MnM's MIDI tracks, using three tracks set to the same MIDI channel to make chords. Or even better, certain notes that sometimes lock into a chord structure and sometimes become lead-like.

I'd get extremely bored with just monosynths after a few months if it was me. That's one reason I am sort of split on all these new analogs coming out. It's nice to see manufacturers reinventing and re-releasing ideas, but everything is mono too and that bores to me some extent.

I like big washes of sound and textures, and while it's possible to layer monos to do it, a good polysynth is just easier.

I went a couple years without a poly synth, got a Mopho x4 last fall, and am now back to only mono synths after discovering that the option of polyphony makes me lose focus since I'm not much of a keyboard player. I spend too much time noodling around with chords without actually writing anything. Bass and vocals are my melodic foundation so I'm used to writing using mono lines (and layering for vocal harmonies).

If I find myself needing a poly synth to figure out what chords to work into a track I will use a VA plugin until I find what I want, then record note-by-note from my mono synths into the OT, then resample them all to one track. I enjoy being able to process each note separately before bouncing to one track, and though it takes more time and effort I am usually more satisfied with the results working this way. I'm with jonah in preferring the sound of altering the pitch on sampled chords, especially when done in the MDUW.

I couldn't live with only monosynths, although I have quite a few hardware ones. But really no need to: there are so many great polys out there (they just happen to be VSTs )