Elektron-Users

Last night I was fooling with the CTR machines on my newly received upgraded MD UW (well worth the money and 1 month wait, btw). I had never used the CTR machines before and I screwed up my kit completely. Is there any way to undo this havoc? From what I've read(and from my experience last night), it seems like the CTR machine changes are impossible to undo or readjust. Is there any detailed documentation on what the CTR machines do and their purpose? I've searched the list and the Elektron website. The explanations seem a bit cryptic. I'm a little leery of using these, given the carnage that they've caused already ("...don't touch the red button!").

Thanks in advance.

A good idea is to load the original Kit you saved.

It's actually a good effect in my opinion. You mangle the kit with function button. Then you load the kit back at the right timing of the loop.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, the CTR machines are a way of having another (mangled) version of the kit to play the same sequence, yes?

I'm not sure what you mean by mangling the kit with the function button. Could you be a bit more explicit? What does the function button have to do with the control machines?

Hope I'm not trying your patience.

holding function changes parameters for all machines simultaneously - from my understanding, the CTR machiens automate this like parameter locks would to a single sequencer. So, lets say you want the entire pattern to drop in pitch - this could either be done manually - by holding the function knob - or you can automate it with the CTR machines.

Its prime directive is to control all, thus the name.

OK - thanks! Looks like I've got some investigating to do...

yeah, itd be nice to have a manual update! These things came in to play with OS 1.20 I think, and there has not been a manual update in a while.

i'll just throw out how after playing with the CTR-AL machine, i re-fell in love with my MD. i mean, you can really get some unexpected sounds if you play with it long enough. it can be a bit wild...i like first changing parameter #2 on the first page, which is usually decay for a lot of machines, cut this down pretty low and your kit gets nice and blippy most of the time...then play with the filters...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

and yes, fear not, in extended mode just load another pattern that loads another kit and the previous kit is restored to normal.

i love how the MD works like this...it encourages you to tweak a kit, however precious, and take it somewhere new. if you don't like it, just load another one and the other is restored. if you like it, save it or save it as something else and keep both...

the fixed the CC automation parameters for these machines, so now i'm working with automating it in Cubase! crazy possibilites

or if you don't want to change patterns, you can always just use the kit menu to reload the original kit (can do while playing sequence with no interruption, gotta love that).

Just be careful not to save your kit after CTRL-ALL tweaking!!!

One thing that could be better about the ctrl-all function (including function+knob twist) is that I don't like how the original settings are lost after tweaking. If I do an all-track filter sweep down to 0, then back to 64, my tracks will lose any of their original filter offsets, because once they hit 0, they ignore further all-track tweaks. It would be better if the MD tracked a negative value internally in this case, clipping to 0 for the sound engine, but accurately preserving the offsets in the param for each track. That way you could do an all-sweep down, then back to center and the kit would be like it was originally. Would be more useful that way, but maybe too complex on the software side (since it would require twice the bit depth per parameter value).

ggoodwin wrote:
It would be better if the MD tracked a negative value internally in this case, clipping to 0 for the sound engine, but accurately preserving the offsets in the param for each track.I agree, this would be totally rad! and I remember mentioning it to them during the beta test phase. I don't remember whether they said it would be impossible, buggy or too difficult but either way it apparently wasn't done! it might be that the parameters are only 7 bit (which is weird, but that's the way MIDI values are) and so they can only go from 0 to 127.

it doesn't seem like anyone's done a complete synopsis of the CTR machines yet, so I'll take the liberty...

there are two CTR machines: CTR-AL and CTR-8P
- the CTR-8P machine allows you to assign whatever you want to the first 8 parameters of the machine (i.e. on the synthesis page). you can take any parameter from any other loaded machine and assign it to one of these. which means that you can stare at one control page and tweak completely different and independent parameters for several different machines without having to change pages or active tracks. in addition, you can sequence changes to these parameters via parameter locks. what's great about this is that the locks on a CTR machine track (for this or for the CTR-AL) don't trig anything; they just change parameters. which is great because this is the only feature that the Monomachine's sequencer has over the Machinedrum's and these machines make it possible.

- the CTR-AL machine changes the respective parameter on every track. it's the same as holding FUNCTION while changing a parameter on a track. the difference here is that you can sequence these global parameter changes through parameter locks.

hope that helps! :-D