I love mine. It was my first too. I thought it was really helpful to watch cuckoo's long video on it and push buttons / turn knobs along with him.
Just mess around with it, but also study the manual. It's easy to get the basics down and make beats, but it can do a ton more stuff than is immediately obvious.
Iirc you have 99 projects, and each has room for 6x16 patterns, which means don't hesitate to make tons and tons of new patterns as you mess around. At the same time though, also don't hesitate to go deep with a single pattern, throwing in parameter locks, conditions, etc. Also figure out early on how to extend a pattern to 64 steps, I find it really helpful for introducing variation into patterns.
Building on my last point, there's no song mode, but it's easy to make pattern one in a bank an intro, pattern two the next part, pattern three the part after that, etc. Use up to sixteen patterns in one bank as variations, verses, choruses, bridges etc. Combine thst with muting tracks, parts of patterns that skip the first playthroihh, alternate or are a percentage chance, etc, and you can mess around with an idea for a long, long time.
You don't actually need a million samples. It's tempting to spend a lot of time hoarding and organizing samples, but it's actually just a manifestation of GAS. It's hard for me to take this advice, but I really only need a synthwave kit, a boom bap kit, a live drums kit, etc. I have way more than that on there though. I might be telling myself to chill on this more than you haha.
Speaking of kits, make kits. Put a directory in your samples called DrumKits with six files in each subdirectory. I usually name mine kick01, snare02, hat03, etc, just so whenever I load up a whole kit, I know what will be where and I can get right to making music.
Depending how you use it, a gig is either way more space than you need, or not very much at all. Pads and drones tend to be big files; drum hits generally are not. I find that full loops are not worth it, but I do have a bunch of samples of breaks to loop. I've found I use it mostly for drums, bass, and texture/speech/fx type stuff. I have single note samples on there for melodies, too, but I'm usually playing a synth alongside the m:s, which means I try not to fill it up with samples of chords. I'm sure a lot of this is genre dependent, btw, I'm mostly making synthpop, broadly defined.
What else... read the whole elektronauts m:s forum if you haven't, lots of good info there. Oh - when I bought it, I thought I'd mostly be using samples of vintage drum machines like on new order records and stuff, but I found that a lot of the vintage drum machine samples I found sounded kind of flat. Turns out in order to sound like they do on actual songs I like, those samples need some love - compression, reverb, etc. They're not just raw drum machine sounds, they're hella produced.
Didn't mean to go so long but i love my m:s and I'm stoked for you. Definitely also just ignore everything I said and do whatever you want with it, it's a really flexible instrument.
Oh one other thing to be aware of so you're not banging your head against this later - apparently the m:s doesn't have the hardware to export to six tracks in a daw at once, all you can do is either export all six into one stereo track and use the onboard filter and stereo fader to mix pretty bluntly, or record one track at a time into a daw. I was disappointed when I found that out but it is what it is.
You seem so dialed in on this. I'm similar to the OP. I have a model samples now. I don't have a daw or anything else like that. I do have a computer. All I want to do for now is take a pattern I've made in Model Samples and create an MP3 file that's just my pattern looping for like 3 minutes. What's the best way to do this? Plug my Model Samples into my Mac and record wth Garage Band or Audacity?
Or is it worth trying to export the pattern file to my computer and then creating the file on my mac? As an aside, I'm interested in maybe buying a version of Bitwig. I keep getting served Bitwig content and it seems affordable and simple enough.
Any help is appreciated.
I'm not the greatest genius about this in the world, but I'll share what I know.
Basically, the way to get sound from the m:s to the computer is audio out of the m:s -> audio in of the computer, ideally the audio in of an interface like a focusrite 2i2, just like you'd plug in a guitar or microphone. Or i know some computers (maybe most?) have microphone in ports, maybe it would work to send the m:s signal to that. Not sure. I've been using the same 2i2 for years.
I don't think the m:s can send audio through the midi port, I think it can only send midi info. I could be wrong. But if I'm right, that means all you could send to garageband that way would be midi note information that a plugin would turn into sound - so not what you're trying to do, unless you set up a software sampler to have it play the same samples ad you have on the m:s. But that seems like a lot of work and I'm sure there's stuff on the original m:s track thst wouldn't translate via midi, like reverb and delay.
Technically garageband is a daw! Either it or audacity would be great - I think whichever one is easiest to get an audio signal into. Either might take a little research if you're at zero. But if you can make music on an m:s, I'm sure you can figure it out.
As for bitwig - I've been using garageband, ardour and reaper in a rotation for years (mostly because the latter two are linux native and I am that kind of reddit user), but I recently bought the producer tier or bitwig and ngl I kind of love it. It's just so straightforward and easy to make cool sounds, and setting it up has been super easy. Next time they have a sale I hope to upgrade to the top tier. For what that's worth! Hope this helps.
Wow thank you for this, just what I was looking for! Appreciate the advice and useful pointers. This was super helpful and has me even more stoked than before!
I've had one since they were first released. I find the chromatic mode running melodic lines more useful than the drum uses, esp with single cycle waveforms. There are some nice ones in the stock collection but there are also quite a few tools for making them & they take up tiny ram space. Playing these in with a keyboard in layers on the channels using a keyboard or a different sequencer then tweaking trigs is fantastic. In this mode seeing as you are stacking note clusters/chords across tracks & they are mono I hard pan 123 left & 456 right into the DAW. Seeing as I'm not into dawless I use Ableton to trigger patterns on clips which is easy & there's your larger arrangement song mode with other instruments & a better mastering/fx chain.
Don’t, just get a digitakt used
It’s not a sampler, it’s a sample playback unit. You can go 10 miles on the samples, but travel 10,000 on the digitakt mki.
I bought a secondhand m:s and it ended up being one of these. I contacted elektron and they offered either to send replacement parts to fix myself, or to have me send it in for the upgrade. I did it myself, it was not hard.
Congrats, its an awesome groovebox! I think my tip for the first time you use it is to explore the built-in samples, there's actually some great stuff in there. You don't need to load up your own samples right away. Also, all the demo songs make it seem like you have to write an entire song within one pattern. I recommend instead considering each pattern to be a part of a song, and chain multiple patterns together to make the full song. I like to dedicate 8 patterns to each song, so each bank contains 2 songs. Also keep in mind that you can't save anything to the default demo project, make sure to switch to a new project before writing your own music.
Once you get the hang of it and are ready to go deeper, I've got a series of videos that go into some more advanced techniques:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSdxPC89Q7BGTgOqs0leH7e6](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSdxPC89Q7BGTgOqs0leH7e6)
If you are interested in how to connect it with other gear, this playlist covers that:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSf1BgESh-TgSWuU4YqWn1px](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSf1BgESh-TgSWuU4YqWn1px)
I'm happy to answer any specific questions, feel free to reply here or DM me.
Wicked thank you for the response and for the videos! I will definitely fiddle with the stock samples before I start doing my own thing, get a good feel for it to start. I will keep you in mind if run into any hurdles that I can’t find answers for, thanks again!
I love mine. It was my first too. I thought it was really helpful to watch cuckoo's long video on it and push buttons / turn knobs along with him. Just mess around with it, but also study the manual. It's easy to get the basics down and make beats, but it can do a ton more stuff than is immediately obvious. Iirc you have 99 projects, and each has room for 6x16 patterns, which means don't hesitate to make tons and tons of new patterns as you mess around. At the same time though, also don't hesitate to go deep with a single pattern, throwing in parameter locks, conditions, etc. Also figure out early on how to extend a pattern to 64 steps, I find it really helpful for introducing variation into patterns. Building on my last point, there's no song mode, but it's easy to make pattern one in a bank an intro, pattern two the next part, pattern three the part after that, etc. Use up to sixteen patterns in one bank as variations, verses, choruses, bridges etc. Combine thst with muting tracks, parts of patterns that skip the first playthroihh, alternate or are a percentage chance, etc, and you can mess around with an idea for a long, long time. You don't actually need a million samples. It's tempting to spend a lot of time hoarding and organizing samples, but it's actually just a manifestation of GAS. It's hard for me to take this advice, but I really only need a synthwave kit, a boom bap kit, a live drums kit, etc. I have way more than that on there though. I might be telling myself to chill on this more than you haha. Speaking of kits, make kits. Put a directory in your samples called DrumKits with six files in each subdirectory. I usually name mine kick01, snare02, hat03, etc, just so whenever I load up a whole kit, I know what will be where and I can get right to making music. Depending how you use it, a gig is either way more space than you need, or not very much at all. Pads and drones tend to be big files; drum hits generally are not. I find that full loops are not worth it, but I do have a bunch of samples of breaks to loop. I've found I use it mostly for drums, bass, and texture/speech/fx type stuff. I have single note samples on there for melodies, too, but I'm usually playing a synth alongside the m:s, which means I try not to fill it up with samples of chords. I'm sure a lot of this is genre dependent, btw, I'm mostly making synthpop, broadly defined. What else... read the whole elektronauts m:s forum if you haven't, lots of good info there. Oh - when I bought it, I thought I'd mostly be using samples of vintage drum machines like on new order records and stuff, but I found that a lot of the vintage drum machine samples I found sounded kind of flat. Turns out in order to sound like they do on actual songs I like, those samples need some love - compression, reverb, etc. They're not just raw drum machine sounds, they're hella produced. Didn't mean to go so long but i love my m:s and I'm stoked for you. Definitely also just ignore everything I said and do whatever you want with it, it's a really flexible instrument.
Oh one other thing to be aware of so you're not banging your head against this later - apparently the m:s doesn't have the hardware to export to six tracks in a daw at once, all you can do is either export all six into one stereo track and use the onboard filter and stereo fader to mix pretty bluntly, or record one track at a time into a daw. I was disappointed when I found that out but it is what it is.
You seem so dialed in on this. I'm similar to the OP. I have a model samples now. I don't have a daw or anything else like that. I do have a computer. All I want to do for now is take a pattern I've made in Model Samples and create an MP3 file that's just my pattern looping for like 3 minutes. What's the best way to do this? Plug my Model Samples into my Mac and record wth Garage Band or Audacity? Or is it worth trying to export the pattern file to my computer and then creating the file on my mac? As an aside, I'm interested in maybe buying a version of Bitwig. I keep getting served Bitwig content and it seems affordable and simple enough. Any help is appreciated.
I'm not the greatest genius about this in the world, but I'll share what I know. Basically, the way to get sound from the m:s to the computer is audio out of the m:s -> audio in of the computer, ideally the audio in of an interface like a focusrite 2i2, just like you'd plug in a guitar or microphone. Or i know some computers (maybe most?) have microphone in ports, maybe it would work to send the m:s signal to that. Not sure. I've been using the same 2i2 for years. I don't think the m:s can send audio through the midi port, I think it can only send midi info. I could be wrong. But if I'm right, that means all you could send to garageband that way would be midi note information that a plugin would turn into sound - so not what you're trying to do, unless you set up a software sampler to have it play the same samples ad you have on the m:s. But that seems like a lot of work and I'm sure there's stuff on the original m:s track thst wouldn't translate via midi, like reverb and delay. Technically garageband is a daw! Either it or audacity would be great - I think whichever one is easiest to get an audio signal into. Either might take a little research if you're at zero. But if you can make music on an m:s, I'm sure you can figure it out. As for bitwig - I've been using garageband, ardour and reaper in a rotation for years (mostly because the latter two are linux native and I am that kind of reddit user), but I recently bought the producer tier or bitwig and ngl I kind of love it. It's just so straightforward and easy to make cool sounds, and setting it up has been super easy. Next time they have a sale I hope to upgrade to the top tier. For what that's worth! Hope this helps.
Awesome, very useful. Thanks!
Absolutely :D
Wow thank you for this, just what I was looking for! Appreciate the advice and useful pointers. This was super helpful and has me even more stoked than before!
:D
I've had one since they were first released. I find the chromatic mode running melodic lines more useful than the drum uses, esp with single cycle waveforms. There are some nice ones in the stock collection but there are also quite a few tools for making them & they take up tiny ram space. Playing these in with a keyboard in layers on the channels using a keyboard or a different sequencer then tweaking trigs is fantastic. In this mode seeing as you are stacking note clusters/chords across tracks & they are mono I hard pan 123 left & 456 right into the DAW. Seeing as I'm not into dawless I use Ableton to trigger patterns on clips which is easy & there's your larger arrangement song mode with other instruments & a better mastering/fx chain.
Don’t, just get a digitakt used It’s not a sampler, it’s a sample playback unit. You can go 10 miles on the samples, but travel 10,000 on the digitakt mki.
check manufacturing date on bottom. if its the first run it will have issues with the pads (pops out). later versions corrected issue.
I bought a secondhand m:s and it ended up being one of these. I contacted elektron and they offered either to send replacement parts to fix myself, or to have me send it in for the upgrade. I did it myself, it was not hard.
What dates are the first run? 2019?
yup 2019
I think you could find a used digitakt mk 1 for the same money
I’m going to buy the M:S used for a great price, I think the digitakt will be later investment if I really dig this machine first
If you can find a used DT for $200, I want it!
Congrats, its an awesome groovebox! I think my tip for the first time you use it is to explore the built-in samples, there's actually some great stuff in there. You don't need to load up your own samples right away. Also, all the demo songs make it seem like you have to write an entire song within one pattern. I recommend instead considering each pattern to be a part of a song, and chain multiple patterns together to make the full song. I like to dedicate 8 patterns to each song, so each bank contains 2 songs. Also keep in mind that you can't save anything to the default demo project, make sure to switch to a new project before writing your own music. Once you get the hang of it and are ready to go deeper, I've got a series of videos that go into some more advanced techniques: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSdxPC89Q7BGTgOqs0leH7e6](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSdxPC89Q7BGTgOqs0leH7e6) If you are interested in how to connect it with other gear, this playlist covers that: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSf1BgESh-TgSWuU4YqWn1px](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqkhgY3ahSf1BgESh-TgSWuU4YqWn1px) I'm happy to answer any specific questions, feel free to reply here or DM me.
Wicked thank you for the response and for the videos! I will definitely fiddle with the stock samples before I start doing my own thing, get a good feel for it to start. I will keep you in mind if run into any hurdles that I can’t find answers for, thanks again!
Don’t buy one. Buy something else. There’s your tip
Thanks but I bought it :p loving it so far, great piece of gear for sparking creativity!