A gateway to something more

Preface

This isn’t so much a review of the Monomachine, nor a tutorial (you can find amazing Monomachine tutorials starting here), it’s more about my experience and history using the Monomachine. Perhaps it will give you some insights or better yet, give you something to read to fall asleep to.

My first interest in the Elektron Monomachine

Back in 2013, I was very much interested in grooveboxes (I still am, but I was then too). I had, in 2011, purchased the Radikal Technologies Spectralis 2 (which I did the Vintage Synth Review for, here). When I was originally buying that, I had actually been torn between that Spectralis and the Elektron Machinedrum. This is funny to me because the Spectralis and Machinedrum (both items I currently own) are nothing alike. In fact, I have no idea why or how I stumbled onto the Monomachine, since my big interest was in the Machinedrum. There’s a Machinedrum video (this video here) that just blew me away and that’s all I could watch for weeks at a time. Anyone who’s ever been interested in the Machinedrum must know where that link takes you to. So, how did I even get interested in the Monomachine? There was one specific artist that caught my ear, and that’s where my adventure began.

Back in the day, YouTube didn’t have monetization. Back then you found artists that just did their jams/performances not for any personal gain besides getting people to hear their music. And wow I stumbled on something great on this channel. Normally I don’t share other people’s work on my website, but this is an exception. This person singlehandedly got me interested in the Monomachine. To this day I find this specific performance so incredibly good. All of the track transitions. Just 30 minutes that my ears cannot turn away from. In fact, I am listening to it now. Well, not now, not when you’re reading this, but when I was writing it (the now that is obviously now past tense for you).

I miss those days of YouTube. Today, it is incredibly difficult to find new interesting music like this. In fact, when I tried searching for this video, I couldn’t find it. So much monetized stuff floods the first few pages and you just can’t find music there anymore, at least not easily, and not like that. It was gold. It seems YouTube is all about side hustles, monetization, buy this, buy that, don’t buy this, don’t buy that (to be clear, all of the ‘don’t buy this’ videos are actually telling you to buy it, they just want you to watch their video first). And then those ‘shorts’ videos that you can’t skip forward and have bad aspect ratios. Ok, I’m getting off-topic here. I just have to say, it stinks to know what used to be so great, and YouTube has been nice to get people to hear my music, where they otherwise wouldn’t, but now I’m stuck in a place where sharing music isn’t what it’s geared towards at all.

Elektron Monomachine: Back on track

Ok, so much for all my digressions. Here I am now to talk about the Monomachine, that’s what you’re here for right? If you know nothing about the Monomachine, I’m not here to indulge you, you can pretty easily figure out what to make of it on your own. I will say only this about it and why it’s so interesting to me. The Monomachine has 6 tracks. Each track can be assigned a different ‘machine’ which can be anything from basic sine waves, to saw and pulse waves, odd FM tracks, vocal tracks (vocalized synth sounds), a SID engine, and some others (I only own the MKI versions, and I believe the MKII version allows import of user waves?). You can also change from mono mode (a single note per track) to having a poly mode (all 6 voices on a track). The poly mode isn’t dynamically allocating voices like the Analog 4 does (and perhaps other units do). This would have been an awesome feature, but alas, it doesn’t do that. Needless to say, there’s a LOT of things going on. Plus, you can use FX tracks to affect other tracks (the FX can actually be used with sound being input to create a time/sequence based pedal for your guitar/synth).

I believe back in the day, I think folks felt the Monomachine sounded ‘flat’ or thin. So they were being sold fairly cheaply. I think the ‘Analog Renaissance’ played a role too. Who wanted a digital machine in 2013? And so it came to pass that I bought my first Monomachine for $850 in October 2013 from jack07777 on eBay. I remember teaching a class and being so incredibly terrified. Then after I was done, I got to my girlfriend’s (now wife) apartment and sitting down and playing the Monomachine. It was such a cathartic experience. However, that feeling was short-lived when it suddenly wouldn’t boot up (a known issue, see my post here). Here’s all I would see:

Panicking, I eventually returned the Monomachine. I followed up and ordered a new one on eBay for $616 (I was just reading my conversation with cableonia). Well, after a few weeks, the first unit that I had bought and returned popped up back on eBay for $250. I was utterly shocked and ordered it again anyway, figured some parts could be used as a backup for the new one I bought. As I reached out to the seller, I learned that someone else bought it. I was a bit sad, but the seller said they’d rather deal with someone in the States than someone foreign (shipping overseas can be costly and increases the chances of damage), so they did in fact sell it to me. I now had two monomachines.

The damage

The $250 unit did in fact turn on sometimes, but it was still strange (a known issue, see my post here from 2015, but for $250, whatever. Eventually I bought a 2-tier wooden stand to contain both of my units. Well… after screwing them together, I found that some buttons and LEDs stopped working. The screws went right into the PCBs, damaging not one but both of my Monomachines. At the time I had no expertise in repairs. I was devastated that I messed up both of them. Well, I sent them in for repair at a local place. They said there was a power issue with the $250 unit and they fixed it. I’ve never had a problem with the boot issue since then, although my $616 unit has had issues for years.

The sound of the Elektron Monomachine

I hardly know what to write here. How do you describe something that can sound so different just by changing the ‘machine’ it uses to generate sound? Well, what I will say is that I mainly use one Monomachine for melodic parts, using a lot of SID sounds and the other Monomachine for drums, using FM and sampled drum parts. The sequenced parts can be modified in real time or you can easily do parameter locks (where if you press a step and shift the parameter knob, you will modify the sound on that step alone). Often, I like to use the arpeggiator to create real-time modifications to the melodies and drums. You can hear that quite readily in these tracks:

I also did some ambient tracks just using it as a 6-voice polysynth for ambient or bell sounds and also used the SID machine for chiptunes NES music:

The Monomachine is an incredibly expressive synthesizer/groovebox, and these are just a few things that I can do with them. Many others can do more I am certain.

Build Quality and Visual Appeal

I love these old Elektron boxes. I love the clacky keys and nice bright LEDs. The Monomachine and Machinedrum are both really well made and personally I love how they look. I once had a Digitone for a while and just really didn’t like its form factor (or the sound, but that’s a different story – it was very hard to justify when I had the Monomachine). I’ve also had the Octotrack which had a nice visual appeal too, but boy did I hate that thing (you can’t mute the step, only the audio – that killed it for me, besides the horrible workflow). The Monomachine does have a somewhat ugly LCD screen. Both of mine have modded and inverted colors, which look a lot better. The Machinedrum has a cool screen without modification in my opinion. They feel like solid instruments that a lot of thought was put into.

User interface

I’ve always felt the Monomachine was really easy to use in almost every way. It’s easy to sequence without an external midi controller, it’s easy to figure out how to modify sounds/parts as well. It’s really just simple to use, a product of good design? There are really only a few things I wish you could do on the Monomachine that isn’t possible. 1) Change the pattern length of each part individually. That would allow for some really interesting drum patterns. 2) Allow dynamically allocated melodic parts like on the Analog 4. The way that works is that you could have multiple tracks be 6 voices. Track one uses 4 voices, but if track two used 2 voices on a step that track one had 4 voices active, only 2 voices from track 1 would be heard. As it exists, the Monomachine can only have a single 6 voice part playing, all other parts are not functional. Again, I understand that this limitation is something that had to be done with the Monomachine, so I’m not upset about it. In fact, I didn’t even think about it till I got the Analog 4 and was blown away by how far you could stretch 4 voices.

Aftermarket +Drive

Something I recently discovered is that a company called MachineStore is selling +Drive’s for Monomachines and Machinedrums. I couldn’t believe it when I stumbled across this on Reddit (here, here, and their own subreddit here). If you don’t know what a +Drive is, it effectively allows you to store ‘snapshots’ of 128 extra sets of whole songs/patterns/kits. This makes it easier to offload than using a PC to back up (which you should still do of course). I often found myself not wanting to connect to a PC to get a new set of ‘songs’ but this really changed things for me. I was really thankful to receive these +Drives, which were really easy to install. This is, in my opinion, an excellent option for upgrading your Monomachine (or Machinedrum). Not only that, the guy in charge of MachineStore (username: SyntheticJudah, I don’t know their real name, sorry!) is really nice and helpful. I hope they find a lot of success with their products.

Prices

Well, there are always downsides to good things. In this case, the price. Looking on Reverb, 4 units have sold, all between $2100 – $3100, although all units were MKII units. How this came to be, I don’t entirely understand. The Machinedrum goes for way less money than the Monomachine, although, truthfully, I don’t like the Machinedrum as much either. It’s got it’s share of quirks and has a bug in it I find so infuriating I hate using the thing to begin with.

I have been made aware over the years that an artist named SOPHIE used the Monomachine and her death seems to have been the cause of the Monomachine price going up? I am not an economist, so I guess I won’t personally speculate on this. I do not know SOPHIE’s work and had not heard of them except in the context of the price of the Monomachine going up.

Would I pay $2100 – $3000 for a Monomachine today? Well, that’s hard to say. I’ve bought a lot of things that were expensive but shouldn’t have been. I guess I probably would, but I’d try to find it for as low as a price as I could, because that’s just so much money to spend.

Alternatives?

Well – because of the prices, you’d probably ask “what could I get instead?” The answer is: well… there really isn’t anything like the Monomachine. I listen to what I’ve created from the Monomachines and I truly haven’t come across anything else that’s allowed me to make that kind of music. It seems folks here feel the same way – there really is no alternative (as of last year, 2024).

Elektron gear?

I do think the Analog 4 (I prefer the Analog Keys) can do a ton of interesting and unique things too, but when I think about the music I’ve created with the Monomachine and the Analog Keys, I feel the Monomachine is the more interesting instrument. I haven’t really worked that much with a lot of Elektron’s newer offerings. I don’t have the money or time to invest in a lot of newer gear, so this limits my ability to judge other Elektron gear in this way. I had the Digitone for a while, but I did not enjoy using it, then again I didn’t give it as much attention as I should have. The Digitakt just never interested me either. There’s the Snytakt, Analog Rytm, Octatrack… they’re all just simply nothing like the Monomachine. The Machinedrum is great, but I don’t find it to be something you use melodically, not as easily as the Monomachine. To be clear, it’s easier for the Monomachine to become a drum synth than the Machinedrum to become a synthesizer for melodic parts. As a brief aside, I did have the Model:Cycles and honestly thought that was a really interesting drum synth that could do a pretty good ‘drum side’ alternative to the Monomachine. Syntakt probably would be better in this regard.

Korg EMX or ESX?

Nope, forget it. They’re not really close at all. They LOOK cool and I have used them extensively and enjoy them, but they just distort a lot more and their sequencers are not as user friendly as the Monomachine’s. I think the ESX is an excellent drum machine though. But I don’t think these fill the void of the Monomachine.

Roland MC’s or Yamaha RS7000?

Nope – again, forget it. I love my MC-303 and I’ve made some really great music with it. I also loved the MC-909 (but it had some bugs too), but the MC units just felt so basic on every level. I think they’re more geared towards ‘standard’ electronic music. That’s not saying you can’t do interesting things with them. People do, but I find them less enticing to use. The same goes for the Yamaha RS7000 (although I find that instrument to be far better than the MC’s for many reasons.

Can you think of a viable alternative to the Monomachine? Write in the comment section if you can think of something. I can’t seem to think of any real contenders.

Conclusions

This wasn’t much of a review, I admit as much. It’s hard to find the time or energy to write an in-depth review, especially to an instrument that is so unique and complex as the Monomachine. I didn’t even touch on the MIDI tracks you could use. There’s just so much going on. It’s a lovely instrument and really still one of my favorites, even after 12 years (at the time of writing this) of ownership. It really sucks that the prices make it outside of most folks ability to obtain it and, from what I understand, most of the folks at Elektron that made the Monomachine are no longer there so it would be a major challenge to make a new unit (I believe I read this somewhere, so this is pure speculation on my part).

To end, I’ll send you on a sonic journey through some of my Monomachine tracks: