yeah i got mine as soon as it came out and i’m still loving it. i use it every day. not really as primary percussion anymore, but typically as a “background layer” for my octatrack drums. only because i find the octatrack kicks and hats easier to fit into a mix. but the octa’s compressor is nice at cranking the transient info from the cycles too.
it’s perfect for a specific type of thom yorke/jan jelinek percussion. whatever that style is. micro house maybe? i cannot get the same types of clicky snappy muted fluttery slippery sounds from anything else. and i have tried. i used to love making percussion sounds from white noise and field recording snippets on the octatrack by shaping short bursts of audio with the filter, compressor and envelopes, then other mod type effects and the lofi bitcrushing. i like to ping filters in eurorack. i like to get plaits style particle sounds in vcv rack. but none of those methods produce drum sounds in the same way as the model:cycles. for some reason, it just sounds perfect to me for what it does. i find if you make very complex, constantly changing polyrhythmic patterns with more subtle percussive sounds with short decay and lower the volume so it sits just behind the more predominant kick/snare beat, it creates the perfect layered rhythmic bed for a full track. of course, it’s good for main/singular drum patterns as well; the kick is so deep and gorgeous but also snappy, the internal distortion and other effects are amazing and you can spread everything out pretty well in the stereo field with pan, delay, reverb, lfos; as with all elektron stuff. i just find this method to be my favorite use of the machine now
another thing i love is that it’s the most fun of all 4 of my elektron boxes to perform with. knob per function is fantastic when you’re doing ctrl+all and pattern reload style live deconstruction.going crazy on the delay is extremely fun. polyrhythms are very easy. i think it’s definitely the easiest machine i’ve ever used to create complex patterns super quickly. i really love retrig mode. and the pads+chromatic trigs for finger drumming are perfect. if you figure out how to use the track pads in combination with the chromatic trigs and velocity retrig, you can do some crazy live finger drumming performance stuff that isn’t possible anywhere else as far as i’m aware of.
anyway, yeah i have the same thought you’re describing here with the digitone sometimes. it seems intentionally limited for musicality and ease of use. but neither of them really are. they could have some more sound shaping features, and that would make me extremely happy. but as with the digitone, the secret to getting the most out of them is finding sweet spots, really figuring out how certain parameters shape sounds with just a slight nudge, and working within those limitations. so much can be done within the boundaries, you just have to be patient and meticulous with your sound crafting. i save sounds on this thing like crazy, every time i get to a new point i like by adjusting a parameter, i will save a new sound so i can build on it later. there is no patch preset limit as far as i know. i’m not sure the best way to articulate this, but i think the point is that there is a deceptively wide timbral range inside of these seemingly limited parameter sets of the elektron fm synths. you just have to be patient and learn how to coax out the sounds that the machines were built to create. small changes can yield satisfying results
