M-Thirteen

Every time i turn it on, I hit record and just play for half an hour or so, letting it take me where it wants to go. It’s intuitive but also unpredictable and that’s a positive attribute.

I will always have the SH-101 front and centre of my live rig (even though I promised to retire it from live use, afraid of breaking it). There is no monosynth quite as intuitive, powerful and instant, particularly when improvising.

I have owned mine since new, for about 20 years. It’s connect-ability to the computer editor via MIDI was ahead of its time, but unfortunately Clavia did not support with updates over the years. There are a few DIY editors out there which work but are unstable. Best bet is to find a cheap old XP laptop and use it as a dedicated editor for this unit. Mine has a great selection of instruments i have created and built up over the years so i really don’t delve into editing anymore (maybe again one day)

I have used this monosynth a lot lately. I purchased it to replace my SH-101 as a live monosynth but it has ended up being additional! Exciting features have been added by Novation via the firmware updates lately, hopefully they continue this (though it’s already a 5-star beast!)

I traded my Elektron Machinedrum for this unIt; some might call me crazy for doing this, but I have a Digitakt which I believe is a superior control unit (over the Machinedrum). I slave the Tanzbar 2 to the Digitakt and primarily use the kicks and toms, to add “depth” and “toughness” to my tracks.

Beastly little monosynth, very usable computer interface too! Still need to spend some time with this thing though, lots of depth to be explored

I use the digitakt to control my other synths via MIDI. It’s a powerful little machine, and a lot of fun to use. As with all my gear, there are unexplored levels of use/potential which I will eventually get to

Most of my outboard synths/modules have midi in and out only. This provides 4x additional paths from my Digitakt to control

I am actually caretaker of my brothers Model D... he put me in charge of it when he moved abroad. Turns out he has now bought another one as well as a Moog One, so this one might be mine permanently!

I use this for stripped back, live shows using 3 pieces of gear maximum

I owned this for about 10 years. It was amazing, then i bought a Digitakt to essentially replace it as my central controller machine. I decided that i didn’t have time to synthesise my own drum sounds, preferring to work with samples, though I have also added the MFB Tanzbar 2 to my set up (i swapped the Machinedrum for the Tanzbar 2). The Machinedrum also has some interesting additional controlling features (CTRL ALL etc) which i never got my head around but are supposedly very powerful tools for experimenting.

Too much menu diving, though the vocoder is a lot of fun

This is a great controller, very well built, great feel to the keys (weighted). I sold it because i wanted a simpler unit, with more keys but without pads, transport, knobs etc. Replaced it with a full sized Roland HP400 from 1983!

Had these for about 15 years and they have never let me down