@luserdroog I recommend starting to get a feel for the Monotron ribbon by playing some chord arpeggios, with one finger per note. For me, c-minor is the default position. Once you've got that with roughly acceptable intonation (of course without the auto-tune enabled!), you can start searching for the diatonic scale notes in between the chord tones – they can all be obtained by combining two chord-tone fingers or shifting one finger by a semitone.

(In the case of the Monotron, a semitone shift is really just a slight finger twist, no more than the motion you need for vibrato on cello or guitar.)

@leftaroundabout Thanks for the tips. It's so portable, I should have no difficulty finding time to play with it. I think I'll focus on using the left hand on the ribbon, since I keep the left nails shorter.

But I also got this usb/headphone mixer and an amp-sim box, after years of playing just acoustic. So at home, I'm probably going to play more guitar than anything else for a while.

One issue I'm having with the monotron, which is probably peculiar to the dual-oscillator model, is I can't seem to adjust the x-mod (which mostly seems to cross-fade between the oscillators) without a pitch-shift. And then I have to tweek both oscillators to tune close to where it was.

I guess I'll learn how far to twist the knobs eventually.

The filter knobs are the most fun, one's like a wah-wah with a really wide range, and the other's like overdrive.

Is there any similar instrument with a bigger ribbon control, I wonder? The Ondes Martenot, of course, but it doesn't have a ribbon exactly. ... Theremin Cello, I guess.

Aha. Korg Monotribe is a bigger box with a ribbon and lots more knobs. $180 on amazon. I think I'll wait on that a bit, get some use out of this one first.

Hot damn! This usb mixer gives me rca line-outs for my computer's audio, too. Now I've got Doctor Who in my headphones. :)

walks in

So apparently after a tiny bit of silence, FL studio stops a MIDI recording.

Would have been nice to know that a few hours ago when I started playing the epicest things I've ever come up with in my entire life (that I can now never have again)

thank you, chopin, for reminding me how impossibly small black keys are when you want to press them and how impossibly large they are when you want to press between them.