Elektron-Users

I'm sure I posted something in this thread yesterday, but now it's gone...

Great discovery PreviewL!

Psykisk wrote:
one way I tune low notes on the MD is by turning the distortion to max, which makes the harmonics more apparent.

That's what I do as well, makes it a lot easier to tune correctly.

The EFM-BD and TRX-B2 can also do pure sines. They have a narrower range than the GND-SIN, meaning they have better resolution within that range. Combined with the static LFO trick it's posible to tune each note quite accurately. I find them more suitable than GND-SIN for bass layering/suboctaving.

The TRX-B2 also has the adavantage of the HOLD parameter, which makes VOL=0 trigs unneccessary when you want to achieve full-sustain notes with programmed duration.

cheers for mentioning the trig-Vol=0 .. p-lock technique, i didn't think of this.
also the LFO .. i am guessing this means use a silent machine to Trig an LFO targeting the bass trig machine's volume?

hmm, interesting, what is sub-octaving?

well, cheers to the original poster for starting all this research.

i found the notes after trying to make a bassline with the GND Sn machine..
http://soundcloud.com/bboymixers-1/tal
did not use the static LFO to adjust the 'in-between'-ness of some notes at the time..

something to mention - the "Blues Scale" learned by many guitarists is said to be derived from an african scale with micro-toning - there is a note in that is somewhere between major and minor third. so, with that in mind, i was able to accept the tuning of the machinedrum being between-notes, although some notes do require some further eq work.

previewlounge wrote:
cheers for mentioning the trig-Vol=0 .. p-lock technique, i didn't think of this.
also the LFO .. i am guessing this means use a silent machine to Trig an LFO targeting the bass trig machine's volume?

The VOL=0 technique often indtroduces clicking, but sometimes it's the only way to stop a note from sounding.

Not sure what you mean by the "LFO silent machine".. If you refer to my original post that disappeared for some reason, I was talking about a trick that Toni mentioned once about applying a square LFO to DECAY to sustain notes. I've hardly tried this technique so I can't really give any decent examples. Toni, do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

The trick you mention will work, but unless you've already used the LFO for the track in question for other duties, you might as well use that.

Another idea is to use a CTR-8P machine to control the envelope of a track. With slides etc yo can chieve a lot of cool stuff, notes fading in and out etc.

Hmm... sorry for the messy explanation

hmm, interesting, what is sub-octaving?

Simply adding a note N octaves below the original. A common trick in simple monosynths to achieve a deeper, bass-heavier sound. Usually a sine or square wave is employed. You'll find several suboctaves it in the Superwave saw machine in the MNM.

Nils wrote:

Not sure what you mean by the "LFO silent machine".. If you refer to my original post that disappeared for some reason, I was talking about a trick that Toni mentioned once about applying a square LFO to DECAY to sustain notes. I've hardly tried this technique so I can't really give any decent examples. Toni, do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

There are two LFO-tricks and I've lost track which one we are talking about. But here they are:

1. Using LFO to finetune pitch of the machine
Appying a square LFO to pitch and setting LFOs level depth carefully, one can achieve greater resolution than what Pitch knob of the machne usually gives. One can raise pitch a little by using normal square LFO and lower it by using inverted square.

2. Using LFO to make sustained sounds
All machines in MD have Decay-parameter. Sometimes you would want to have a 'Hold' type envelope to make sustained sounds, but MD doesn't have this. Once again you can do it with square LFO which is mapped to Decay. For example, set Decay to 64 and then assign square LFO to it. Set LFO Depth to max and lower the Speed. Now you should have sound that starts with max decay and will stay that way until the LFO suddenly lowers it minimum, which effectively cuts the sound. Good part of this trick is that it doesnt create a click sound when sound is cut off (using vol=0 does that). So it works nicely with BDs and other low frequency material. Using LFO speed you also achieve accurate 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 -notes (speed being 2,4,8,16 and so on for example).

very cool!

the thing is, i would like to use different bass notes, and so although using a square wave LFO as a rhythmic gate is a cool idea (and would sound fantastic ... must try this very soon)...
i would like to have different notes playing..

currently working with the ENS-Sine machine.. yes, as mentioned there is no 'hold' parameter, only a decay parameter.

using the LFO of the Sine machine track doesn't quite work... it cuts in to the note too soon or not quite the right time (in my studio experiments that is)...

so, found a workaround: load a blank "GND --" machine in to a slot next to the Sine machine, and set a trig exactly two sixteenths after each GND Sine note in the sequence.

the LFO of "GND --" has the following attributes and is assigned to the DEC parameter of the GND Sine track...

Update: Free
Speed: 47
Depth: 28

Shape Mix all the way right and the Second wave shape is Inverse exponential tweak.

Essentially this allows for the GND Sine note to have a long decay assigned to it, and this then becomes the "Hold" part of the sound.

The "GND--" trig track is there to send an LFO curved tweak-off to the decay.

made a quick example here:
http://soundcloud.com/bboymixers-1/march-1

to start with, the "GND--" track is muted, so the long decay notes sound, and then the bassline notes are tightened up by the "GND--".

there is a click sound happening, but that is because i didn't keep the bassline to being straight crotchets, and so the 8th note got in the way, should have placed on a separate track.

apologies for wall of text!

^^^ Yes that's what I'm talking about Toni, thanks!

^^ This sounds great - no clicking. However I don't understand why it would work with an LFO on a separate track, and not with the LFO on the GND-SIN track? In the latter case it would basically be the technique that Toni describes, only you're using a different LFO waveform?

oh! thanks for mentioning this.
just realized why things were not working for me.. i was assigning the GND Sine track's LFO to volume... instead assigning the LFO to the decay parameter. Setting the (GND-Sine's) LFO to adjust the decay does work very well, thanks Toni!

well i am glad that the workaround of GND-- extra track is not required. much more economical.


the great thing is that the LFO speed and depth work to create different subtleties of ramping down the decay.

also experimenting with square wave for Shape 1, and Inverse exponential tweak on wave shape 2 ..
then adjusting the Shape-Mix parameter.. creating fine differences in the character of the bass sound.

Complex envelopes! Nice!