Good evening Elektronauts. I got my DN about a week ago and I’m enjoying myself a lot and frankly blown away by the possibilities but also trying to work out how to improve my workflow for creating and sequencing sounds. Obviously sound and parameter locking is an integral part of the Elektron workflow but I’m finding that trying to browse the factory library for the sound pool whilst also trying to come up with ideas is a bit cumbersome. I’ve been deconstructing the factory patterns a bit (wow, by the way) and it looks, if I’m not mistaken, like the creators have programmed a lot of sounds and saved them into the track pool. That possibly sounds obvious, but I mean that those sounds for the track possibly aren’t part of the +Drive factory library so they must have been designed purely as part of the process of creating that pattern/project.
I’ve been experimenting with parameter locking and although the relatively-new FUNC+YES feature is an absolute godsend, it’s still a bit of a hit and miss process to find those sweet spots by tweaking parameters for a step and then FUNC+YES over and over, and then try to do that as part of constructing a meaningful pattern or song, copying the trigs about here and there etc.
I’m wondering if might be an idea to separate out, to some extent, the sound design and sequencing parts of the process. Something like this - I sit for a while and try to make some kicks, hats, snares, basses and whatever else and when I find a sound I’m happy with then I save to the sound pool. I can also tweak a little bit and make variations of a single sound/patch and save them too. I’m building up a body of sounds that can be sequenced and locked and that might be a bit less random than trying to parameter lock many different parameters on many different steps. I could also, of course, save my best stuff to the +Drive if I wanted to.
I’m also wondering, after watching the excellent Oscillator Sink video about DN percussion, whether it’s an idea to try designing sounds that are very velocity-sensitive (not just drums) and then use that as a single “axis” of tone shaping just by varying the velocity but not much else in order to try to simplify a bit. I’ve often done that with software synths where you have a macro control that is making several other controls vary over a wide range so it’s easy to get a lot of interesting tonal variety with a single lane of automation.
This is all a bit “stream of consciousness” so I hope it makes sense, but I’m essentially wondering if trying to do sound design by parameter locking the MANY parameters on the DN is just a bit too overwhelming and hard to keep track of.
I’d love to hear what other people are doing. I’m also thinking that if I save lots of sounds (or variations of sounds) into the sound pool for a project then when I come back to it later (even if I barely got started with any sequencing) then I’ll have a load of inspiration to get started but it won’t be as overwhelming as staring at the entire factory library!
Same here.
I make all my own patches now. Dont bother with pool, every patch is just saved with the pattern. So if I want to have the same sound over several patterns, i just copy it. I rarely use sound locks.
Velocity mod is a must in my book. I play stuff into the sequencer via midi keyboard so I always include some velocity mod and or aftertouch mod.
Looking at the patterns i am currently working on, I dont seem to do much P locking of parameters at all. I design the patch so it moves and breathes via envelopes, lfos and velocity mod. Only ocassionally will I add p locks for very obvious stepwise change.
So far as song construction goes. I write a pattern, save, copy to next, change something, repeat. Simple.
From reading your post (and considering that you’re only a week in) I got the impression you’re trying to do all the things at once. Start simple. Drums are hard to program from scratch unless you know what you’re doing from experience - or if you want some weird percussion that doesn’t fall into an easily defined category like snare, clap, hat, etc. So use the presets there - they sound excellent, especially with a little bit of filtering, unison on the higher frequency elements. But as others have said, I didn’t like the synth presets at all and tended to roll my own from scratch. At this stage, you’re in the wonderful, I don’t know quite what I’m doing honeymoon phase, so take advantage of that. Just play around with the parameters, see what happens, put some LFOs on things, then sequence a few things without complicating the process with 10s of parameter locks on multiple steps. And like @Microtribe said, DN works well for sketch pad ideas (that can always be tweaked and developed later on) by creating a pattern with three/four tracks, copying it to the next, changing some things, next, next, next. When I got to 16 patterns with different things happening on each one, I would send everything to a DAW via OB for working into songs. Enjoy!
A good approach. I do it a lot. Just to get familiar with the features of a synth, particularly with a new synth and built a repository of good patches. Sometimes a new found patch becomes the hook of a new track on the fly and I swap from sound design to writing.
But it depends very much on the preferred workflow. I write mostly melodical stuff. If I have an idea and need to dig for or worse create patches, it wouldn’t work for me. It’s often the other way around. First I create the musical idea to an extent and later I care for the best sound.
Absolutely. IMO it’s a benefit for each synthesis having a couple of parameters, which can be modulated and used to create expression. Velocity is one of those natural parameters, which we also have on traditional instruments. And our Elektron sequencers provide a lot of parameters. There are many “non-subtractive” parameters on the DN, which can be used for expressiveness.
Maybe at the very beginning it’s overwhelming. But what we con do, is to run a pattern with some nice patches and then wiggle some of the parameters, just to know, what they are doing. If one of those wigglings (if there is even such a word) sounds good, we can record it …
Generally I would say yes, a good idea, but I would do this not with “a lot” but “well curated” patches. Maybe one or two for each important role of the piece of music. More can be added later, when the baseline of the track is laid out. But this again is a personal preference of myself and there are many other workflows as well …
Thanks for all the input. I probably should have given some context - I’m trying to use the DN as a standalone groovebox so, in many cases, I’m going to have to use sound locks to get around track limitations and do drums in a single track etc. I’m not totally against moving to the DAW as @craig suggested but I’m a software developer so I stare at the screen for 8+ hours a day already! Trying to get some music time away from a computer.
I’m very much at the start of this journey so there’s no rush and I’m trying to avoid previous mistake of getting frustrated after a short time. No hurry and enjoy the process, I tell myself!
On a related note, when I was looking at the velocity parameter mapping it made me think how great it would be to have proper macro controls like the A4 has. Amazing for jamming and for opening up the sound design process in a new way.
There seems to be something like macros possible, if an external midi controller is used. The following modulation sources, which can be controlled via MIDI, allow up to four destinations:
PITCH BEND
VELOCITY MOD
MOD WHEEL
BREATH CONTROLLER
AFTERTOUCH
My understanding of the manual was that we can use one of those corresponding MIDI-CCs and control up to four paramters. Haven’t tried it myself, though
Well this is certainly an interesting development. I’ve got a MIDI cable coming in the post today so I can put my DN and MS together so perhaps I can figure something out there. Fun times! Maybe I can use a spare track on the MS as a controller for the DN or something.
Forgive my ignorance, does this imply that I can go from MIDI out to in on the DN and use one of the midi tracks (and knobs) to act as macro controls if they map to those handful of exposed CCs for mod wheel etc?
It does indeed. Obviously don’t sync the box to itself as mentioned above, but Elektron recently fixed a bug where doing midi loopback would crash the DN if you hit stop twice. So now you can do it whenever you want - send notes, CCs, midi LFOs etc etc.
I fill up the projects soundpool with nice drum sounds so I can soundlock all drums on one track. Then I make pattern after pattern. Patterns are my „songs“. I save them all individually with their own tempo and name. I rarely save sounds to the drive or soundpool I just save them with the pattern.
My approach to soundesign is simple. Since the feature was introduced I hit page randomizations like crazy until I find something that pleases my ears. Then I finetune it so it‘s usable in my track.
I love randomization, especially on an fm synth. I understand fm and can program my own sounds but randomizing pages leads to results I wouldn’t think of best feature.
I usually separate the composing part and the sound design part and mostly do one at a time. When I start a new project to make a new song, I find myself burning up my “stamina” really fast if the first thing I do is design a sound from init. When I’m not feeling particularly creative but still want to play with the Digitone, I’ll make patches. And like @SoundRider said:
This really helps me a lot when it’s time to actually make music. If I’m hearing a cool melody in my head with, say, a nice bell-like sound, I can dig through my patches and find one. If nothing matches, I’ll take the closest one and tweak it. If that new patch sounds great, I’ll save it as a “ver.2” in the +Drive.
It feels like a missed opportunity when I’m feeling inspired and motivated to create, but spend that precious music-making time on finding those sweet spots from init. Also, having a bunch of home-made patches also helps give you a signature sound.
Thanks for the thoughts @Eaves. I watch your videos over and over, really beautiful music and inspiring for what’s possible with a single Elektron box. The video game soundtrack inspired stuff you did in 5/4 (I think) was awesome.
best feature.