Sorry for wasting space/time. Just wanted to chime in with how impressed I am with the filters inside of AR2. I have had mine for about a month but really haven’t had time to do much with it. I sat down this morning and started to sample some synth sounds. I started with a P6.
It’s been some real trial and error. I originally sampled about 2 seconds, figuring I could loop it. Started with two saw’s slightly detuned and did a C major chord. Looping sounded awful, with the two oscillators beating off each other there was no way to get a decent loop without it sounding really terrible. Not the machine’s fault.
I instead just did a static 10 second hold on C major so that I would have enough time for a long drawn out pad sound if I needed it. I was really impressed. Using the built in amp/envelop/filter I was able to get pad sounds that sounded more or less exactly like my P6, with slow attack and filter opening and closing over time and such, it sounded wonderful. I next tried to do some quick synth pluck chords, also with filter envelop to get that nice attack/decay sound. Also sounded absolutely wonderful. There’s enough sound design capabilities that I really am not feeling the need to sample specific patches, just capturing the core notes and letting AR do the rest as far as sound design is concerned. I might capture some PWM patches, but again, probably wide open.
Now to spend the rest of the next hour or two capturing Cm, CM7, Cm7, CM9, Cm9 at various octaves with saws and squares. Doing this and maybe capturing some single notes off the Moog and Juno for basses and leads and it feels like the AR2 will be a pretty capable “groove box” on top of a great drum machine/sampler.
I also enjoy pitching down a sample 2 octaves bellow and getting a whole new sound out of it.
Yes, these filters on samples can really add some interesting character indeed.
Don’t hesitate to resample btw, so that you can go further on modulations if needed.
Love the AR filters as well! One of my favorite things to do with it is using a resonant high pass on samples and attenuate the mids… this gives samples a kind of warm sizzling sound with a lot of high end.
Best Elektron in my opinion, can’t stop praising it. I have done loads of music and live sets just with this one, also feeding it long sustained oscillator sounds from synths, and cycles too, plus vocals and vintage digital drum machine samples. I also use the drum synths a lot. With 12 tracks you can do pretty complete music, even though it has 8 voices, that never was a limitation. The scenes and performances are unique features, and very useful for live, and also creating different moments in a track made with just one pattern. I also have recently started using the song mode (after 6 years of just patterns) and it has proven to be very flexible and full featured. I am still using the MKI for the form factor, more portable and smaller footprint for DJ booths. I sample on the computer and use the standalone Overbridge to be more precise with sample manipulation. Just recently bought a Digitakt, and I like it a lot but lacks a lot of performance features that I find very important in the AR.
Dual VCO through the allpass peak filter with resonance boost to taste is how I get acid (though I haven’t tried parameter slides on pitch)- it’s just a massive sound.
Currently using the LPF mode for acid. I’ll try the peak one next. Nice idea.
I have mine going out through a Rat and blending the dry/wet to get a bit more bass with my screech. Loving it.
Slides on the TUN param work quite well. I’m not sure they follow as well as a real 303 (or the Rebirth s/w one I used in the '00s) for slides lasting more than one trig.
Impulse is also an engine that is very interesting, since it lets you play with the filter only, synthesizing old-fashioned drums from a resonating LP whose cutoff frequency is lowered by a snappy envelope (with the help of the LFO for instance).
Right on! People don’t talk enough about Elektron filters - they sound bloody great. I wish I could get the analog multimode from the AH in my eurorack.
Fellow member @taro has excellent (matlab generated) wave libraries with all kinds of chords, even chained and in AR format (amongst others). Conserves space and loops perfectly. And no, I am not an affiliate, just a grateful user
I am pretty really with my p6 samples. Each one is about 650k or so. I captured samples at two separate octaves, and did a set of saws and a set of squares. and each set has a major and minor, major and minor 7th, and major and minor 9th. so 24 samples (6 samples x’s two octaves x’s two wave forms). I’d never load more than a say, 4, into one track, so they’re not taking up too much space on ram, and 15MB or so total for really 90% of my chord duties seems like a nice use of space. The samples are long enough where if I’m looking to use them for a long drawn out pad, at a slower tempo, say 110bpm, I’m able to get 2 bars of one chord before the sample runs out, which is all I’ll ever need I’m pretty sure.
