I’ve been toying around with the Rytm MK2 for the past months, mostly using the factory kits. Trying to make industrial techno, and heavy atmospheric ambient with some dub techno vibes.
It seems for my taste that the sounds I’m getting are quite clean and not as complex, crunchy and dirty as the sounds that I can get from my A4.
Now given the fact that it took me a long time to tame the A4 and start to get sounds out of it that I really liked, then I’m wondering if it might be a similar thing happening with the AR.
I haven’t really been able to master and get the compressor and distortion to sound like I would expect them to sound, but maybe the secret lais there?
Or is it maybe just related to the fact that I’m using factory samples and haven’t started adding my own samples to the mix?
Given how easy it is to hear the noise floor using the compressor, I don’t know how you can call it “clean”.
The overdrive and distortion are pretty noisy. You can make the signal break up entirely with the distortion and symmetry control. But… the distortion has a plasticky feel to me. Maybe it’s not crispy enough for you?
When in doubt - resample. Kick not heavy enough for you? Resample it, assign it to track, then reduce bit rate. Still not dirty enough? More overdrive. Repeat.
I’d suggest not using the compressor at all, if you can’t get the drum patch sound to your liking. Get rid of it because it’s probably making you miss something that sounds good. Then if you feel the whole thing needs the compressor, go for it.
Same. I way overused the compressor and master distortion when I first had my Rythm.
Overtime I got a lot more careful with how I design sounds/choose samples. Only when I’m playing live or tracking drums do I now use the master distortion much at all. Usually it sits at or near zero.
One tip for getting HHs dirty is to use the Bandpass with heavy Overdrive.
Interesting. This is a topic I’ve been planning to explore for a while. And was always curious to know wether you need an expensive analog mixer or if something cheap would suffice. So Maybe something like the mackie 1402 vlz4? Or any other mixers you have in mind?
+2 overdrive on every voice, +2 distortion on the master. Avoid too much compression. If all that fails, stack a sample with the analog engine. It’s very impressively phat and warm sounding, I’ve had non-Elektron fans tell me so, i’m not just making that up.
There’s no training wheels on Rytm, and you have to know it well enough to know which avenues to take. It’s not like an 808 or Syntakt for that matter. You have to dial it in and you can mess that up if you don’t know it well. The voice architecture is far more open, for better and worse.
This is a proof-of-concept I did to see how hard I could push the Rytm. It’s not meant to be a full song, just a sound design experiment. All sounds other than the sleigh bells are Rytm analog engines driven through external distortion. I’d say it can get pretty damn gnarly – not clean at all!
Might be exactly this. Most factory kits I found on a lot of different machines have been more to the taste of their creators rather than mine
This … but bot a long time, since IMO the AR voices are simpler. But having a good understanding of sound design, which in the case of AR is combining synth and sampler techniques, might get you everywhere you want to go.
Even though it is still my favorite drum machine of all time, I do agree that it lacks “body” the way Moog, Korg ESX, Jomox have in spades.
But when the individual tracks are mixed and filtered right…let me share from experience that on a club soundsystem, it is like butter…rich, creamy BUTTER.
I was playing live at an even where almost everyone else was using Ableton and my Rytm was such a delight coming out of the system…
