The hi hat machines on the Rytm are somewhat a controversial topic. Not everyone likes them, some even strongly dislike them. I’m somewhere in the middle, but most of the time I simply layer them with a sample. The sample is the actual hi hat and I use a synthesized sound to add high freq sizzle, or “body” with filtered noise. This can take nice hats and place them in the “Yay!” category.
Anyways, two things made me contemplate getting two eurorack hi hat modules, an effects module and maybe a mixer which saturates nicely and put them in a small skiff.
First, pitching hats up or down can be a nice effect for transitioning or adding tension. With synth and sample playing, it´s not soo easy on the Rytm when I´m busy tweaking stuff on other tracks, I´d have to take care of the synth layer and also pitching hi hat samples simply sounds different.
Second, I either fine-tune the send effects on my Rytm so they work nicely with basslines, leads and other tonal stuff or I fine-tune them to work with the hats. A lead might need a totally different delay and reverb than the hats might need. This is not really a problem, don´t have to drown everything in fx, but having the hats in a small euro skiff would open up a lot of possibilites like using reverb washes and delays for transitioning.
Switching between the different parameter pages and tracks on the Rytm is not really ideal, especially when working with infinite reverbs and/or delay feedback.
Does anyone of you have any experience with eurorack hi hats feeding the Rytm´s external inputs? Want to share any insights, things you found that work nicely and things that didn´t - things you didn´t think about, but later became important?
Afaik the external inputs are able to work with euro level (Never tried it, but I´ll do a little test later).
The ext inputs are located before the compressor, but after the master distortion. This would be ideal for me.
I´d probably sequence the euro hats from the Rytm using impulse machines. When muting a track on the Rytm, it would also mute the trigger from the impulse machine, so I could continue to use mutes on the Rytm.
I don’t have a rytm myself, but I’ve done a somewhat similar dive with eurorack and my Digitakt once.
Definitely understand your concern about menu hopping – it’s definitely good to have some things separately ready at your fingertips.
From how I’ve understood your plan, you would do all the sequencing within the Rytm and then use the eurorack for all the sound generation. Keep in mind that this would greatly limit the type of motion sequencing that you can do on your hats. I myself enjoy manually tweaking the attack/decay/whatever parameters of hats to get a nice groove going – doing something like that in a “musical” way could be hard to do in eurorack with just free running LFOs or whatever.
Not sure about the Rytm’s MIDI out implementation, but I don’t know… for me “just” having a straightforward trigger and not even one CV channel might be a bit too limiting.
But yeah, take that all a bit with a grain of salt, I have no experience with the Rytm myself.
I have hats sampled from my Digitone and A4 on my Digitakt - it’s easy to sample pitched versions and sound lock the samples? You can even put them all on one file and lock the start point?
So even if you got a eurorack skiff setup, you could sample it in as you like then unplug it?
Also: get a mixer or attenuator to drop the vol of eurorack level
Good point. I plan to use the euro hats more for your usual driving 16th hats, simple off beat open hats etc. and since each track on the Rytm can be used to send triggers, it’s not like I’d lose Rytms hi hat capabilities. On the Rytm, I usually have two straight-forward hi hat tracks (closed and open hat) and two tracks for more groovey background stuff, often using shakers or ride cymbals (these will use decay or other parameter modulation as well as live recorded p-locks).
Rytm’s midi is very limited, tracks can output midi notes with velocity and knobs can send (fixed) midi cc. I have my Octatrack that could take care of modulation via midi to cv. I’d probably have attenuverters in the skiff for easy access. Starting with OT midi to cv for modulation should be a nice way to experiment with a bunch of modulation without swapping modules…
Analog Keys could also provide cv, but I prefer the OT. Midi to cv works really well and OT has the lfo designer.
I’m looking for hands on control, jammability (lol, is that even a word? If not, it should!), knobs you can just grab without having to go to this track and that page…
Knobs you can just grab and pitch up the hats, increase the decay, send the hats into a cloud of reverb with the left hand while doing something else on the Rytm with the right hand.
A mixer, yes. I’ll get one that can also provide nice saturation.
I think this is the key thing here: you won’t have any CV capabilities with Rytm alone except sending triggers, and Rytm’s MIDI sequencing is extremely barebones so you couldn’t even use that + a MIDI to CV box to get things going. Unless you throw some modulation utilities in your skiff (which I would strongly recommend if you go down this route) or have a Eurorack sequencer, you’re basically going to be limited to doing your hi hat pitching etc that you mentioned by hand at all times, which might be more frustrating than using Rytm’s menus: or downright impossible to fit into a workflow that involves also doing stuff to the Rytm with your hands.
EDIT: just seen you posted before I hit enter and you’d be using OT + midi to CV. That definitely solves some of this above. But I think the stuff below still applies.
Personally I do like to supplement my fixed architecture hardware synths with drum modules (huge fan of the WMD Crucible that adds a killer ride cymbal that neither my Rytm or Pulsar can even approach), but they’re in a massive case getting supplemented by all kinds of sequencing/modulation doohickeys, and I think if I just had the Crucible + FX + Rytm I wouldn’t get very good results out of it. This line of thinking is why a nice small skiff idea quickly gets you addicted to Eurocrack and drains your wallet btw, so beware. Modules have a multiplier effect that doesn’t really kick in till you have a fair few of them, so some small cases can just end up being an excruciatingly expensive version of something you could get fixed architecture for a fraction of the price. Even just case + decent hi hat module + fx module + whatever you need to get things talking to each other could end up being about the same price as a whole other drum machine. Maybe there’s another drum machine with a hi hat you’d like more you can pair up with Rytm?
And uhm, you also mentioned that you’d benefit from different reverbs – have you looked around for some guitar pedal to use with the individual outs? Maybe there’s some funky amp-gate into filter into reverb with CV input or whatnot so you can mangle your rytm hats.
Yeah, I have some nice reverbs, even one with cv control for most parameters and I tried some things like feeding the Rytm hats individual outs into a mixer with send effects, feeding them into an OT track that goes into the mixer with send fx. I tried using the OT for hats…
I guess what I want is some 909 hats + saturation going into the compressor in the Rytm.
I’m aware that I could just get the TR8s for the money such a small skiff would cost, but I’d probably just start with a Tiptop Hats 909 or Erica Hi Hats D, put that into my rack and then see how things are going…
Cool, so some stuff that might be useful for your use case:
CV.OCD for OT MIDI to CV. Standalone so saves you valuable HP in a small case CV.OCD - Sixty Four Pixels
FX Aid for lots of high quality FX at a very reasonable price/HP (comes in different sizes depending on how much more usable you want it to be) FX AID -
Pip slope: you didn’t mention an envelope, but my experience is that envelopes you get out of MIDI to CV conversion just don’t have the snap you want from an envelope on drums. Pip Slope is a real nice punchy envelope in a small foot print with some nice performance options. ALM - ALM008 Pip Slope
Don’t worry too much about specially designed output modules for going to line level into your Rytm: all you need is an attenuator and 3.5mm to 1/4" cable
With the Octatrack providing most of your sequencing/modulation, I think this + a mixer module (maybe look at Happy Nerding again, lots of good ones in small footprint that can also do other stuff) would be a nice little set up that you could build on later if you like the modular lifestyle.
Thx. I’ve had modulars in the past and have an 84HP rack here with a few leftover modules. I kinda took a break from modular for a few years.
Never had any drum modules, though.
I’ve read the Rytm can take modular level, never ran anything through it and I’d have to order a trs to ts splitter (Rytm ext in is a trs socket for both left/right and if you want to plug a mono source in, you’d have to feed it to both left and right. They are just hardwired analog inputs, no control over level, panning or anything) first to properly test it. Or maybe I have one somewhere…
Anyways, I have three synths with built in midi to cv converters, even a desktop delay+reverb that takes modular level, so I could just screw a drum module into my rack and jam a bit. Still not 100% sure, though. I probably should sample some heavily saturated hats and load them into the Rytm before I buy a 909 module…
CV.OCD (or the Mutant Brain which is a licensed eurorack version of the CV.OCD for easier repatching) and FX Aid XL were already on my list.
For envelopes, PipSlope looks nice. Could be used as audio rate lfo…a hint of fm on hats can sound really cool. No shortage of mixers, saturators and filters in euroland…