The MD can do melody lines. There are a few ways to go about it (maybe this stuff would have been helpful prior to the contest ending!):
a) Use the AM effect. The AMF determines the frequency. It can be atonal, but depending on the source material, you can get some solid, recognizable notes.
b) Pitch. This is obvious, but it doesnāt work on all types of sounds and certainly doesnāt work on long loops, such as this one. For this contest, the best way would have been to isolate a ātonalā speech-segment and go from there, p-locking pitch. SRR brings out some harmonics, too.
c) Modulating RTIM. Itās an obvious technique (maybe the only viable one for making āsynthā sounds out of this sample), but the key to getting a somewhat chromatic scale is the tempo. Since RTIM is based on a multiple of the tempo, this determines the pitch.
The idea is to put RTRG all the way up, so you get an infinite loop of a section of the sample. Next, adjust the STRT point to find an interesting sound (you could say that this is the base waveform of the āsynthā sound weāre trying to make). Then, turn the RTIM knob to a value in the first half of the range.
You should hear more recognizable notes in this range.
Now, if your tempo is too high (say, 130 or above), you wonāt get a lot of resolution on the notes because the MD has a āspeed limit,ā with regards to RTIM. Bring the tempo down to ~100 or less and youāll get a few octaves worth of usable notes. Will it be all of the notes in a 12-tone scale? Maybe not, but who needs all of them?
PTCH works in tandem with STRT to produce the waveform and waveshape of the sound. Adjusting PTCH will get you some cool, hardsync-style sounds.
Now, just use that filter and standard amp settings, and youāre in business! Oh, and donāt forget to p-lock the RTIMāthatās the most important part!