Simulating the 808 / 909 / MPC groove

Oh yeah, it most certainly does. :slight_smile:

I just want to say that he didn’t invent swing it was a thing before electronic music existed. Ain’t no thing if it ain’t got that swing? It’s exactly the same swing that were talking about. Roger Linn (or whoever) just implemented it into music gear.

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Not on the older MPCs. Those machines are actually super tight.

At the end of the video you embedded (which is great, by the way), Mr. Linn explains very briefly what he feels the difference is between “his” MPCs and those that came after.

He doesn’t go into this very deeply, but my understanding is that he very explicitly designed the human interface of his drum machines in such a way that they are very accessible and don’t give you a ton of options and features that might get in the way of you creating great beats.

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^^ this is exactly what I meant by interaction… his designs and limitations really foster/promote creativity

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The 440 has a gorgeous grooving thump and solidity. It sits into a track.

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Not saying he invented swing in music which was invented by jazz musicians and African rhythms. But he was to first to implement it in drum machines as the prior drum machines of before were rigid with no swing.

This discussion is great, it goes to show there isn’t a single device/sound/system that cuts it for all.

We’re all essentially looking for inspiration and have go to device to achieve this.

Having used myriad machines over the years, some have a great interface, are tactile/immediate; some require time to master, but offer huge depth.

Other times build quality influences how a device feels in use, some are plastic and cheap but provide a feeling of playfulness.

I realise this doesn’t strictly relate to the original topic, but groove takes on many forms and when it feels right, nothing else comes close. This sweet spot is what we are talking about? We’ll go to great lengths personally and financially to capture the muse.

We can debate and discuss, but we’re only fuelling one another’s muse (or gas) for the next magical device which will give our music that extra ingredient we feel is missing.

This is only my opinion. Your mileage/gas/muse may vary…

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@denoise
Best way i think to get the sloppiness of our beloved sequencers (groove? :wink: ) on the AR would be to multiply live recordings fingerdrumming style to get velocity and timing inconsistensies.
As i am not a professional drummer I would then apply a slight amount of quantize % to get close to the grid and sligtly compress the velocity of my drum hits but not too much in order to maintain that human feel and then try to add a bit of swing and see how it reacts.
I would keep my LFOs to animate tunings, envelopes or anything that could emulate the sloppiness of the sound generators (having 2 successive trigs not sounding exactly the same way).

by the way… a bit off topic but i had a Tr-08 for 2 weeks and i want to say that IMHO Roland’s ACB technology emulates a lot of the slopiness of the sound and the sequencer of the original 808. it sounded really impressive to me and definitly give an “sexy organic feel” to it.
recommended!

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Almost like a “sexual healing” would you say ?
I’m loving my tr-08 !

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Well yeah fair enough, you kinda did though that’s why I said what I said, but its not a big deal. I spent like 2 years learning how to feel and perform my own ‘swing’ (that’s what i/we called it but its not the same as its just a live performance recorded unquantized then maybe adjusted) and the subject is very interesting to me, was just chiming in.

I am thinking it would be great that @Elektron implement Trig FX (similar to MIDI FX) on the sequencer, as seen on many midi other sequencers (Squarp Pyramid for example).

random trig velocity FX , trig timing random moves …lets call it trig humanisation FX that could be found on the trig page.
On an octatrack with its many LFOs per track + LFO designer I believe it is easilly achievable, but on a Digitakt or a Rytm we only have 1 LFO to spare!

The 1 LFO per track on DT / AR can be locked to different destination parameters per step, so it’s not as bad a restriction as it sounds.

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Oh yes your right, Nice!

Believe it nor not I had to get a DT to realize that after having an AR for 3 years.

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The context was within drum machines thread on a topic on swing in drum machines so there might have been some misunderstanding. The most natural swing is by manual timing unquantized yes but in the context of playing it in the analog rhythm more power to you if you can do it.

However the analog rhythm has the same tools as every drum machine made since the Linn Drum as Roger Linn’s Innovations became industry standard. Just Elektron and others called it different names.

You know its ok to make a mistake or simply mistype something… I wasn’t judging you I just thought you didn’t know. It really doesn’t matter. I believe that you already knew because you said you did.

There’s a reason I didn’t post my original post as a direct response to you and that’s because I thought it was interesting to point out, for anybody that might not know, that swing has been defined and around forever. Lots of people have misconceptions and misunderstandings about what swing is and also maybe a lot of people don’t have an extensive contextual knowledge of music in a wider sense even though they do know electronic music and gear inside out.

What im saying is im not out to prove that you we’re wrong so not sure why you’re trying to defend yourself to the contrary but heyyyyy hooooo the magic (myths) of swing eh?

I’m not the competitive type so everything it said and done. Still my posts I made in context of the op questions on how to use swing on his rytm helps to get the feel that he wants akin to how it done on the other drum machines. Micro timing is the ace in the hole as far as Elektron rytm goes as we have a lot easier way of programming a loose feel on hardware than other gear. Still I wish a shift of the track was possible sometimes rather than note by note.

Also think of micro timing as ticks on the mpc when doing shifting 3, 4, 5 ticks early or late while listening to the pattern if it grooves nicely or not.

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Yes, but they weren’t comparing with a rytm to see if/how it is different when making those templates…
Unless they made a rytm template, or we assume the rytm has perfect timing…

I don’t really desire to do this, but just sayin, one could look at and analyze any difference specifically between rytm swing and “legendary” swing, and just timing in general…

So you’re basically saying that no drum machine older then 10 years is capable of ‘groove’ ?
I mean, at 96ppqn you get like 24 positions between every 16th note.
In my experience at that rate the volume and timbre of the sounds will have a far bigger impact on ‘groove’ then a higher resolution in the sequencer.