There is only so much space in the sound spectrum. When ears are overwhelmed with sounds the details become blurry, unrecognizable in a musical sense. Too much bass is an easy example, where several tracks carry the same low frequencies the whole mix will sound dull or muddy. But does it matter if is the Digitone is dialed in for sound quality? I think so when you take into account what you can do with controled modulations in FM synthesis; how subtle adjustments can give life a progression rhythm and sounds. If all four tracks are high leveled and busy, even though patterns emerge all the same, there is dimensional loss due to the high levels. It is also likely some frequencies are phased out so movements within the modulations will be stunted. Musical taste is another thing all together; synthesis is essentially a form of a sonic biology and if it begins with enough breath it will grow into a complex form like a flock of birds or a standing wave.
The hardest part for me learning how to play instruments like the Digitone or Digitakt was learning how to âproduceâ musical compositions without ending up with a sonic steamroller. That of course is fine and well, but synthesis is more than just an effect. The biggest moments in learning the DT and DN were understanding the LFO modes and copy and pasting patterns as a way to build evolving songs live. I was surprised how well the Digitone emulates feedback/harmonics, another reason to learn how to clean up the sound and let synthesis flourish.
Human ears respond to loud and quiet with different parts of the ear (different sets of cochlea hair cells), so your perception system can differentiate quiet sounds within loud sounds. I think it works even when frequencies overlap, so something moving around 700Hz with -20dB should still be discernible âwithinâ around 700Hz with -6dB. It definitely works when the frequencies donât overlap too much, or when you have quiet tonal sounds within lots of more random noise. So, whilst âmuddy mixesâ are easy to create, itâs also possible to hack interesting texture and detail with them.
I find that when I listen to well-mixed material, my visual imagination often builds âheight chartsâ of sounds, along with my auditory imagination painting an emotional picture. I think the âheightâ idea is a pretty good model⌠but I still find it hard to mix my own stuff this way.
i get stuck in these cycles where im trying so hard to push my synths beyond what iâve heard before. trying to extract the most unique, but still musically useful patches from every synth i have. then i get tired of them because i perceive them as not deep enough, and ultimately end up selling them. no matter how much i love them or how flexible they are for sound design compared to other synths iâve used, thus comparitvely probably some of the deepest synthesis iâm going to have access to.
it was the digitone where i first had this realization. Iâve bought and sold it 4 times and im on my 5th now. i think it was the oscillator sync âDroneâ digitone video that helped me understand that the smallest variances in a patch make huge differences. and so this i think is one of the biggest secrets to all elektron machines. it very much applies to the a4 too. if you copy and paste a pattern with a simple patch, then on each subsequent track, just slightly alter the filter or some envelope, maybe waveshape, you can come up with some beautiful layered compositions . the a4 and digitone are so powerful in that they allow you to build massive layered melodic structures that are dynamic and interesting with multiple tracks, all tied to the powerful sequencer. p locks help, obviously. but the qper knob on the a4 helps a lot too. you can assign all 4 tracks to the filter cutoff and then just experiment with slight little variations on your patch and see what sticks.
i think it applies to the rytm as well. the syntakt obviously. probably the digitakt too. but yes, i totally agree. the most fun and satisfying results ive had from these machines is when i start with a simple patch, copy that to all 4 tracks, and just fine tune each subsequent sound to build a more complex composition
I would say synthesis is about creating one (possibly evolving) sound, and production is about balancing different sounds, both in frequencies/levels and through the stereo spectrum.
Looking for such balance is an art in himself, that I discovered mainly in reading Mike Seniorâs âMixing Secretsâ and through practicing with decent monitors.
The less sounds you trig at the same time, the easier it is to reach a good balance.
DN made me realize a lot of things about sounds and why i make music in the first place.
I cant put it in words yet, and im not sure ill be able to do it later.
Before, i was trying to catch fish in muddy water with my bare hands to no avail. But now, water is clear, and i dont need the catch, just admire the beauty and enjoy.
Iâm still at the early stages of my journey with synthesis, but a lot has happen with knowledge and discovering where i want to go.
FM and Digitone ( also Fors devicesâŚstrangely enough ) had me going through these key points of crancking up values ( because it was âfunâ ) and later, finding more color, evolving textures and deepness when operating with micro adjustments and low values.
Then itâs almost scary, the moment you find that point when each increment of a ratio/pitch/rate etc is a total shift in mood, grain, movement and dimension.
Itâs like a living creature.
I think itâs the one thing that i found the most fascinating with synthesis, when it becomes organic, when itâs breathing.
Itâs like discovering biomes from odd worlds.
I think the best word to describe the method of bringing sounds into a mix is âsubtractiveâ. Frequencies can over lap, but as a matter for fact in such situations detail is lost. This isnât good or bad, just important to know if we want to get more out of a mix. Too much overlap makes a mix sound flat. The hardest thing to to is open a mix up while retaining the full range of fidelity.
Higher frequency cut easier through a mix so as a general rule I lower my higher pitched sounds. I also tend to cut/reduce lows in reverb And delay effects.
This is an issue in electronic music because the instruments are unconstrained in the energy of the sound spectrum, and also, they arenât mixed in the air, but on a wire or a chip. Acoustic instruments have much less high sound energy in their spectrums because reality rolls it off. So learning to control the spectrum in a similar way with synths is essential to getting a good sound
Same feeling with a particular configuration, different settings on a minimalist lowbass soundtrack, few tweaks and recordings of asynchronous automations which offered an evolving sound changing all the time to infinity.
And then suddenly, between the rebounds of echo throw slowliness LFO, I heard him breathe, slowly, and whisper a few melodic and vaporous words.
Letting go of the digitone, I gently took off my headphones and asked him with trembling voice:
âA⌠Are you⌠Alive?â
Electronic instruments technically have no âsound energyâ. Their signal is what is called âline levelâ and according to the manual max out put is +22bDu (which will drive headphones; max output for acoustic drum kit is 130 db, thousands of times more powerful as acoustic energy). Line level needs to be amplified for it to be audible beyond headphones. As opposed to an acoustic drum which can blast you out of a room with no amplification. Plug a passive speaker (no amplification) into the audio out of an electronic instrument and see how loud it gets.
No âsoundâ is âunrestrainedâ by the sound spectrum; physics. The sound you hear is the vibration of air molecules caused by acoustic energy. Analog or digital; a mixing board is wire and chips. Mixing is a science, with specific ranges where an engineer can push a mix in one direction or another.
Iâm just putting the facts out there. We have to learn about the dynamics of acoustic energy as they apply to sound reinforcement or recording.
Does any of this apply to making music on the Digitakt or Digitone, or any Elektron instrument or groove box? Of course, but the master sections are very brief, and âmixingâ is very basic. The gear is designed to sound good and it does. If the conversation were about playing through PA equipment it would be a different thing. But as some of the posts convey an understanding that the sound can suffer with âtoo muchâ signal coming from all the tracks, you can just accept there is something to mixing that requires a humility towards the finer points of mixing.
This is what I find to be really useful about the Elektrons. You have access to only very basic settings mixing-wise but I find that they actually require sursprisingly little post-processing if you set these few dials appropriately. In fact I think it also helps that you donât get any fancy readouts and analyzers, being forced to do it by ear.
What I think is a bit special in electronic music is that composition and production are strongly intermingled⌠You are doing musical arranging (trying/adding/removing musical elements) while sonically shaping them at the same time. This is typically not so in acoustic music.
Iâve played the electric bass for about 35 years. Funk mostly, with latin influence, from a jazz approach. That means, really listening to and feeling music as it fills the air and effects the atmosphere in a room full of people. It might seem like âfingers on stringsâ is like pressing buttons, or striking a drum with hand or stick is like selecting âvalue 1 thru 127â, but these styles of generating musical sound with flesh and bone against highly responsive percussion instruments or strings, have the physical connection to the emotional body- that is what generates the energy to make the sound. To think that playing funk bass âtypically doesnât involve sonic shapingâ is insensitive to the unmatched fidelity of human expression by way of musical instrument. My biggest complaint of my electronic instruments (which I love) is that you have to turn a bunch of dials and select all kinds of values to make the bass sound have some depth and dynamic to it. Bass guitar has maybe 8 dimensions to the sound between finger styles and slap- all responsive to the way you touch it- the way you feel it. I know there isnât a electronic bass sound ever recorded that matches the fidelity or expressiveness of a funky electric bass, played by a funky bass player.
If one studies music by itâs sound and not itâs mathematics, you learn that in each note you can hear a different âsonic shapeâ both in itself and influenced by the interval of surrounding notes. You learn than one note can be played many different ways and with different intervals and tunings, different rhythmic patterns and voicings of chords create music youâve never heard before, or couldnât imagine. You learn how music can breathe when musicians who play together, hear each other,and follow the music that emerges from their union.
I love electronic approach to music too. Itâs funky. But it is different based on the fact that the musician isnât making the music directly, they program it. It can be highly responsive, but in different ways than direct instruments. You can still create grooves with the Digitakt and Tone that breathe, but in different ways. I donât compare electronic music and my bass, same as I donât compare my left foot with my ear.
Perhaps I didnât express precisely enough what I meant by âsonically shapingâ. My point was that (in my experience playing multiple âreal instrumentsâ) writing a song for an ensemble I think more in terms of musical arrangement rather than technical aspects of production. Bluntly put, I donât write instructions like âThe Rhodes should be side-chain compressed by the bass drum and we need spring reverb on the vocalsâ into a lead sheetâŚ
Of course, shaping their sound on their instrument is up to each musician, and in modern production the lines may well be blurred not just in electronic music.
The original thought, the subtitles of synthesis in the context of mix sounds togetherâŚhow without understanding we can leave a mix flat or dull modulations because of overlapping sounds/frequencies. Some of the posts here acknowledge overall sound has improved by applying some thoughtful adjustments to levels (track level and volume). Further adjustments can be made to the filter and LFO settings to avoid overloading particular frequencies. These are subject to the desired effect, but nonetheless can create more dynamic modulations and clearer more plump mixes.
