Haha. Opinions.
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Rytm is a common theme here…
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So I set down yesterday with the goal to record soundscapes that can be used for improvisation. I saved my current AK project as new (so I don’t have to setup midi etc.) and the last kit I used there already had a nice sizzling fm patch on track 1 and after a few little tweaks I recorded a few bars.
First I played around with a granular effect, pitch effect and a sequenced delay (Max4Live devices) and resampled that.
Then I loaded the result into Granulator 2 and inserted a few additional effects and recorded about 8 minutes while tweaking stuff, adding lfos, adding and removing effects.
I’m very happy with the result, plan is to record more stuff at different tempi and then have a bunch of material I can load into my OT.
Should have tried that earlier, very pleased with the results so far.
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Pretty much plocking around a single note on digitone, got lost in it for quite some time.
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Building a library of soundscapes seems the way to go for me. It seems kinda obvious to approach it like @dtr wrote above
Idk, somehow I needed to hear it from someone else.
I played with OT and AR for about half an hour yesterday. One thru machine for the Rytm, one track with those soundscapes and one single cycle waveform track on OT.
It worked so well! Having a foundation ready really seems to open up that impro techno thing for me.
I made the loop crafting process unnecessarily difficult by recording stereo, finding loop points on those granular soundscapes seems especially difficult, probaply gonna record in mono in the future.
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Yes.
I’ve had my AR and OT about 5 months. I can use them together, but the OT mostly just does MIDI and mixing. When I try to add FX and scenes over the mixing aspect, and with many similar options on the AR, my mind melts a bit.
Don’t tell anyone but
I wrote all these sketches in about 20 minutes. 8) I hope this is bad enough
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Great, great insights.
It’s like each one, teach one. As a teacher, I LOVE that vibe!
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The Rytm is an improv goldmine that makes excellent use of the pads for performance and control. I’ve been exploring the Akai Force in this regard, and while it can do a lot more on paper (64 macro pads rather than 16, for a start), so far it feels more ‘removed’ from the sound than the Rytm, which is a odd choice of words but feels closest to what I’m trying to describe. I think it’s ultimately because the Rytm has a smaller feature set and keeps you more focused. What I should do is pair the Rytm and Force, because the main downside of the Rytm is that you can’t record the performance controls (I guess maybe you can resample them on the MKII). So performance / scene mode on the Rytm sampled as loops on the Force could be a powerful combo. Just one more pairing to add to the to-do list…
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Well, something happened and had to buy my friend´s A4, so the DT must wait.
For now my doubts about getting some modular or semi-modular synth are gone, back to my previous plan: the AR+A4+DT+DN+OT project I had on mind before: a live Elektron “modular” instrument with 32 separate tracks.
For now it´s like this:
To be able to improvise you have to do some work before but I´m having a lot of fun playing it.
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Something I found pretty interesting…I plocked a few nice and glassy/woody oneshots on Digitone and (mainly) fooled around with the channel’s probability and delay. You can get a really surprising and exciting dynamic range by doing so. :>
Background stuff was pretty much formed around the pitch-LFOed rimshot. Kind of a tribal feel to it.
DT+DN btw.
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I‘m just about in the same situation while building up an impro-set.
Trying to overcome it with very strict and unified rules for what the scenes do. I‘ll report on how successfull that approach has been once I know…
Right now I’m still trying to find out, what exactly the scenes should do. Means: what changes are musically interesting in most situations.
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I’ve been digging in to the dual VCO recently - you were right, it offers a lot!
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I’ve put everything away apart from the Rytm and the virus snow which I just use for FX on the dual vco individual out. I think I can go far with this.
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Yes, mate! Been noodling on the RYTM too and then I took a walk. I put in my my headphones and Trampelpfad came on. There is a sound in there that is identical to the one I was I playing around with last night and just before my walk. A nice surprise.
The low end is also something that I’ve been focusing on with the RYTM too. It takes a couple of voices to get the low end sounding like Techno. How are you managing with your low end, peeps???
I’ll try and post some examples later 
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YES!!! That’s awesome!!! I’m just focusing on the RYTM as a sound source too!
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I think it’s really best to develop a universal (universal=works for all your tracks) scene layout on OT and AR (scenes and performances) or rely on OT scenes entirely.
You probaply won’t be able to benefit from the intricate fx shite you can come up with at all anyway.
I found two different approaches to scenes that work quite well.
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Develop your standard layout and just stick to it. The last scenes on the OT can be switched easily with one hand, even while operating the crossfader. I usually have filters + fx combo scenes setup there which affect only the drums. (Like high pass filter on 15, high pass filter + reverb on 16).
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Scenes corresponding to tracks. Scene 1 would affect track 1, scene 2 would affect track 2 etc…scene 9 affects a synth on input a, scene 10 affects another synth on input b - or 9 and 10 are scenes for the stereo input ab. You get the idea.
The benefit of this setup is, you can use different fx and different parameters for your scenes.
I prefer approach 1. I want to be able to focus on the moment as much as possible, just let it flow…
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Interesting - 1 is pretty much what I was thinking about and am experimenting with right now. I never did think about the second option you named though, quite inspiring…
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I wrote all these sketches in about 20 minutes.
20 minutes for 13 minutes of music? Go realtime, man!
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My rule is that a performance affects the track it shares the pad with. I use a midi controller to control them though, so don t need to call up the perf page and keep the mute page on.
Not using scenes much yet though.
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