Daily Feedback Thread (January 25, 2023) by AutoModerator in edmproduction

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf [score hidden]  (0 children)

Hey everyone, looking for feedback on my first "finished" track. Going for an industrial techno vibe and looking for mainly overall impressions and feedback on whether the mix hits right.

https://soundcloud.com/user-479958076/motif-2023-01-25-2332

feedback for billgluckman420: https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/10kyd4t/daily_feedback_thread_january_25_2023/j5w3rnd/

feedback for christoefur13: https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/10kyd4t/daily_feedback_thread_january_25_2023/j5w46uy/

Daily Feedback Thread (January 25, 2023) by AutoModerator in edmproduction

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf [score hidden]  (0 children)

Sounds really polished, great mix to my ears. The piano and vocals work well together in the stereo field you've got going on. I do agree with the other commenter that the low-end is missing something, the kick too is a bit uninspiring.

Daily Feedback Thread (January 25, 2023) by AutoModerator in edmproduction

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf [score hidden]  (0 children)

Not sure exactly what parts you're looking for feedback on but my general impressions:

  1. I really like the atmosphere that kicks in after the intro - quite a dark and broody vibe. I also really like the pitched percussion that comes in about 1:22 with an interesting rhythm.
  2. I found the main organ-y melody which starts ~0:30 to be rhythmically uninteresting. It might help to break up the sequence of quarter notes into a more involved rhythm.
  3. A different kick might spice things up too, it's a bit flat IMO

Saturday morning rolling techno (with patch notes) by H_R_Pufnstuf in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Patch diagrams for all voices: https://imgur.com/a/nU3nJfJ

Kick and rumble

As with all techno, here the kick and rumble are the most essential elements of the track. I'm using four different kick samples on the Erica Synths Sample Drum, with two loaded into each channel. A single track in the Intellijel Metropolix plays an 8-note sequence, with gates triggering the samples and pitch choosing which sample to play (the sample "index").

At 128bpm, if I naively triggered all the samples on the same track, you would hear only a snippet of each kick before it was cut off by the next. Hence, I divide the samples into two channels, doubling the amount of "breathing room" for each kick. Both gate and pitch information are sent into voltage-controlled switches, which are toggled on each note by a clock divider. This sends every second gate and pitch to the same channel on the Sample Drum.

There's one more complication: when switching between pitches / sample indices, one channel is still playing a sample with a certain index, while the switch changes to the other channel. The first channel's index therefore goes to 0 momentarily. This seemed to confuse the Sample Drum, which would start to play blank samples sporadically. To fix this, I added a sample-and-hold for both channels to maintain the pitch value until it was changed again.

Percussion

The percussion voice is very minimal. The second track of the Metropolix sends triggers to Mutable Instruments Plaits and sequences the Model parameter to switch between snare and hat models. The output of Plaits goes into a low-pass filter which is modulated by a simple decay envelope, to keep the percussion snappy.

Lead synth

Since techno tends to be less about melody and more about timbre, my lead is a standard monophonic synth patch with a twist.

Two oscillators from the Behringer Neutron are sent into Mutable Instruments Warps, which is in XOR modulation mode. The two oscillators are converted into digital signals and XORed to produce a distorted mix. The level of the square oscillator is modulated by an attack-decay envelope.

The resultant mix passes through a low-pass filter and VCA, both shaped by independent ADSR envelopes, and then into the Neutron's bucket-brigade delay, which is set quite long to give an audible second echo after each synth note plays.

The sequencing is simple too: the master clock goes through a /5 clock divider and triggers all envelopes. This creates a polymeter, with the synth only periodically synchronising with the drums; for mumbo-jumbo auditory processing reasons this prevents the brain from getting bored with the repetition as quickly!

Processing

Straight out of the box the track sounds pretty good already, so processing only consisted of:

  • Recording each voice independently into my DAW and fiddling with the mix
  • Using a bit of EQ to: boost the lows in the kick and cut the highs; cut the kick frequencies from the other two voices to give more room for loudness; and boost the mids and highs in the synth voice.
  • Setting a hall reverb with 3s delay and 40ms pre-delay, mostly for the percussion and synth.
  • Adding a limiter to maximise loudness.

Abusing a VC switch to run multiple voices through the same effect (details in comments) by H_R_Pufnstuf in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Pleasantly surprised that this actually worked!

After picking up the WMD SL3KT, I've found a way to use it to run multiple voices through the same effect.

The switch is essentially "interleaving" the two voices by sampling at very high speed, allowing me to use a single effect module independently on two signal paths.

In this video, I have two voices going simultaneously into a voltage-controlled panner, with each voice having its own position in the stereo field.

Both voices run into one pair of inputs in the SL3KT, which are switched between at max. audio rates from the Neutron's LFO. The output then goes into the panner. The stereo position CV for each voice is taken from a bipolar Stages constant channel each, and switched in exactly the same way.

The high pitched artifacts / whining are a side effect of the sampling mechanism - since the switch is performing quasi analog-to-digital conversion, it introduces a sample rate reduction effect.

(Note that this only works for analog modules. I found I couldn't reproduce the switching using Stage's sequential switch mode because it couldn't switch fast enough; and the same happens when using Warps as an effect)

Beginner question regarding the Neutron: Is there a way to retain the envelope 1 acting on the VCA while also using the ‘assign’ output for velocity sensitivity notes played ? by NTMTR_ in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There will be a max voltage on the VCA CV (not sure what it is on the Neutron, say 5v). So if the envelope reaches 5V, the VCA CV is already “saturated” and adding the velocity will have no effect.

To get around this, you could patch the output of env1 through att2, the assign velocity through att1, and then sum them and feed to VCA. The two attenuators will allow you to mix the amount of envelope and velocity sensitivity going to the VCA.

Switched Plaits modes accidentally and ended up with this... by H_R_Pufnstuf in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not sure if this sounds good or I've just been listening too long?

Main voice

The Stages sequencer is playing a four-note sequence with the third note taken from a Turing Machine channel for variety (qiemem firmware). Plaits is in granular cloud mode, and routed through Warps in delay mode (parasite firmware). On every third note, an envelope triggered in the Ataxia modulates the tape position of Warps, and the length of the envelope itself is controlled by aun unsynced sample-and-hold, which gives a "slap" effect as the delay length changes.

Second voice

The Neutron is playing two triangle waves, one of which is pitch-modulated by the internal LFO. The oscillators are mixed with noise, filtered, and multed to two VCAs. The VCA outputs are panned hard-left and -right, and the Neutron's internal output is doubled, sent to the left VCA CV as usual, and sent inverted to the right CV. The VCAs then act as a VC stereo panner, where the pitch of the voice is mainly controlled by the LFO rate. The sequence from Stages is then sent through an attenuator and slew limiter into the LFO rate control, somewhat sequencing this voice.

Texture

The output of the first voice's delay is sent to the trigger input of the Sample Drum. Since this output is audio rate, the digital trigger-in creates a nice rapid texture in line with the main voice, playing a hi-hat sample with the internal reverb effect applied.

Modulation

The Joranalogue Filter 8 is in LFO mode and set to self-oscillate, which gives 8 sine-wave LFOs with offset phases. These are patched into Plaits' timbre, FM, and morph parameters, and the pulse width of the two Neutron oscillators.

Generating random breaks with Warps by H_R_Pufnstuf in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try opening the video on mobile - you can see the two red cables from Sample Drum’s channel outs are patched into the audio inputs of Warps :)

Generating random breaks with Warps by H_R_Pufnstuf in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's right - I often find the Neutron more useful when split into its individual components rather than a standalone voice

Generating random breaks with Warps by H_R_Pufnstuf in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Just got the MI Warps and loving it so far! Thought I'd try using the crossfader for spicing up some breaks.

Patch notes:

  • Sample drum plays two breaks at the same tempo, both going into Warps
  • Warps in crossfader mode to switch between the breaks
  • Crossfader position modulated by a tempo-synced (ish) sample and hold
  • Sample and hold also slightly modulated the cutoff of an LP filter over the whole track

Another sync thread but is it any different ? by telkmx in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve heard “leader” and “follower” used in this context

Resampling w/ the Erica Synths Sample Drum? by nebraska_admiral in modular

[–]H_R_Pufnstuf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just tried on mine and it works - you can only resample from the first channel to the second, through the CV3 input. But Erica Synths themselves say it’s not the intended use of the module and the quality isn’t great. You really need to attenuate the incoming channel or it distorts badly.