Down In Wax

Set up the little mod case with the Squid, Grids, Pico DSP and Pip slope so I can mess around with it on the sofa. The Pico DSP is ok (esp the Leslie amp and overdrive) but the Ruina Versio blows it out of the water. Unfortunately, not enough space in the little case for the Ruina.   Worked my way through most of the parameters etc on the squid. it’s actually very simple. It’s very easy to get great sounding breaks out of it. Next is working out complex arrangements of the simple functions, like granular loopers and complex chained CV envelopes.  Once you have the breaks you can re-sample them then mangle etc with either the Squid or the Digitakt. Sweet. The filing system will take a bit of work. First thing is to find a way to batch process samples to -3db, 16bit, 44k. Then throw them in the pool folder and build up kits sample by sample?

Today I worked out how to save Sounds [export sound in the pattern menu] and how to copy and paste sounds [track + copy, switch track and then: track+paste]. These functions combined allow me to set up presets for using the digitakt as a poly synth. 

T he Squid arrived today. It’s absolutely amazing. First plugged it into Mutable Instruments grids and just fired off some crazy beats using random kits from the stock usb.  Next routed it through the Noise     Engineering Ruina Versio. Crunchy crazy beats!  Then routed trigs from my Digitakt through the Expert Sleepers FH1 to clock a 2 step sequencer patched on mutable Stages. Step 1 is 0v and step two is 5v. By feeding the output of this mini patch into the Squid’s record control I was able to precisely control recording length with the Digitakt, great for loops. I recorded a few 4 bar loops (the Squid only has an CX 11 second record time but this still gives you 4 bars @ 100bpm). By triggering the sample with the same trigger used for setting the loop length I got a very nice clean loop! Better to do this looping on tracks 1-5 as the pitch control is very hard to exactly nail on the original setting.  Lastly I recorded the raw sound from plaits to create addi...

The Squid Salmple is arriving tomorrow, so spent the morning watching the ALM deep dive vids  one , two and three  on YouTube, reading the manual and reading the modular grid thread to geek up on all of its ins and outs. It looks like it will be a lot of fun.  

My goal today was to work out nei locks. I played around and got the idea, the nei locks respond to locks in the previous pattern (nei locks in track 2 respond to locks in track 1). A little confused about the relationship of track 1 to track 8? They don’t seem to work like the other tracks.   Did some research. Didn’t find the answer to the track 1 and 8 issue (edit: found an answer “  There’s not meant to be a connection, so what (I) observe(d) is normal behaviour (same with all other boxes) ” thanks Avantronica link ) but did learn that nei and pre locks only respond to % and a:b locks not to ‘normal’ trigs or other nei and pre locks.  Played around with programming the Amen break using locks for the 4 parts on 16 steps rather than 64. I tried using nei and pre locks but in the end the most elegant solution uses micro timing to allow 2 trigs to share the step, with different a:b locks. This allows for example a snare hit to be in parts 1 and 2 but not 3 and 4. You can ...

Learned the ‘terrorist’ snare pattern and messed with various samples and kick/hat patterns using trigs and locks rather than longer patterns. The amen crash    is easy to add and makes a huge difference. Changing the start times and the velocity locks makes the hats sound much better.  Set up resampling and granular time stretching. (Add YouTube link) Set up riser/faller using granular lfo concept triggered by fill button. Still some kinks to iron out but pretty cool. Re-trig speed sets the texture of the sound from choppy to smooth. Also continued my study of the Amen break. Started pulling apart the “Stranjah 10 Amen patterns” YouTube vid (add link). My theory is that if I learn how to program/chop all of these patterns I’ll be able to use the rudiments to put my own bits together on the fly. 

  Lazy morning making acid house on the Elektron Digitakt. I have nailed the technique for setting up portamento (half a ramp lfo, speed 32, mult 32, set the depth equal to the semitone shift). Now need to work on my sound design with the looping VCOs. It’s possible to take wave forms from any sample by setting the sample length to zero and scanning through, but the bottom end is pretty crap. Better to use the factory ones or find (make my own) single cycle waves as the sound is much cleaner. My ALM Squid Salmpler is now in the post so will have that to play with soon :-). Using the Expertsleepers FH1, I can use the squid for drums and the audio tracks of the DT for looping, granular time stretching and risers etc.  

This blog aims to document my journey learning to make music with hardware, synths, iPad and Mac.