Tut REQ How to make single cyc WF

Elektron Gear Monomachine
#1

Hi all! I’ve owned my MnM for about two weeks now. The more I play this thing and learn the more I fall in love with it. It’s a really unique instrument.

I have some single cycle waveforms (thanks adventurekid and awesome users of this forum) that I have been using for a while with RYTM and OP-1 which I’ve now uploaded to MnM. They sound crazy and good and all that nice stuff.

I’ve read some forum posts on custom waveforms and seen many youtube videos, but what I have not yet read/heard/seen is how to make your own. Lets say I just wanted to use any sound and break out a tiny nub of a wave and use that.

I’m curious if anyone knows of a video, tutorial or any documentation showing how to create your own single cycle waveforms.

I can do it in sort of a funky granular method using the OP-1 where I bring sample start and end points together really close and hold shift to tune it carefully to C (playing a C note in the background from tape). This works great if you stay internally in the OP1. You can resample re-granularize etc etc, but there is no method to really save just that tiny repeated grain and get it into your compie for use in Elektron machines. You can only save the whole original sample or save a long “repeated” version of the wave.

Thanks yall,
Walter

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#2

Google says:

http://groovesizer.com/make-your-own-single-cycle-waveforms/

#3

Thanks kindly for the response debug. I read this tut a few days ago and though informative, isn’t exactly what I’m trying to achieve.

I can make generated tones in audacity to be looped etc, but I’m not sure how I can use this method to chop out a tiny bit of waveform from a sampled synth, voice, noise etc and make the file just the right length to be properly tuned to any specific note/freq.

I’m not an audio expert, but it seems the note or frequency is tied to the length of the cycle in samples. If I could determine that sample length for a specific note I suppose I could make an empty file the size in samples I need, and just paste audio in there, loop it, and keep trying over and over until I find something I like. The polyphonic cycles kinda boggle my mind since you’d need to mix overlapping waveforms that are different sample lengths.

#4

I highly recommend using Renoise to edit your single cycle waveforms.
It’s snap to zero function is extremely good, and I mean… It’s a tracker. What better tool is there?

I suggest that you record a long sustained tone of a simple waveform to begin with, maybe saw, triangle, square etc. Zoom in so much that you can clearly see the shape of the wave, and then you will see the pattern at which it repeats. After a few tries (and different waveforms), you will get a feel for it. The key is how it repeats. You want to take just one cycle of the repeating pattern and play that over and over again to recreate the original repeating pattern, which hold for a longer duration is creating the tone that you are hearing.


If you want to begin with an empty sampling and fill in the waveform yourself, or use any sounds (non-tonal) for wavetable synthesis you will have to convert frequency to samples (in the same samplerate that you are working in) in order to keep it properly in tune.

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#5

You’re absolutely right.

frequency = 1000 / cycleLengthInMilliseconds

or

frequency = samplingRate / cycleLengthInSamples

Research Just Intonation ( JI ) if you’re interested in putting chords into a single sample. It can be done but you might find it awkward to work with as you have to do things like playing chord notes several octaves lower than they’re perceived. You have to think in terms of harmonics rather than notes. It’s similar to the idea of a lowest common denominator. But this does open up some pretty interesting possibilities with the DigiPro, especially when you start playing with crossfading between waves, e.g. with the double draw, or the wave transition time parameter.

I’ve done it before with the Octatrack. It didn’t sound as good as I hoped, and I had to write a little code to map equal temperament notes to harmonics.

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#6

I’m so excited - I think I got this stuff nailed!!! I figured a way to get a little audio grain from any sound or sample and have it tuned correctly to play well in the Monomachine. It’s basically the same thing I’ve been doing, but short cutting the math and technical stuff using my ears and eyes.

Thanks Simon for your suggestion.

Here’s how: I sample whatever audio I want on the tape (synthesis, voice, noise, farts whatever) - copy a section to the drum sampler then I move start/end points extremely close together with the trig/hit type on loop. This allows me to hold down the key with one hand and cycle through the whole sample until I find something I like. This is similar to a granular method of sample synthesis using start/end points on the RYTM.
When I find a nice looped “cycle” I like the trick is to tune it so it’s playable. I go back to tape … make a looped track of lets say C3 (or 1 or 2 for bassey stuff) using a very basic sounding synth. IE: pulse playing a smooth sounding wave. I leave that playing and go back into my drum machine and play the key for my tiny little cycle looping and hold shift + turn the green encoder which controls the end point. This allows me to fine tune the “cycle length”. I keep shortening or lengthening the loop until the tune gets close. I just use my ears like tuning a guitar and listening to the harmonics until the looped cycle frequency lines up with the C3 playing on the tape. BINGO !

So up to this point this isn’t new information for me. How do I get just 1 cycle (the single grain) saved as a file. I can play my looping cycle tonally on the OP1 great, but I want a file I can upload to Monomachine.

Well here’s where Simon’s advice helped me…

I play a bar or so onto the tape - copy that into the Sampler Synth - save the snapshot - plug OP1 into my compie - grab the snapshot - load it in audacity (or whatever audio editor) ZOOM super far in until I can see the waveform and use my eyeballs to find the wave shape that appears to be repeating. Sometimes I can hit it perfect on the first try, but sometimes it takes a few tries . I try and grab a selection of what looks like the repeated wave at the zero crossings, then hit Z to snap to the actual zero crossings. You can preview what it sounds like by shift-spacebar. When it sounds right. copy that selection - paste to an empty file and BOOM I have my own single cycle tuned to C3 (or C1 C2 whatever I want).

HAZAAH MOFO ! I’m not at home so I can’t hear it yet, but next step is to upload these files tonight to Monomachine and see how she sounds.

I’ve never made a tutorial video before, but if anyone else finds this info interesting albeit confusing, let me know and I’ll try and throw something up on youtube showing how I did it. I’m pretty sure I could do this on the RYTM as well - perhaps using Overbridge to record the loop then audio editor to slice the cycles.

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#7

Anybody know of a good way to create your own single cycle waveforms?

#8

Me, I like to use something like Karma FX Synth’s Additive oscillator, but any additive synth would do nicely. I export a note and then use an audio editor to chop out a single cycle. There is also Audio Term, which is based somewhat on the PPG Waveterm (I have an use a Waveterm for PPG-style 8-bit wavetables, too. I am meaning to do some for Monomachine at some point. Maybe it’ll figure in a tutorial). I believe Audio Term can do individual waveforms - it can build wavetables and resynthesize, too https://www.facebook.com/Audioterm/

#9

Why not look on elektronauts.com?

https://www.elektronauts.com/search?context=topic&context_id=5322&q=Single%20cycle%20waveforms&skip_context=true