A4 - Psytrance?

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#1

Hi all,

longtime lurker here :zonked:

I got my A4 a few months ago and I did mostly, lets call it “Experimental” stuff with this machine.
But now I really want to learn how to use the A4 for that kind of style.

I found this 1:21 minutes long tutorial on the tube:

I was able to recreate this on my Nord Rack very easily because of the similar layout of them both but I found myself struggling to translate this tutorial to the A4 parameters.

So my first question:

Is there anyone willing to help me recreating this on the A4?

My second question is:

Do you guys mind sharing some tipps & tricks how to do some other fullon/psytrance related stuff?

Any help would be very appreciated!!

Thanks in advance,

OCB

1 Like
#2

Replying to my own initial posting.

One of my favorite tubers out there, Jimmy Myhrman, uploaded something that I am aiming for.

Props to Jimmy!!

#3

A starting point for a psy bassline is basically the same on any synth:

  1. Single saw wave oscillator
  2. Osc phase reset enabled for consistent notes
  3. LP filter cutoff set low
  4. Short decay for the filter envelope, near 0 sustain
  5. Filter envelope modulates LP filter cutoff

The filter envelope pops the filter cutoff open, creating a pluck type sound. The amount of decay determines how much pluck.

On the A4 these settings are used:

  1. Set Osc 1 to use a Saw wave (the default)
  • make sure only one of the oscillators is turned up for now
  1. Osc 2 / page 2 - TRG is On (switch to the right)
  • this resets the oscillator phase
  1. Filter page
  • Filter 1 cutoff to around 35
  • Depth 1 to around +30
  1. Envelope page, envelope 1
  • Decay 1 to around 45
  • Sustain 1 to 0

You should now have a basic plucky bass so set up a sequence triggering G2 with this pattern:

xBBBxBBBxBBBxBBB

You can change this later when you’re more confident programming the basic sound.

Swing is really useful, and of course side chain compression is used at lot to shape the basic bass pattern in to something more groovy, using the kick as the SC input to the compressor (obviously).

As for “sharing psy trance sound tips” … the beauty is working on psy is that you’re basically free to do whatever you want as long as the kick drum and bass line is hammering along.

Oscillator sync is one technique for creating alien sounds.

Abuse of PWM is another.

One of the main techniques is to keep the filters right on the edge of self-oscillation. When LFOs / envelopes / other mod sources move the filter cutoff frequency, you’ll hear the self-oscillation come in and out of the sequence. This is one (out of many) things that makes a sound “psychedelic” when listening to it on the dance floor.

Basically, you need to go deep in to synthesis, looking for diamonds in amongst a whole lot of rough. “Tuning in” is another way to put it. There is no easy “just do this recipe” with psy, but if you check Youtube you will find tons of useful tutorials.

Some links that might help:

Sort out kick and bass frequencies with EQ:

Some nice tips for basic psy production in Live:

(check out the other videos on his channel, he really knows his stuff)

Sorry, bit of an essay there. I hope it helps!

Peace,
Andy.

12 Likes
#4

Holy mother,

Andy, your reply is such a gift.
This exactly is what I am looking for. Very useful tips!!

Thank you very much - highly appreciated!

Do you have a Bitcoin Adress? I’d like to donate you.

Regards,
Daniel

#5

Thats right!! very usefull if you’re into that sorta thing!

Cause psy can be a bit like marmite … you either like it or hate it :slight_smile:

#6

No BTC or marmite required (I hate marmite).

Make trance, not war.

Every body wins :wink:

2 Likes
#7

Hi, I haven´t got personally the A4 but I make psytrance for a long time.
ZenPunkHippy has nailed it with the tips. The best thing is to “be free” and use any synth to achieve psychedelic sounds.

For sure the A4 can achieve those sounds and other textures.

The basics are allways the same, Sawtooth, LPF, filter envelope… side chain…

Regarding DiscoDSP, it´s a clone of a “Nord Lead” and the patches can be loaded in a nord lead, also the other way around so you can search for Nord Lead libraries and load them in discoDSP.

Clavia devices are great in general for Psytrance, and for example some of my best kicks have been done in a Nord Micro Modular.

I personally use a lot the Virus TI… what you want really is LFOs, filters, modulation matrix, FM… DiscoDSP is amazing for FM sounds.

Once you have the basic Kick and bass combo sorted, you can add pretty much anything on top… So have fun and experiment!

Would love to hear some of your achievements with the A4 for this task!
Cheers!

#8

I’m using an A4 and have a long history with psy-trance (mainly as a DJ).

I do find a lot of it too generic these days, so am not aiming for a by-the-numbers approach. I’m trying to throw in stuff from my various influences.

Being able to arrange on-the-fly with the Elektron kit is an interesting way to go though, not many people doing that - even with Ableton.

Something I find can work quite well for me is - patch randomisers. Virus Ti has one which I really should try out more often. Useful for producing those unexpected patches which you can tweak afterwards.

A quick search has thrown up something potentially interesting I hadn’t heard of before:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/7563/

…and there’s also a randomiser here:

http://patcharena.com/synth-resources/elektron-analog-four/

There’s various mentions around this forum, including info on the above.

3 Likes
#9

Oh yeah, one thing I always find works well for a psy-lead is using a dynamically sweepable resonant band-pass instead of low pass filter. Nords do it really well I find.

#10

A trick I found to achieve the pumping effect was to trigger an exponential lfo on the amp. So you get some pumping.
You can also do the pumping just with the velocity.
To increase the volume of the sound, you can sync osc2 to osc1 and put a sawtooth again in osc2.
But even with all the tricks I find it difficult to reach a computer quality kick/bass.

#11

Haven’t come across much that’s better than Massive, for clean psy-trance bass tbh.

I’m not trying to use my Elektron kit for that style at all now. If I did, I might take bass loops and stick them on the OT.

#12

This guy made some psytrance with A4: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wIPQ0tzhaag

Sounds good to me.

#13

All the massive waveforms (ie. the raw oscillator sounds) are from the galbanum architechtural waveforms singlecycle wav samplepack, which NI originally licenced for Massive VST. If you’re not doing anything highly specific to massive, you should be able to recreate that sound with a sampler and the same singlecycle wav from that pack. So a rytm or a digitakt might also be able to pull it off, given that wav?

#14

…except that the Massive architecture has some really interesting envelopes in there, and a lot of modulation options. …and we were talking about A4, not Rytm or Digitakt. :slight_smile:

Massive really lets you get in there and sculpt.

…but yeah, VirusTi and a whole load of other synths can do a similar job. I tend to find samples or a digital VA work best for that clean/clinical style of bass.

Depends what you’re after and in what context.

#15

yes, not questioning massive’s usefulness at all. Just saying that if there’s not much else required from massive than selecting the waveform and adding a simple filter env, this same sound might be able to be reconstructed via that sample…

#16

A4 doesn’t have a sampling feature. :wink:

(I mentioned Massive in response to the “But even with all the tricks I find it difficult to reach a computer quality kick/bass.” point).

#17

Thank you! Your instruction is not enough to copy what you’ve done- but fully enough to start my own music picture based on your kindly advice )

1 Like