Hi everyone!
I am making a synthwave / dark italo kind of track, and using the rytm for drums.
I know I can just use samples, but then I could have just bought a digitakt 
I’d really like to see if I can make things more fat and special by combining a typical drumsample kit (so samples from e.g. linndrum, 707, etc) with the machines from the rytm.
Especially for the kick, this should be possible, but I struggle to get it sound good/better.
Any tips, or does anyone know a good tutorial on sound design on the rytm (that deals with combining samples with the machines)?
Thank you!
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I don’t make these genres (I do listen to italo every now and again though), but I do frequently layer samples and synth engines in the Rytm. I like to use the separate sections to their strengths: digital for interesting attacks and the analog parts for the larger-than-life weight. Perceptively, we can recognize a sound just from a very short attack sample (<0.1 seconds) and this is where most of an instruments character lives. By taking that little bit from a digital drum like a 707 kick, you can then layer and tune the analog engine to your liking without having any clash in the bottom end, as the digital sample won’t play long enough for a full fundamental wave cycle. Getting this perfect solely on the Rytm is a little tricky due to the small resolution of the sample end parameter, so it’s probably best to do the editing on your computer before loading the files onto the Rytm. With this short attack sample, you will want a little transient information from the synth engine, just enough to make it sound like the digital and analog part are the same drum, but not too much as to have clashing transients. Just mess with the sweep time/depth on whatever engine you want to use, and leave the tick, transient, or mod depths to minimal values. Finally, a little bit of distortion, even if you want that cold 80s sound will help smear the two sections together, further making the sound be one drum instead of two parts.
Also be sure when cropping the digital sample to have the ending point be at phase 0° or else you might end up with an audible click. You can also just make a super short fade out on the sample as well if you do not want to deal with hyper precise sample editing.
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thank you @splenda for this elaborate response
Indeed, I sometimes find it tricky to make a sample shorter on the rytm (clicks due to low resolution).
I also thought about the short fade but Rytm can’t do this, right? good advice to do this on the computer first.
what do you mean with phase 0?
By zero phase I mean the zero crossing point on a waveform (typically this happens at phases 0° and 180°).
In this picture the pink circles show where the waveform has made a full cycle (returning to phase 0°) and the green show a half cycle (phase 180°). If you cut the waveform audio off at these points, you will get no DC artifacts (the clicks you mentioned are these), since the wave does not need to suddenly jump back to zero. Since the Rytm does not have a separate amp envelope for the sample part, you will want to either crop your samples around these circles or place a super short fade (just a couple of samples) at the end of your cropped audio to make it even less auditorily apparent on where the sample ends in your final sample + synth drum hit.
Don’t worry too much about the exact length of the sample transient. the <0.1 seconds is just a general rule in the music perception field, drum transients are a bit shorter than 0.1 seconds anyways. Best advice is to use your eyes to look at the waveform and see where it starts to become a smooth sine wave and cut just before that point. Usually super easy to find on a kick drum where the attack transient has all the high pitch information and it quickly stretches out to a deep sine wave type of sound.
My workflow is to load two different versions of drum sounds that I know I’d like to layer: one that is just the unmodified sample, and another that is just the transient information. Since the transient is such a small amount of information, it takes a minimal amount of more space up at the benefit of having a much more flexible sample.
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Use a really fast LFO one shot one sample vol.