you know…after deep diving the Ae SysEx…its seems like probability isn’t really a thing. sure it may be used to find ideas. but when it comes down to the actual tracks…its just many versions of the same pattern in succession with slight variance.
I think random, tho neat and something I was wanting to do LOTS of, is actually less interesting to the brain. it prefers [so I’ve read] to find patterns, even in chaos. so perceived random is more interesting than actual random, where you can tend to lose interest.
just shit I was reading about making tunes. and shit I’m noticing with AFX and Ae etc…
I’m also enjoying this a lot, and I think this still definitely works with developing techno phrases/loops! Maybe a bit higher percentage, to keep the loop locked and recognizable, but hell yeah
I’m sure you meant that Ae don’t use probability rather than it not being a thing but anyway… Correct me if I’m wrong but MD and MnM never had probability (aside from random LFOs) in the first place, right?
All that aside, I find it incredibly useful in my own rhythms and I like the fact that no one pattern of 64 steps sounds exactly the same as another. This philosophy (for me at least) has been inspired by Christoph de Babalon’s ‘My Confession’ (linked below) and Ae’s own ‘Flutter’, which deliberately never repeated to get around a ridiculous UK law trying to ban illegal raves or ‘free parties’ as we called them.
Hi maybe you’re missing an important part of this everything is controlled by a Bitstream 3x that have some killer functions under the hood and Ae doesn’t include the B3X SysEx but is documented on the files and you can see this gear on the live setups with the silver boxes
I hear ya. But Ae aren’t the be all and end all of beats. Our own beats can be random if we want them to be, especially with the recent Elektron updates - that’s my main point. I’d love to read some of the studies you mentioned earlier tho. PM me some links if they’re not relevant to the discussion. Getting sidetracked here
I would suggest, for anyone looking to improve on their drum programming, spending some time studying the 26 essential rudiments. Its sort of the musical language of the snare drum and therefore the drumset.
Sure, the paradiddle is just 16th notes, but learning the hand to hand motions of it and breaking it up into phrases around the drumset, and shifting the accents around in the notes makes it extremely applicable for drum phrasing.
I also think of advice that my teacher gave me when i was studying bop drumming. He said " It is extremely easy to make the drums sound inhuman. You arent tied to your breath in the same way a horn player is. Think of your phrasing like you would think of speaking, pausing to breathe and not speaking in run-on sentences." or something to that effect.
I think i am actually getting to a place where i can get my programmed drums to sound like ME, which is kind of ironic because on the drumset ive felt stuck in that “sound” for years now. Its interesting to me that i can hear my own preference for rhythmic phrasing in my acoustic drumming and my electronic drumming.
Which brings it back to The 26 Essential Rudiments!
look into the history of the drum set.
learn the language.
drum on everything.
and this too.
EDIT: One thing that I have been messing around with on the DT is to use 1-4 for my drum sounds for a “main” pattern, then program a variation using the same samples/sounds on 5-8 with edits in pitch and velocity. Its kind of like cramming two patterns into one. You can also use the FILL parameter to squeeze an extra “track” in there.
something the Elektron boxes excel at…I find…is the shifting of a track. im yapping about it on the PT thread. but…just nudging one track forward a couple steps and/or another back a step can give you a whole new beat in the vein of the old one, which is so sweet. new ideas pop up from that,
I don’t think so…the sustain changes. I dunno…
sick tho!
a cool way to come up with ideas…
take the same vid, in this case with the same track [sometimes diff tracks yield cool results], but here lets use GO SUMO…start one, then start the second in a diff spot and shift around the play point till you hear something cool. some quicker shit and ideas might pop out at you. [prob obvious to most, but just thought id post for the hell of it]
these are on the right track, offset…dunno how this’ll be…
true, but for ceratin styles it’s also too much hassle to have any kind of drumkit at the venues where you perform. especially if you are not a big name (yet).
Synth line not drums.