Do you quantize your (modular) techno?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I recently got a uO_C (micro Ornament and Crime), which allows me to pitch quantize my modular, which I couldn’t before. Now, I actually realize that for the techno I make it almost sounds off now when I quantize it.

It’s interesting, because I’ve always automatically had quantisation on every piece of (Elektron) gear before I had this with my small Eurorack.

Not a “problem” to be solved; I just unpatch the Quantizer again, most of the time :slight_smile:

But I’m curious if more people have thoughts/experiences here. (When) do you use Quantizer in your modular or not?

And does that impact the way you use your Elektrons? (For example, do you use your Elektrons unquantized, just turning the fine Oscilator pitch encoder?)

I’m guessing that for many more chromatically melodic music styles this isn’t really relevant, hence my specification of techno in the title. But do share anyways if that assumption is wrong.

#2

My few cents …

  • Pitch quantization 1: Using old-school sequencers, which only support to set a CV, require to fine-tune each sequencer step, if the melodic part shall be in tune, or to use pitch quantization
  • Pitch quantization 2: Useful for having an arbitrary CV source playing a melodic part. If the quantizer is set to a particular scale, which O_C provides, the CV is “improvising” using this scale. I use this for CV created by simple or complex CV sources including sources based on probability and noise.
  • CV quantization in general: Useful like the above methods but applied to any control of modules.

IIRC the O_C supports many different scales, microtuning, and use of custom scales.

The O_C provides a couple of features, which are based on shift-registers. Just to name one, the O_C can be used as a Turing-Machine feeding its own quantizer.

Beside the above mentioned use cases, I use the O_C as a part of my “generative music” :wink:

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#3

My whole setup is almost completely unquantized. My Lyra, DFAM and Fusion system are all tuned completely freely by me. My Quadrantid Swarm’s sequencer seems to stay “in tune” but isn’t quantised to a particular scale or whatever.

I make techno, noise and drone music, none of which sound very good to me if everything is in tune.

If I wanted to make ambient or something more melodic, I’d probably want to get a quantizer of some sort as I’m pretty tone deaf.

In terms of Elektrons, I’m mostly using my Octatrack for sampling my modular or for drums, which I’m not really super bothered about being “in tune” either.

I don’t even tune my kicks. :flushed:

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#4

Don’t let every online techno YouTuber hear you

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#5

Most online YouTube techno people seem to make the same sort of coffee bar inoffensive acid, take it home to meet your parents plinky plonky, by the numbers bollocks anyway.

Which is fine, they’ve got followers to gather and most people are boring fuckers anyway.

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