Drum Loops Limited to a Single Analog Machine

Elektron Gear Analog Rytm
#1

Lately, I’ve been doing entire drum loops - kick, snare, hi-hats, perc - with just a single voice circuit/track of the analog RYTM by using sound locks on every trig. I like how this opens up the rest of the 7 voices for more complex compositions. But today I challenged myself to not only limit a drum loop to a single voice/track, but limit a drum loop to a single analog “machine”, e.g. SD Natural or DVCO, and completely WITHOUT SAMPLES!

What started as an experiment turned into a terrific exercise for making new sounds and going deep with the analog “machines” in general. I highly highly recommend it to anyone new to the RYTM or analog drum synthesis. Also, people who feel they are underutilizing certain “machines”, and peeps who feel like their RYTM doesn’t have enough variety in analog drum sounds NEED to try this out too.

So the challenge in detail:

  • Pick any machine on any voice circuit (e.g. BD FM, CB Classic, SD Hard, etc. - the less familiar you are, the better)
  • With this machine and this machine ONLY make three sounds resembling a kick, snare, and hi-hat - save each sound to the sound pool once you have it
  • Sequence a drum loop using sound locks set to these patches you just made.

With a lot of tricks, I believe you can make any machine sound something sort of like a drum loop.

Of course, here’s recorded audio of my go at 9 different tries
In order of appearance (changes ever 4 bars):

  1. SD Natural
  2. SD FM
  3. BD Sharp
  4. RS Hard
  5. BT Classic
  6. XT Classic
  7. CB Classic
  8. CY Ride
  9. Impulse

Please share your results if you try it out.

29 Likes
@saint_stink's compositions on Analog RYTM
#2

Nice exercice, terrible idea and cool result :clap:
Your rythm prog are nice too. You gave me a new path to explore
Thx

1 Like
#3

Lovely sounds, especially the fourth (RS Hard)! :upside_down_face:

1 Like
#4

Really an eye opener with great examples for inspiration! :thup:

1 Like
#5

I really appreciate this effort :slight_smile:

1 Like
#6

Nice exercice, terrible idea and cool result :clap:

:rofl: i’ve never had a shortage of terrible ideas, but rarely do they have cool results.

probably the most interesting take-aways from this experiment were

  1. For machines without sufficient white-noise for a snare (BT Classic, CB Classic, BD Sharp, Impulse), one can manage with a bandlimited pseudo-noise transient by assigning a S&H lfo to the oscillator tune or the filter’s frequency cutoff.
  2. Anything can resemble a kick when you sweep the oscillator’s pitch fast enough
  3. A good drum loop needs expressiveness and sonic variety much more than it needs obsessively fine-tuned patches

Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone!

5 Likes
#7

Made an IDM track using the drum loops and sounds I made with this experiment. Really helped me work the RYTM’s “sound pool” structure into my workflow.

Pretty surprised this pointless exercise precipitated into an actual track!

15 Likes
#8

This is such a good track. I love how playful the different parts are! I’ve become an avid fan!

I’m waiting for my Rytm and your videos inspire while I’m waiting. Hopefully I will be close to your Rytm sufficiency

#9

Man, this was great, I can’t wait to try this on my Rytm. Are you having any fun with OS1.70? It has that TRIG+SOUND/MUTE shortcut to save sounds from a trig step–though I haven’t really used it a lot, since it saves to the +Drive, and I can’t figure out a fast way to save to the Pool.

What was your workflow to speed up saving-to-the-pool? I just feel like it has too much friction, kills the mood to go through that many steps.

1 Like
#10

Press [LEFT ARROW] and boom!

4 Likes
#11

Thank you for the tip, though I wish it were less tedious:

YES + SOUND + LEFT ARROW + YES + DOWN,DOWN,DOWN to the available slot + YES + now name the sound, which i usually do by hitting GLOBAL for a random name + YES + choose your categories which I usually ignore because I just want to get back to making music + YES.

And you have to do this every time, it doesn’t remember that you were saving to the pool, it doesn’t jump to the first available slot–it doesn’t even jump to the slot of last saving, it goes to the very top of the pool list.

Anyone have any kind of tips to speed this up?

2 Likes
#12

Thanks. The new OS is pretty cool, I posted my first beat with it here That RYTM 1.70 Sound - #87 by saint_stink. I know what you mean, especially when you wanna name and tag the sounds (but the random name generator in the new firmware helps). One possible approach is to make a bunch of sounds at once, saving everything to the +Drive relatively fast; then, when finished making sounds, you can select all the new sounds and copy+paste them all at once to the sound pool (the sound manager page lets you do this in one operation).