FM workshop livestream + Live/DJ sets

The Lounge General Discussion
#53

yep - I sat down to watch a film (had to move the link above to the appropriate thread) and decided to cast it to the TV - then realised i never knew how much i underestimated the flexibility of the DN in particular in taking it into areas of my sonic interest - really changes my perception (as did the MC) of how much i was needing some well configured FM machines - the walkthrough of the darker corners of its palette really sold it to me

thoroughly enjoyed teh stream front to end and learned a nifty trick wrt the stacking of FX which i will investigate on A4 - super impressed by the potential unlocked by the analog filters and overdrive circuits, i assumed these would be far poorer cousins of the analog equivalents and sort of added frills, but they are really offering a lot to teh overall potential

i’m now a bit confused about how teh Cycles got the reputation for being a bit grittier, there’s a lot of bite and excitement from teh DN voicing

quite an epiphany, the MC put it on my radar, but the stream has completely sold me on its potential - not a glassy pad in sight

a bit gutted that there doesn’t seem to be a way to realtime record soundlocks from the pool as you can with the A4 and AR - has anyone tried doing this with a DN and maybe a keyboard set to Auto channel, whilst browsing pool sounds in live record mode - this is super fast and intuitive on A4

i struggle with the soundlock via step mode workflow - it’d be great if this was possible on the Digitone

Excellent stream and some incredible music too, very relaxed and enjoyable :thup:

i think those ratios masking the third decimal place might drive me totally bonkers though - couldn’t there be a way to have a dot above/below the final digit to indicate non-zero or true zero !

+1 for releasing that hacky screen viewer

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#54

(Streaming the rerun now, nice!)

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#55

Catching the rerun after work as well, @Ess thanks for doing these! Also I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be totally into a sound pack full of all those hazy dirty noisy things I am hearing in these videos.

#56

I think I must be getting old. Am I the only one that got nothing from watching this? Cant say I’m a fan of freeform workshop style.

Love the digitone, and just ordered a model:cycles. Guess I just learn by just figuring things out myself.

I’m waiting for the Mark Doty rant about you cant do PWM on an FM operator synth because there is no pulse width to modulate…

#57

Maybe? :woman_shrugging:

#58

@taro explained it well here:

#59

Sorry it wasn’t for you! It was definitely more of a ‘hang out’ style stream, I thought it was fun to have people ask things about the stuff I’m playing and such, but of course that’s pretty far off from a workshop. I think if I do something more focused I’d like to do it shot properly and not on stream.

Hah, you can actually make both a pulse wave and modulate its width with FM. I love Marc’s energy when he gets riled up on things; I vividly remember being very drunk at Thomann with him while he was shouting about how he hated both FM and the TB-303. It was hilarious, he’s great.

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#60

Thanks to everyone who joined in, was really fun!

The Cycles clip easier, so you can get it dirty sounding with a bit less tricks than the Digitone. Plus, it is in fact not as much oversampled internally so it does have a different tone to it, which is a bit less pristine. However both can sound glossy, both can sound harsh - just different ways of getting there.

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#61

Really enjoyed this, so many handy little tricks to try out! Did you ever figure out the AE track you had in mind for that bass patch? There’s a super gnarly bass sound running through this comp track that I’ve been wanting to reverse engineer for ages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBH-kC_rUQM

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#62

:alarm_clock: Welp, I guess I need to enable notifications :alarm_clock:. Time to catch up on the VODs :slight_smile:

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#63

To me it was a very valuable workshop, thanks a ton!

@Ess would you pleaaase consider sharing/0-day’ing that 2-step project? I heard so many things in there I’d like to study a bit closer :astonished:

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#64

Yes! 6852

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#65

@Ess Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to watch it again (a few times over probably) when my brain is more ‘powered on’ and fiddle along on my DN to fully grasp and twist to result. Great tunes and snippets. Are you featured on Elektron Grammofon?

I thought that, what turned out to be ‘a drummachine’ thing was a DIY midi controller of some sorts? Seeing the four sets of knob rows and all. (As i’d like to build some dedicated arduino controllers when i finally get my head around it (and raid the electronics supply store), to be dedicated towards controlling all cc/events on the DN + DT + AH (Mopho & TB03))

I know a few people here (me including) are very curious about your inhouse devtool, the nice screenshot. Would it be possible to say for instance expand the tool and show all the menu’s/parameter pages at the same time in an overview (and possibly highlighting with a ‘led’ whenever there’s a param change/event)? Is that also built/controlled with Max as well? I would definitely like to get to know more about Max if so, but for now the learning curve is too steep for me besides problems focussing and being easily distracted.

I like the small peeks behind the curtain of how a elektron product comes into development.
(ofcourse don’t share the entire IP for obvious reasons, but i’d settle for a few more teasers in the production pipeline/workflow)

DigiTone™
So your next show will be about?
I’d propose DT, for i would like to know a little more inside info and tricks. Even if it’s not structured like a ‘common’ tutorial but moreover a freestyle session with a Q&A i think it’s great and inspirational. It’s always nice to see someone talk passionately about what they enjoy doing.

Model:Cycles™
But a laidback Model:Cycles session would also be nice to know a little more about, but i understand your concerns given current covid situations picking it up at the office and having to go outside. It is kinda funny that you, as a developer, don’t have a few of them ‘cycles’ lying around. I’m looking into buying one at some point in time before they run out of stock, those buttons shure look nice, though happy with my DN for now.

If you’re feeling like feeding the Elektron nostalgics and craving a little more?
Another nice sesh would be: MnM or SIDstation even !!!
Since i missed out on the oportunity to get one of those (shoot me) and reading it’s features sure sounds exciting. (Everybody keeps asking for an MnM MKIII)

Nice drummachine/MC202
But hey MC202 or that nifty little drummachine, hell yeah go for it! (you obviously put it up there right in front for everybody to notice :stuck_out_tongue: ) The short demo you made had some sweet quirky chippy dirt (not the standard drummachine noises you’d expect) which sounded great. And you can really tell you’re excited about this piece of machine. It’s ‘your show’ but don’t feel obligated in any way to entertain us all :stuck_out_tongue:

6581
I liked the micromusic you made with the DN. It would be an interesting additional feature (mode) if there was a way to shape sounds like the 6581 did in addition to the Trigs. (you know: e.g. the kickbass NES-trick, quick pitch to simulate a kick on top of your bass sound) (You can fake/emulate this obviously to some extent by pumping the BPM and using the Trigs to make the anatomy of soundmorping but then you’d have to have a second sequencer that triggers starts/stops a sequence by cc and use some kind of transposing? So another 'PAGE-like function where you can add a small WT/table of param changes and let the Trigs do the usal ‘overrides’?
? Maybe i could build a max ‘prototype’ arduino midi controller device to pull this off ? Would be a fun additional little box to strangle the FM even further into nice glitchy dirt ?

(yup this bastard snuck in a sneeky little feature request, disguised as a common forum post/reply)

Anyway thanks again for the Sessions, inspiration and cheerfully insightful stuff, and just keep doing whatever you feel like doing! I’ll make shure to tune in at the right time.

Cheers!

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#66

Enjoyed hearing your sounds and patterns on the digitone, very inspiring. Thanks for sharing

#67

Taking notes ! :writing_hand: Thanks !

#68

It might be worth revisiting the A4 (mk1 for nostalgia sake) and showing what can be done with the FM implementation on that device.

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#69

The Stream inspired me to take on the techniques you discussed. Clipping the DN is so fun!

Thanks @Ess

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#70

This has been a great series of workshops so far! Really got me into programming more on the Digitone with jaw dropping results. Understanding phase brought these sounds into a whole new territory. The Digitone has just become a lot more fun for me. Thanks for taking the time to do this @Ess !

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#71

Can’t believe I missed this!
(Thank you @avantronica for talking to me about this).

I really enjoyed this stream (fortunately still watchable).
First because I’m so much into FM since a few weeks before DN launched (it’s been my fav synth from day 1).
But also because it’s been a few months now that I just love pushing things hard to red 11…
Model:Cycles is so gritty it’s just calls for this, but on the Digitone I haven’t tried to reach such filthy sounds.

Especially liked the extremely distorted snares, first thing I’ll try to reach.
A suggestion could be to see you start from scratch on a pattern, maybe, and show how you program your beats, what your workflow looks like.
Thank you @Ess for this, hope you’ll do some more sessions :slight_smile:

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#72

I second the suggestion of seeing @Ess go from nothing to full pattern with no premeditated stuff worked out beforehand. Seeing someone who knows the thing inside out go into the dark corners of the device and, more importantly, talking about why this choice was made over that one etc etc.

Also, I’m finally about to score an M:C next week, so seeing some tricks on that would also be appreciated (if someone’s able to grab your unit from the office that is :slightly_smiling_face:)

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