You can set it to keep tempo, This would be nice to have.
In the latest Sonic Talk #612 during the introduction, Charles Chicky Reeves talks about how much he is loving his new HSK.
At the end of the show, he announced that he is planning to make some tutorial videos on patch design with the Hydrasynth. Not sure when, next week or so maybe. His youtube link is here.
1 Like
I have the Hydra on its way. I am just curious about something. Is it possible to hold the output of an LFO when a note is triggered? Just like on the Elektron boxes when you set it to “hold”.?
I think i understand your question. I’d suggest try choosing S&H for the “Wave” parameter on (LFO, page 1 #1). I would suggest reading the manual about that setting, -but- there is no further explanation in the manual.
Weird option: Something i had not considered before but thinking about your question it occured to me. For a non-oscillating LFO it’s possible to select a single set value, using Step for that same parameter, setting step length to 2, and setting both values to the same amount. Not sure if this ever is useful but you can do it. (A moment later: Thinking about this some i definitely can see ways i’d use this. Time to experiment ! ) Tons of things are possible with the HS, if you approach things creatively.
Which HS are you getting? I’d love to read your reactions when it arrives.
Thnx for the tips. Yes the Manual is a bit vague about the Sample & Hold LFO. So have to try it out. Would love to “hold” function as on the Elektron. That gives so much “randomness” but less chaotic.
I get the Desktop version. Not a keyplayer so doesn’t need the Keys.
Yeah I will share my knowledge. Now wait. During the corona delivery is a bit uncertain.
Yeah the poly-aftertouch pads are nice on the desktop, and you have the multiple options for how notes they get laid out on the HSD.
I’ll point out to everyone who is in process of choosing, the differences between the Desktop and the Key versions. Obviously the HSK also has the ribbon controller, with it’s various modes.
But what gets missed, that is only on the HSK, is “Chord Mode”. This is distinct from the arpeggiator “sequence” and in fact can be used in combination with arpeggiator, so that you arpeggiate chords. I especially like using “Chord Mode” (with or without the arpeggiator) with a key and scale defined in the Voice section.
And of course the six control knobs – though you can get to all those controls in other ways too.
1 Like
I guess you have the keys version. Well like you mentioned it is the chord and ribbon that makes the difference. Sure the modwheel and pitch bend are there aswell. But as a non key player I c ant justify the extra 500 bucks. I like the small DT. Doesn’t take that much space :-). Can’t wait!
1 Like
When i ordered my HSK in September i spent a long while going back and forth in my mind of the features between the D and the K. This was before the manual. The stuff i read about them then, made it sound like they’re the same except for the controls. That’s partially true. I am an average keyboardist at best, i think of myself as an “improving keyboardist”. I ultimately thought “in for a penny in for a pound”, it’s only 500 bucks.
It was only when i had played with it for a while, that the value in all the differences became clear. I had missed the “chord mode” difference, and i know others missed this too. Now in retrospect, i am really glad i made the decision i did.
So i point out the differences to help anyone still weighing the merits with either synth.
And the wheels ! I really like the tabs on them, i know others don’t. With the super deep Mod-Matrix all external controls, along with the CV and Pedals (both Expression and Sustain) the Ribbon and the Poly-Aftertouch, all gain extra value, all being mapable controls.
That was something else i didn’t fully appreciate when i bought my HS. Just how good a controller it is, both with MIDI and CV output, though i wish it had more than two mappable CVs on the output. Plus the HS can be used as a hybrid – part synth and part controller at the same time …
1 Like
Question about the Keys as a midi controller. Does it send chords from the Chord mode and does it send arp over midi with all its controls?
1 Like
I love these questions – it forces me to go off and investigate something i wouldn’t have considered, or at least not consider so completely.
And as you may expect, given that this is the HS there’s a lot more to this than you’d imagine.
Short answer first – yes and yes. I knew that answer already. But read on.
A note first: I run with NRPN output turned on, so you see most any time if you fiddle with a knob or button. This is part of what makes the HS potentially such a good controller. But you need stuff that can be controlled by NRPN !
The Chord button (HSK only) for instance shows that it has been pressed, and then shows it’s been released. It also shows the exact chord that has been entered. (I think, i didn’t bother to completely decode all the NRPN messages, but the shape of the message is right for this conclusion.)
NRPN mode is key to using the HS as a midi controller – so the receiver of this data needs to be set up to understand it, and be able to do that. NRPN is a special format of MIDI CC data. It is 14 bit – so the stair stepping is cut drastically with this.
All the Arpeggiator controls output NRPN, except for the Ratchet and Chance controls – the thinking i take to be that these are meta level things that affect other outputs, so they don’t output NRPN data themselves.
Now a bit of clarification. There’s the “Chord” button, only on the HSK, and there is also “CHORD” Mode that you can set in the Arpeggiator which is on both the HSK and HSD. They are separate things, and also a complicating factor between them as we’ll see in a moment.
The CHORD mode and also PHRASE mode on the arpeggiator, outputs the arpeggiator sequence as a chord. That’s both the sound played and the MIDI data output. CHORD Mode outputs the chord every beat. And PHRASE outputs a variety of different variations of the arp sequence played as a chord, with one of the 64 preset melodies and rhythms. (I still want to have user definable phrases.)
But if you put the two Chord modes together - it multiplies them, so for every note in the Arpeggiator chord, it plays the “Chord” chord. You can very quickly overwhelm everything with these masses of NOTE-ONs and NOTE-OFFs. Sonically it’s pretty amazing. I often try to avoid this, but not always.
But what you can do is alternate between things. Use the CHORD button ON together with the six arpeggiator modes that play single notes, and turn the CHORD button OFF and use the two arpeggiator modes that play chords.
The chords are remembered by the CHORD button when it’s off, but the Arpeggiator sequence is not remembered by the arpeggiator when it is turned off.
One more variation on this all to take note of. Things are not always the same between what is played with the sound generator and what is output in the MIDI stream. The Scale and Key settings in the Voice is only applied at the voice level, so it does not affect the notes sent out in MIDI. The setting of Scale and Key outputs NRPN data, including setting Custom scales, so it can be known what those setups are, and a specially programmed device could deal with the output MIDI.
Point being though that the MIDI data output is not changed directly because of the Voice setting of Scale and Key.
There’s also more stuff with poly-aftertouch and chords, but i will stop here.
You can download a document that lists out the NRPN data over at ASM.
1 Like
Well that was a long answer for a short question ;-). What you mean by turnin knobs they light up in NRPN in?
It’s the Hydrasynth – it can give you the long (but interesting) answers too when you have one. It’s a complex synth, but you really don’t have to think about that level of complexity, you can just let it happen.
So again the short answer to your question and perhaps all that matters is YES and YES.
On the detail side again:
NRPN (Non-Registered Parameter Numbers) are speciallized MIDI messages that allows a controller to go beyond 7 bit (128 levels) output that is in the normal MIDI CC output. All the controls (except the two i mentioned and the module selection buttons) map to an NRPN output. A lot of the controls below the surface also map to NRPN inputs and outputs, so it goes both ways.
The 14 bits in a NRPN message is 16,384 levels. You likely can hear the difference between two steps with only 128 levels, but with 16,384 the difference gets smoothed out.
The relevent ASM document on this is here.
This is the Hydrasynth so sure you can do this. There is no “drone mode” or “midi hold” that i know of.
But here’s one way to do this, though i don’t know if it’s the best. There are no doubt other ways.
I started with the Init patch. Then i set Envelope 2 Hold (Env 2, Page 1, #6) to max of 36 seconds, Freerun (Env 2, Page 2, #7) to ON, and Env Loop (Env 2, Page 2, #8) to Infinity. There is a very small click at the end of the hold time, but you won’t hear it unless your wave form is something like a sine wave.
No doubt there are other ways to do this.
You can be running modulations with this, so for instance do this and set up a nice talking Wavescan that you walk semi-randomly through.
I also started the arpegiator on top of this. Or tweaked the ribbon controller. Or played keys and replaced voices making the drone simpler or more complex.
ADDED: For fun take any random patch and do the three things i list above to Env#2. Then play with the Macros or the filter or whatever. This synth is always blowing my mind.
2 Likes
Is it possible to send a sequence to the HS over CV, ie from a euro sequencer? I tried for ages the other day and couldn’t work out how to do this. There is no gate selection for CV mod inputs.
Demo of MIDI guitar to use the MPE implementation on Hydrasynth. Not by me but by tjontheroad
1 Like
Not sure if it’s possible anyhow, but did anyone figure out a trick on how to make the LFOs (or envelopes in loop mode) go even slower than 0.02Hz (or 36sec+60sec for envelopes)?
FIrst thing that i had to figure out – That 0.02 Hz is 50 seconds.
One idea – but this has side effects you might not want – Use either the LFO or Envelope and set BPM Sync (LFO Page 1, #3) to ON. Then set the Rate, or Hold to 64 beats and turn the tempo down to minimum of 30 BPM. That makes it a little more than 2 minutes. I guess you could use a external clock at a slower tempo, though i’m not sure how that all would work.
Better – Use one of the CVs IN or use the method that allows you to plug a CV in to the Expression Pedal, and use an External LFO as slow as you want, and use the Mod-Matrix to hook it to what you want.
Even Better – Use MIDI, either a CC through the Mod_Matrix, or NRPN (14-bits) either directly to a parameter control, or to a Macro set to what you want (the Macro being like a mini secondary Mod-Matrix). I think you could also use MPE through the Mod-Matrix too.
If you would like your LFO to run at infinity (that’s slower) – Set Wave type (LFO page 1, #1) to Step, the Number of Steps (LFO page 2, #1) to 2 and then Edit the Steps to set the two steps to the same value, what ever you’d like.
ADDED LATER: While i napped something else occurred to me. Using the mod-matrix you can send two different LFOs (or envelopes, or a combination of the two) to modulate a single destination. They will be added to each other. By having the two LFOs both slow and at slightly different rates, particularly without a small common multiple in those rates, you get a new LFO that loops at a much slower rate. Orders of magnitude slower. You do need a little cleverness to get a wave shape that will work for you. But with all the various modes for the component LFOs that gives a fair amount of flexibility. Plus you have a choice of adding it as unipolar or bipolar, or could use different numbers of steps in LFO step mode and vary the amount of smoothing. When i do this i might first send this out to CV and look at the new LFO wave shape with an oscilloscope at a faster rate or a really slow sweep in the oscilloscope. This all must have occurred to me because i’ve been thinking about the Moog Subharmonicon, and this is a very SubH sort of approach to things. This is also very Hydrasynth.
1 Like
Researching that last question i notice something that has me curious.
If you look in the manual you will notice that 0.02 Hz is the slowest rate for quite a variety of things:
- LFOs
- Chorus
- Flanger
- Rotary
- Phaser
- Tremolo
I’d think that with two digits in a decimal the smallest would be 0.01 . But if you search for “0.01” in the manual there are no matches. I’ve got no explanation, just a curious fact.
ADDED: Tremolo
1 Like
A fw of the LFOs I have on various bits of kit and modules have 0.2hz as the slowest, but there are a few eurorack modules that go really low.
There’s a few rounded up here, and likely more since that thread is now a few years old.
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=181877
“Batumi lfo rate can be as slow as 28 hours per cycle” 
1 Like
Dialing BPM all the way down works quite nice for my use case. Anyway I wrote an email to ASM with a feature wishlist including ultra slow LFOs 
1 Like