Thanks for the responses, people!
Similar to my initial question…
In your opinion, how musical would you say the RYTM is aside from actual drums? Again, I realize this is a drum machine first.
Do most people try to push it to make as much harmonic/musical elements as possible? Or do most use it strictly for drums?
I figure sampling isn’t used for compositions more than it is used for drum sound design, because of the Octotrack
Use it for compositions! Nothing says you can’t use things outside of their intended role.
I end up using it for compositions even when I intend to just lay down some drums. Also, I find that samples are more reliably pitch stable than the analog voices, at least for me.
What Highways_Gothica said.
Use a small keyboard that has built-in scale lock and chord functions? Could go cheap with software too. For progressions-wise, google is your friend.
I’d say it does take a bit of diligence to wrangle harmonically complimentary results, if you’re sticking to just the analog engines, due to the drifting pitch and coarse (only semis) filter tunings. (Yes, you can use an LFO to gain resolution there, but again, pitch drifts, so prepare to fiddle with that fine tune a lot.)
I generally try to turn them on about 30 minutes before a set, and the set list isn’t something I change around a lot, as I’ve committed to tunings that correspond with where I’m guessing the pitch will be at that time elapsed.
This is of course not to say you can’t do it; it’s hands down my favorite instrument I’ve ever used and I very rarely use samples.
I definitely do a lot of melodic stuff on Rytm. If I need it to be perfectly in tune I tend to resample or use a single cycle wave, it’s so annoying if you’ve made a chord and then the next time you power it up everything is out of tune… will be leaving it on for half an hour now as recommended in this thread!
There’s a tuning chart for the different machines !
This gets you in the ball park quickly if you don’t have access to a tuner and also shows what machines are pretty impossible to tune properly (it shows which are sharp/flat at what pitches)
I keep meaning to print this out to have at my studio…
This is the DVCO for the bass
https://www.instagram.com/p/CM-TN6oBm4A/?utm_medium=copy_link
Hefty hefty sub
Yo! First of all welcome and second of all… COOL NAME!!!
@IronCobra the RYTM is very capable. Thanks to the amount of voicing and the ability to play samples you will easily be able to accomplish your goal. I’d go as far as to say it will probably take you further than you need it to, leaving you pleasantly surprised.
Let’s lay it out;
Drums
I’m assuming you’re making some sort of pop-esque track (what artists do you like an aspire to?) and need a traditional sort of kit. 4x4 with open hats on the off beat. You can make the most out of plocks. Say you use the BT as a kick as some do or like me currently, use it as a sample playback for a kick. Plock the sample slot to a snare drum on 5 and 13. That’s 1 voice, 2 sounds. Hats (samples) on MT and HT giving the classic choke effect for the open and close. I’d advise some other sort of drum hit that you want to include on the LT. 4 voices and the backbone of your beat. you can plock the toms by attenuating to the desired volume when you want them to hit.
Chord Progression
Use samples for this. Have the chord take up one voice, say the CH on the top row. You can choose the step on the sequencer and away you go! Pattern 1 for the intro… Pattern 2 for the Verse… Pattern 3 chorus… and so on. Switching between patterns can be done by hand but it sounds like you already have the sea in your head so use song mode and it will play for you leaving your hands free to tweak!
For BD on the bottom row I always have my bassline. The DUO VCO is big, fat, and heavy. Dial in the correct note by using the number system Elektron decided to use.
The rest of the voices are yours to use and abuse however you see fit!
For my first album, I used only the analog engines and some personal samples I created. I used everything on pretty much the voice it was meant to be on. I love the clap sound, the bass drum sounds great. I love the
Additionally, I also wanted my album to play like a mix from a tape pack in my teenage years so I had each song roll into the other. The result was very pleasing to me. I did this by making about 4 kits per song and having each song for each bank. The last kit on the bank was for pattern 13, 14, 15, 16 and was a mix between the kit from the current song and the next song.
At the end of it all I learned how to use Song Mode and let the set play. I ran each voice separately into its own effect and its own track in my mixer (MX1) freeing up my hands to twiddle away as my tunes played.
So yeah, I used the RYTM as the only sound source for a whole set totalling 30minutes.
I made a live video recording, printed it to cassette, ran the stereo file into Logic for the digital version. My whole ethos is to stay away from the computer and even though I could record each separate channel into my DAW I do not want to mix down any further.
Here’s the video and he is the release
Being out of key just sounds more, vintage 
Wow man, gotta say I’m very impressed by your response and video here! Subbed to your channel. That a Gundam you got over there?
Yes you’re correct, I’m very much into classic dance style stuff 
When you say “plock”, I assume you just mean trigger
Two specific questions to dig further into what you wrote here:
1. Is there is a straightforward way to make chord progressions with a chord sample that I’ve imported? I assume you would assign the sample to a single voice. Would that chord then be stretched out with chromatic mode? Or, would you have to manually plan and create all the chords you want ahead of time (in the same key of the song), then import them? If that’s the case, maybe I’d have assign one chord to each voice/pad, then play them out how I wanted and re-sample that down into one track? Lol
I may be overthinking this piece more than anything when it comes to the rytm, because I’ve never attempted to make a full song with chord progressions and basslines etc all out of the box on a single piece of hardware.
2. What is the intended high view workflow to create a decent length song for most people? Does it basically look like what you’ve described, where it’s essentially mapping out how many patterns you want to use, and deciding how long you want to them loop before transitioning into other patterns? Is that what the Chain function is for?
If you are doing chromatic things on the AR, strongly suggest you put one of these on your lap - battery powered, 5 pin MIDI DIN. It only emits MIDI channel 1 so you need to use channel 1 as the “active” channel in channel settings, but can’t be beat for the price.
You have choices:
I’d say this is a good level of thinking for the task you’re attempting. Not over, not under.
You can do it any way you like. Three techniques I’ve seen talked about here a lot, and which I’ve tried:
…fuk scales for now…dig microtonals…
whatever makes ur low end…tune by ear anything u add on to the point it makes sense to U…
there’s always one sonic element that turns out to take the next harmonic lead reference…
leave ur workflow open to readjust all open tunings along in an ongoing process til u got a final sonic picture to complete match…cut that…print that…next one…
Thanks for the great responses!
What sampling tools were you referencing when it comes to assigning a sample parameter lock from a full audio file with chords spaced out?
Also, what is the point of Projects on the +Drive?
Is it just to organize songs? Because it seems like all that really matter is songs and the patterns within them. I must be missing something here!
I don’t work for Elektron, so I can only guess the thought processes. The box has limitations: physical, electrical, financial… and possibly some semi-arbitrary ones because the designers felt it would tilt their and your creativity in certain directions. One of those fixed choices/limits is the mechanism for selecting patterns. You push a [BANK]+[rrig] combo, and there’s only 8*16=128 of those. I’m certain you can come up with more than 128 drum loops/tracks with this box, so how will you choose them? The box is designed for performance, so they HAD to provide quick access to SOME patterns without going via menus, so that part of the design can’t change much… but you probably wont need more than 128 patterns for an unbroken section of a live show, so they can develop a “menu-based” solution to get at the remaining patterns.
Sorry, I don’t remember. I’ve not got into sample chains yet. I would start by searching the forum:
Thanks, Octagonist!
I’ve been playing around with the rytm, and ran into an obstacle you may be able to advise me on:
Similar to a DAW, how would I loop a single note/trig over and over to dial in a specific sound or loop a specific small phrase you want to polish and focus on?
Currently it looks like I have to wait for the specific trig in question to play before I get to hear it again. Maybe the closest thing right now is to shorten the Scale to one bar or something? That seems like it honestly wouldn’t help that much but who knows.
Is there a way to accomplish this, or at the very least a workaround? I’ve searched around and seen some info alluding to the fact that there isn’t.
Thanks a ton!!!
I can’t help as much as you’d like I’m afraid. It’s not occurred to me to try that.
When I’m creating a sound I usually just hit the pad. Sometimes I make a new pattern with a few trigs of that sound and loop that.
I’ve had bad luck changing the length of patterns. The Rytm seems to lose trigs if you shorten a pattern. It also (by default) copies the trigs from one page to the next when you lengthen the pattern.
Either shorten the scale length so the sample comes around quicker or put the sample on every trig so it’s constantly repeating. You can always take out the trigs you don’t need once you’ve got your sound right.
Or are you meaning turning a one shot sample into a constant tone? You’d do that by setting the sample setting to loop then playing with the start and end points to get the sound where you want it