Would be cool if anyone could tell me what’s wrong 
reading the manual a few times helped to understand how the Syntakt works but sadly not how to design sounds 
In the photos of the SY BITs, you’ve got TUN and DET both set to 3 and 7. The SY BITS has two oscillators and DET defines the interval between them. So OSC 2 of the SY BITS will be 6 semi-tones ip from the root note. OSC 2 of the SY BITS set with +7 TUN will be 14 semitones up. These (6 and 14) are unusual intervals for typical harmonic content - especially that 6 semitone one. It’s gonna sound like a horn in a car chase.
I recommend leaving the TUN as you have them, but turning the DET knobs down to a value in the range 0-~0.6. This range will cause OSC1 and 2 to phase against each other in a pleasing fizzy way. This will give the chords lots of nice movement and harmonic content for the filter to work with.
Any help?
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Oops. Didn’t see I left these parameters like this. I firstly tried with the DET on 0 but it didnt work.
Thanks for the advice i’ll try these ! What do you think about the other parameters ?
I’ll have to play with my Syntakt to have any opinions. Tomorrow maybe.
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Cool, thanks ! No hurry 
A lot of these classic chord stabs were run through samplers btw. I’d probably sample the stab from the syntakt and process further in a sampler. Could sound amazing pitched down a bit.
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I was more of a « DAW producer » and used to play piano chords on Korg M1 and sample them into ableton’s simpler and it worked really greatly but i fell in love with the Elektron stuff (especially with their sequencer)… sound design is still a bit new to me. And I only own an A4 and a Syntakt and no sampler yet…
Yeah its not a must. Just something to think about especially if you like the dirtier or granier sounding stabs.
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yes, that’s right ! Will try it as soon as I am able to achieve something good enough on the Syntakt 
I would recommend this as well. I never get the result that I want with just synth sound design. Sampling a synth and layering the samples (then resample) is what works best for me 
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Yes ! As soon as I get something good enough i’ll sample it and get one step further !
Hey man! Did you find some time to check this out ?
I copied most of your settings to my unit. I altered the TUN and DET of the Bits to reflect what I thought they should be, but left the 2VCO as your screen shot to see what it was doing. For me, the 2VCO TUN and DET are also off… although it’s making a fairly nice 7th or 9th-like chord against the “corrected” Bits.
Then I set the 2VCO TUN to -12 and DET to ~0.3; changed the waveforms to be closer to saws; made the envelopes a little longer (because of the FX filter bit, below); opened the filter up on all the BITS and 2VCO to almost fully open, removed them from main out, sent them to the FX; I turned up the FX block overdrive, programmed the FX trigs to follow the same pattern + polymeter as the chords and played the FX filter whilst recording.
It’s pretty rough. It could do with more bite, still, but there’s a bit of gnarly crunch there. The main reason for going through the FX block was because I wanted to play the filter for all the chords at once, but didn’t have the energy to set up a MIDI loopback and control CCs.
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Hello, I’m bringing this topic back up because I still haven’t had any convincing results with the 2 methods.
- The “Chord Machine” method is the one that allows me to get closer to the expected result but it still not satisfactory. Here is how I do it :
I play an F4 note with a 5 step polymeter.
If anyone has some advice about it, it’s highly welcome
I was wondering anything could be layered to it to get it closer than the example ?
- The 3x “SY BITS” + 1x Dual VCO method is the one I described above but adapted with @Octagonist’s advice and 1) I can’t get it sounding as good as you, @Octagonist, but it’s anyway not as close as the “techno chord stab” from my examples.
I think it has to do with the fact it’s probably sampled in most of tracks but I keep believing it’s possible to achieve something really close only with sound design.
It’s maybe also related to how the delay and reverb are set; and to be honnest I have been tweaking these for days and can’t get anything similar.
That brings me 2 questions :
- Are the Syntakt Delay and reverb “good” (or complex) enough to get a similar result ?
- How would you set 'em in the Syntakt ?
Thanks to anyone involved in this topic and spending some time to help me that means a lot as I am pretty sure understanding this point would unlock a hell lot of possibilities for me.
I got your PM.
Truth is Syntakt is less ideal for techno stab. I gave up. Perhaps if we get polyphony one day it will be better.
In the meantime I use A4 MK2 for this sound, which is most ideal due to modulation depths and sequencer (parameter slide) MK2 over MK1 due to more open Ladder filter than the MK1.
Monomachine is also good. Or any sampling Elektron.
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Digitone is also phenomenal for chords, dub and dub techno chords
Looking forward to get an A4 and try the chords there
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Thank you for answering!
I got an A4 MK2 but I have no space as my studio isn’t ready. It was an argument for having the Syntakt by the way, so it’s a bit disappointing on this point… I could get something a bit close to my goal with the Chord Machine so I tought there were possibilities with it.
Gotta give it a try with the A4 too. Any tips ?
I heard that too… But to be honnest If my GAS come back I think I will go for a Digitakt first 
Use it polyphonically. Minor triad. 3 voices. Dual detuned saws with some PWM. Sub -1Oct on one OSC. Mess with the different envelope shapes.
Mix in some noise if you have filter LFO in play.
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Got inspired by the thread and cooked 5 different stabs sounds up today.
Short video for the socials.
Used mainly the chords machine, poly meter tracks. The second example are 2 bits machines tuned to make up a Gm chord.
Enjoy!
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