After listening to AC/DC, I quickly turned on my Syntakt and tried capture their imprint/style. I ended up with this.
I tried to make it sound more “badass”, but it somehow dragged me somewhere bright and sunny and cringy - apologies to those who love this kind of music, I mean no offense. I can picture my kids dancing to it, all smiles.
Has the Syntakt brought you somewhere opposite of where you wanted to be? How often? It happens a lot to me, it might mean that I don’t understand the Syntakt as much as I should.
Nothing wrong with exploring. CTRL-AL is a good way to get weird results from which you can find some pearls.
On ST, the default sounds are rather usable, just need of few tweaks to converge to a sound that’s good to your ear. Drawback is one may most likely stay in the comfort zone than really dig for the weird.
A good way to expand your skills is to force yourself to use only one machine/sound engine, and do a whole track out of it.
Really gets you to use every LFO on parameters you wouldn’t have think of modulating in the first place.
Save interesting sounds you encounter and you get a bigger set of starting points for your next tracks…
I usually start jams without much of a concept or goal and let the machines lead me somewhere. This means I often end up in surprising territory, even though the machines‘ character and limitations of course guide that way a bit.
I can totally relate to your results because ST just has this really nice blend of hard, cold and technoid (drum) sounds countered by quirky, playful and naive (melodic) sounds. I think FM lends itself to that mix especially well, so DN also has this vibe. But ST makes it easier and more fun to explore and get there.
Just recently started using the Modern Bass drum sound in melodic parts, it makes a lovely round siney synth sound I couldn’t get with any of the melodic synths - does anyone else have any favourite ways of using the drum based machines in melodic ways? Would love to hear your experiences
As many smarter folks have suggested, it’s a great idea to use every machine for something other than it’s intended purpose…I’ve done whole tracks with just kick machines, or just the chord machine…not sure those tracks were any good, but it was fun
Indeed, and it pushes you to use modulations and know what a sound engine is capable of.
The opposite is true too: try using the melodic ones for drums!
.
