That warm feeling when you better understand your rytm

I recently found the ideal mix of filter settings, gain staging and compression to make any kick drum I desire; it doesn’t even require active thought, it feels instinctive.

It feels nice.

REALLY nice.

Hopefully people who dislike the Rytm can find this level of zen :kiss:

What is your new breakthrough with the Rytm?

RRJust spent a few quality hours today playing with mine, solely sculpting kick drums- made some fantastic ones. Realized how much playing with the envelope on the filter really helps. Made some very nice billowy soft kicks. Care to share on the gain staging / compression?

Do share! Getting my RYTM on Monday so gathering any wisdom I can before diving in :joy:

The compressor seems to react wildly to levels. I made a single kit that is my “blank slate” that contains all the gain staging I prefer, so I cannot give details.

However, I will say that keeping the mix 2/3 dry 1/3 wet and using the A2 release seem to be golden, and I never use the built in compressor post-gain but just give a volume bump on the mixer.

This one weird trick to get that hit kick drum sound…

In my case, I was amazed by the rendering of a crappy sample played half speed. With a bit of filtering on a weird guitar sample, I truly heard some voices singing !

I tried to do the same on OT, but it wasn’t that beautiful…

I :heart: AR !

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I know that feeling! I had a time when I almost dismissed AR because I found the sounds boring. Today I can’t stop searching for sweet spots and it’s really satisfying to detect them.

Generally, use one-cycle LFOs on anything. E.g. use it on pitch and regulate tone decay separately for Bassdrums. Use it on ANY parameter. Never walk away from a sound without using the LFO.

For instance, use an exponential one-shot LFO with much depth on overall volume while keeping the actual volume level low, with long decay. This results in a snappy sound with long, soft tail - you couldn’t achieve that with the normal AMP envelope.
Or turn up the basic volume and modulate attack with an inverted exp one-shot LFO.

Or create a bongo-like sound with FM and use a free running sawtooth LFO on AMP to create a natural feeling rolling sound. Modulate depth with plocks.

Need to stop now - really wanna go home and play :slight_smile:

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When I put in a random sample, doing some random sculpting, wow, the happy accidents when sculpting… Love my rytm!

Two biggest warm fuzzy moments this week.

  1. Fingerdrumming a whole part in one take (the pads aren’t that bad imho).

  2. Setting up a bunch of euclidean sequencers in Reaktor and using them to trigger the rytm. Mind blown as my algorithmic drum ensemble seemed to play a breathing rhythm, playing off each other. Reading [url=“https://www.crcpress.com/The-Geometry-of-Musical-Rhythm-What-Makes-a-Good-Rhythm-Good/Toussaint/9781466512023”]this book at the moment, which is providing a lot of food for thought / inspiration.

It’s funny, having spent years obsessing on gear and engineering problems, I’m now finding that improvements in my musicianship and understanding of music theory are giving me the most satisfaction.

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Great thread!

Haven’t delved too deeply yet, but I’ve had some fun with the FM kick and tuning different hits up or down. Sort of creating a baseline.

i thought for about 17 seconds that i was gonna sell my AR a few weeks ago.

damn i was once young a dumb

Amen to that. I love assigning mine to a free random and volume and getting velocity variation. Though the new update might make moot that idea and I’ll have it for other purposes.
A lot of people complain about the HHs being boring. I’ve found assigning LFO to tune or decay, peppered with overdrive, to make for really fierce HHs.
These threads are great and such a relief from the more frequent moan fests.
This machine is massive fun.

I like how the machine only slowly reveals its full potential. You really gotta go back to each machine and tweak the shit out of it.

sometimes it’s fun to do the exact opposite of what you were just planning.

Mine’s also been on the kick, created some proper bowel destroying kick sub combinations on one track. Basically finding sweet spots like the others did with filter, resonance, filter envelope and decay, overdrive, long decay on the synth engine with the lfo moving the pitch set to trig for those wonky techno sub rumbles. I’m at work now but happy to share some pre sets tonight with u all

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For the past couple of days I have been trying to re-gain stage 18 mins worth of music, and dial in better compression settings. I almost feel like I know what I’m doing.

The wavs people have posted in the files section sound really good in the RYTM. There’s a few bass sounds that I had chased around for months on the A4 or the SlimPhatty, turns out cycle samples in the RYTM are the answer.

I finally gave Overbridge and honest effort. Besides a few hiccups, I was throughly impressed.

Damn… I really hope some kind people are brave enough to share their tips on the matter at hand – especially compression and gain staging. I mean, this is a great topic! I can’t say I’ve achieved anything groundbreaking, so I’d sure love a leg up… Maybe people like Mr. AdamJay will chime in – I hear he’s a real connoisseur of the AR compressor :slight_smile:

For compression.
I choose a long attack, usually at 1 or .3, sometimes less.
Release varies depending on if I have a long boom kick or short one, but generally I keep the release around 1.
I’ll roll back the threshold until I see the black vertical bar dipping a wee bit.
Mix between 30-45
Turn up the make up gain where the final output is at a nice level without going into the red on what ever the RYTM is jacked into, for me thats the OT.

For basic pads like kick/snare/hat etc, I set the amp volumes to default at 100. Function+dial.
Same for the synth or sample volume, or if they are layered, probably less than 100 for the one thats the highest in volume.
From there I have each track volume around 80-95 tops.

Reverb and Delay volumes maxed and set to pre.

RYTM master volume stays a little shy of all the way up.

Thanks! Super useful as a starting point for a newbie like me

Would love to see some pre-sets if you have any - been working on trying to get those wonky techno sub rumbles!

Im just a beginner but i spent hours on it and i cannot help myself but the AR sounds warm with the compressor and anything send thru it also.

Till now i did not use any samples … just playing around with parameters and filters and so on… this thing is f###ing crazy

Meanwhile i must found a new joB for my OT