this thread is about for what YOU use the sacred middle row (tom pads) of your AR? Built in Toms? Designated Sample Pads because for what else can they be used? The cheapo BD on low tom? Sth higly creative that I can´t imagine? Any tipps or tricks?
I tend to use the analog parts of the AR and mostly don´t use the sampler. And so, furthermore, my middle row of my AR is RARELY used at all. I don´t use the toms. For nothing. I regulary check if the middle buttons still work
I planned to use single cicle waveforms on the middle row to have more synths on the RYTM. But often I tend to use my other elektrons for that.
So, for what do YOU use the middle row?
Do you think, Elektron will ever make some new machines for the middle row? Like realy simple synths or so? Just so we could use them for sth different than toms, noise or the (yes, ok: vast!) land of samples?
not a fan of the toms and if you don’t use the BT for bass then:
noise machine for shaker style pecson BT and under CH, makes it consistent with closed hihat
drop style long noise instead of crash cymbal next to it
impulse with resonating filter for claves style on MT and you can have variation of it on HT with alternating trigs
or samples - any kind of ambience layers, pads, sampled noise, etc., now with the decimal start/end points you can try doing something granular-ish.
I’m pretty sure it won’t happen anymore, probably because of how the oscillators are built for toms, otherwise they would spread the SY machines there as well, but I’d be glad to be wrong and we’ll get some sort of digital machines syntakt style
In my current project I’m using MT for tom sounds (a combination of synthesis and sample), LT is exclusively for samples (glitchy perc stuff mostly) and BT for Impulse machine (pinging a resonant BP filter to make melodic perc sounds or sound fx type sounds). The Impulse machine is one of my favourite things on the Rytm. Have done many ambient tracks using nothing but like five of those, ha!
I’d love to know how you use the Impulse machines. It’s one of the features on the AR that I’ve never given much thought, only played with it a little but didn’t get any sounds I liked out of it, would really like to learn how to use them more
They might be a bit of an acquired taste cos the sound is pretty raw/basic (like a sine wave) but with the amp envelope you can anything from rimshot-like or melodic perc sounds to (what I think are) beautiful melodic synths. For the latter I use the LFO to filter frequency (fairly slow and keep the depth low as well).
I almost never use toms in my tracks. I came up with a concept where I divided the rows according to the frequency spectrum. The bottom row is for kicks and bass, the middle row is for snares, breaks and percussion samples and the top row is for hats and cymbals.
So the bottom row by far is the most valuable. Unfortunately you only get to choose 4 out of the many machines available in that row. So lately I’ve been using it as a “resample” row for when I have a simple sound that doesn’t need to change on row 1. Usually track 5 becomes my sampled BD which frees up track 1 to be a synth or whatever. But yeah I’m mainly using it for samples or use tracks 7&8 to sequence external MIDI. I rarely use the toms and wish there was more we could make use of machine wise on that row. In fantasy land my AR has 2 row 1s and the 3rd row is 4 cy/cb.
I’d imagine that the architecture (ability for Frequency Modulation) bound to the bottom row which allows tone generation and the DVCO update, isn’t available for the middle row given that the tones in the middle don’t have an FM option and are pretty much single VCO. As such, I think it’s safe to conclude that it’s single VCO drones and samples only.
Any tipps or tricks?
