I’ve been madly in love with my Analog 4 and feel decently comfortable with much of the basic operation(s).
It occurred to me though that my music still feels a bit plodding and “on the beat.” What are some tips for generating movement in parts? Favorite LFO recipes? Cool Performance knob tweaks?
I was thinking about this in the context of bass lines and drums specifically, but really any part should/could benefit from some more interesting rhythmic elements.
One of my favorites is of course setting the length of one track to a few trigs short of the main sequence. Say 14 when the rest is at 16.
Microtime some triplets on a different track or a very slow squarewave LFO on any parameter also creates a rhythmic sub pattern.
What kind if rhythmical variations would you like? Do you use trig conditions?
Some lfo ideas
I’ve only messed with Trig Conditions sparingly on my Digitakt and I’m not super knowledgeable about them. If I could use them to add bounce or “groove” to melodic parts though I’d be super interested.
Up to know, most of what I’ve seen is along the lines of “you can use a Trig Condition to make your snare sound like a machine gun!” and that’ s not really interesting to me. Would love to be wrong or see, for lack of a better word, softer or more dubby uses for them.
That’s not what trig conditions are for (what you describe sounds more like the retrig function).
Trig conditions are logical operators which checks if a trig should be executed or not. There is, for example, a probability trig condition (execute trig only in XX% of all cases). Or another trig condition which checks if you are in FILL mode. Then there is also a trig condition in the form of A:B (1:2 means that the trig get only executed the first time, third time, fifth time and so on).
You can read up about the other trig conditions in the manual.
Oops, you’re correct. I was thinking of retrigs. I’ve used Trig Conditions before, mostly for drum stuff e.g., play the crash 1/4 times or the ghost snare 33% of the time.
The idea of using Trig Conditions for melody sounds interesting, and I recall seeing an Oscillator Sink video where he used them to create evolving arpeggiated sequences on the Digitakt. I’ve just never been able to think of a way to use them in my own stuff since I tend to write pre-planned melody lines that depend on a specific note at a specific time.
EDIT - Hmm. Just thought of an idea I might play with – ghost melody notes. Basically use a trig condition to play a note right behind or ahead of a specific note that is part of my melody, but softer and quieter. Almost like a bucket delay. I’ll have to experiment and see if that leads to happy accidents.
Syncopation–dotted eighths, dotted quarters and quarter note triplets are your friends
Great artists steal, good artists borrow. If you hear a particularly spicy rhythmic or melodic part, go ahead and transcribe it or plop it down on your sequencer of choice. I’m not very good at programming drums on the fly (tend to fall into four on the floor with snare on 2 and 4) but when I take inspiration from other recordings I can get going.
There’s a Tame Imapala song with the My Sharona beat.
Listen to the great rhythm guitarists like Keith Richards and Nile Rogers. Their parts are equally singable and grooving–signs of a fantastic rhythm section.
My fav LFO recipe for rythms is sample and hold with random waveform at a high rate, applied subtly to filter envelope depth, amp attack or decay
Would also be really cool if it could be applied to microtiming of trigs, buts its not, but can be kindof mimicked using a fast exp amp attack which is modulate with the lfo above
TRC %, TRC PRE > add 2 notes with %.
TRC %, TRC PRE, TRC PRE > add 3 notes with %.
TRC %, TRC /PRE with - 23 microtiming > alternate 2 notes depending on %.
When doing ambient / droney stuff I really enjoy p locking osc sync and AM. Or very slow lfo on sync. Gives amazing results if you listen for several minutes. P locking with different track length of course will make more rhythmics stuff
you can still use trig conditions to play a certain note at a certain time really, they’re not all based on chance - they just mean you can make a pattern more complicated than the length of the sequencer ( like, have a note play only ever second time around or whatever)
use a random LFO to change the start point of things a little bit is a a good cheat to humanise things.
or the same but for filter cutoff.
Hide some very muted guitar in there
Swing usually helps.
Accent as well.
I will sometimes also ditch the usual snare or clap on the 2 and the 4.
Sounds on those beats tend to break up the beat. Removing them can make the tempo feel faster than it is, and more driving.
Kicks that change in amp decay and pitch.
A delay on an imperfect time (24.15 instead of straight 24)
Recording yourself hitting those drum pads and manipulating the sample. (Slower/faster, different start and loop point etc)
Setting an intention to purposely do things you haven’t done before!