What is your work flow and recording via Overbridge

Elektron Gear Analog Rytm
#1

Hey Everyone,

Totally new to the Elektron world. I recently purchased a RYTM MK2 and I am loving it. I’ve learnt so much already and still I feel I am just scratching the surface.

Anyway, I wanted to get some ideas of how you guys are recording into Ableton from your RYTM?
I would love to know how you find the best way to be hands on with the RTYM and bring that feeling into your DAW to produce a track. I will run through the methods I have tested.

First of, jamming on the RYTM to get a groove and pretty much the main idea of how my track will go. This is great, loads of fun and exactly what I was after.

Then onto getting these sounds into my DAW.

I have tried just soloing sounds and recording in a few bars of each into a channel in Ableton to preserve any FX / Overdrive / LFOs I have. I repeat this with all my sounds and then have Audio recorded that I can start stretching out into a track. This is cool, but it takes away from the fun of jamming and puts me back into the computer copying and pasting.

Second thing I tried was splitting all the channels up individually via Overbridge and recording in like this. This is more fun but I obviously lose my FX. I know about recording the FX on a seperate channel but this can get very messy when you go back to editing and arranging your track in Ableton.

Third thing I did was same as above but put my own Ableton FX on the individual channels. And didn’t worry about RYTMS. This took the hands on approach away from the RYTM again.

I want to preserve the fun of the RYTM within my production, jam into Ableton and tweak parameters on the fly. This seems a lot harder to achieve than one would expect.

Hope that all make sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Just ideas of how you guys approach this and your workflow.

And on a side note… I was thinking of pairing the RYTM with a CYCLES. Any thoughts on this? Or a Digitakt, what pairs the best?

:slight_smile:

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#2

I have created Drum Racks as presets in Ableton to play the AR via Midi from the DAW and an External instrument to connect to all audio channels from Overbridge.

There are a couple of options and setups possible to play the AR live OTB and record the audio ITB, or to controll and record everything from ITB.

There is a reason that you lost your FX. It’s depicted in the manual, where the sound architecture is shown. The FX is not sent to the individual outputs. The FX are send/return lines from/to the mixer bus, and are on the main out only. AFAIK the main out is transmitted via Overbridge too.

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#3

Thanks for the reply. And yes, I know about the architecture. It wasn’t my concern really. As I mentioned, if we can’t jam into Live with the FX then is the work around having those FX within live so you can jam and not bother about RYTMS FX.

Or is it a record each channel in individually to maintain the internal FX of RYTM. Just wondered what each of you do.

The Drum Rack / Midi implementation sounds interesting. I’ll look into it. Thanks again :slight_smile:

#4

Just to answer this: All inputs of Overbridge go to separate tracks and are mixed there old-school like having mics from a real drum set, using channel strips or equivalent plug-ins.

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#5

Not sure if this was already cleared up for you, but if you mute all channels on the main out in the audio routing then the main out are fx only and if you then record individual tracks plus main outs in overbridge you will get all individual tracks plus a separate fx track from the main out. That works for me.

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#6

I like to play with the mutes and fx on the Rytm, so sometimes I just record the stereo output from Rytm into Live. Add some synth tracks in Live, sounds good enough. If I want to have all the tracks separately, I have used Overbridge. Haven’t used the solution of recording each track with fx yet.

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#7

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I have tested this method out. Just seems like it would get messy when you go back to cutting up and editing parts of your entire track.

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#8

whats the main track called? I dont see main or anything. Just the tracks + pre/post fx

#9

Due to the hardware restrictions there isn’t a workflow that fits “best”. Either you loose the fx or you have a hard time in post processing.

IMHO the best workflow (when you want to be productive and not just having fun) is to separate the production stages as much as possible. Don’t go back and forth (endlessly) between jamming with the hardware and arranging/mixing/mastering in the DAW. That’s just a waste of time and will never flow nicely, because these are completely different “jobs” requiring completely different mindsets.

Jam a while, multitrack record everything what’s possible and then change “hats”.

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#10

Maybe the best work around would be to record your seperate tracks through overbridge into your DAW, temporarily sacrificing the FX.

Do your processing / arrangement in your DAW on the individual channels

And then when the bus is ready, send the signal back through the Rytm to gain the Distortion / Compressor. (for delay & reverb you could use the Mute technique outlined above)

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