C’mon, share em up. How do you use the crossfader for fun performance tricks?
There was this document on elektron-users from this nice fellow, about recording and all that… he spoke of this “scene stacking” its not really a trick… but it is a good idea.
havent exactly figure out how I will use this knowledge… so its hard to explain.
but his idea about it was well described…
what is it ?
I think you’re speaking about Merlin’s OT THOUGHTS.
it’s here: http://www.elektron-users.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=22&Itemid=30
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this is a fantastic read and a much much welcome addition to the manual.
highly recommended!
Having a melodic track (say a bassline) and using retrigger at infinite and rate at 2, 4, or 8, creates the staccato effect, very easy but using for altering the mood of the song.
PS Merlins reading is great, well recommended
There’s the classing “playing the scenes” style. For a sliced drum beat, I’ll make a few scenes all with retrig set to infinity, and various settings of RTIM, STRT, PITCH, and various LFO settings (often pointed to RTIM, STRT, PITCH, filter settings), and then I’ll slide the fader over while holding down the button and switching between the scenes. This gets more fun when it’s expanded to more drastic differences for more tracks, but you (or really me) have to be careful not to overuse it.
For a bassline with a lot of harmonics, I like a scene that will take the rate way down to get that streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetched sounds, plus a delay send and an LFO to do a hipass filter sweep… Does a good transition.
I had a spoken (whispered actually) word sample and I had a scene with lots of retrig, start, and rate automation that I would just turn on and off (func. and scene button), no fading. So she’d be whispering, and then I’d disrupt her, and then go back to the normal whispering.
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Wow, would love to see a vid of this. Just saying 
When working with a sliced drumloop, I like to assign a Scene to the last slice. It allows to chose which slice is playing by moving the crossfader.
This way you can improvise with the loop, create fills, breaks etc…
Very cool with a drum & bass loop.
I guess that if you prepare a long drumloop sample made of lots of parts of several and different sounding drumloops and than slice that big sample into lots of slices (32 or 64), you have instant breakcore fun !
But lately, I’ve been using the scenes without the crossfader, just by selecting them with the buttons.
I’m working on a piece which has an arpegiated “blip” on one of the track (but it works with every type of short sound). I created several scenes that use the retrig effect on very small rates. Different rates on each scene, the rates being tuned to matching tonalities.
This allow me to change the pitch of the “blips” on the fly while giving them a more metallic tone.
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Yeah, I have a few scene buttons I can"play" like that too, usually various filter combinations and using the xfader to shorten playing loops and slices. Fun stuff, keep 'em coming!
No rules or typical uses as it depends on the particular song imho, but I often have scenes 9-11 & 15-16 as breakdowns with rythms muted or deeply effected. Easy then to go sky diving & have the parachute deployment cable at hand.
Scenes 9-11 being mid track breakdowns/builds, Scene 16 being ambient version of scene 1, scene 15 being ambient version of scene 14, so then makes transitions back to the beginning from the end smoother.
jumping between scenes is fun for fills & sharper progressions, so is x-fading to inbetween amounts which often create new unplanned grooves.
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Really great piece of advice. But when i use the retrig rtim and negative rate for scene B, the loop starts over when i xfade back to A. Which creates a jump in the audio when the loop retrigs from the next trigger. Gets out of sync and does. Ot get back until next triggerpoint.
Is there a way to avoid that? Maybe use of effects in some creative way?
I thought you sold your Octatrack Tarekith?
^ Check the date.
I wish that cat was still around tho.
@k4p: I use the same method with fully negative rate. It makes cool scratch-like effect when fader is played faster. You need to slice the sample to have (linear) triggers say every 4 steps. Then it keeps it’s continuity.
My trick or rather practice is to have the more radical and playfull scenes in slots 9-15 so I can reach them one-handed while holding A scene button which is normally used as clean state scene. That way I can finger-play them with right hand and going back quickly to scene 1 with left hand pointer finger ready at slot scene 1. More transitional and ambient scenes are at 2-8. 16 is transition trick scene with track 7 recorder only.
I’ve been playing with negative rate to make scratching effects. It’s so damn fun and really effective. Short video here…
Each side of the crossfader has a slightly different pitch. It’s got some sample rate reduction as well, which is fun to have slightly different amounts on each side (as well as effects like reverb).
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I’ve been playing with negative rate to make scratching effects. It’s so damn fun and really effective. Short video here…
Each side of the crossfader has a slightly different pitch. It’s got some sample rate reduction as well, which is fun to have slightly different amounts on each side (as well as effects like reverb).
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Aha, yeah, elektron posted about that, very impressive, so you are just trigging one sample manually then and the fader is not switching to another, great idea conceptually, which might be fun to use in alternative scenarios, sweet 
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Just discover this old thread. Anyone in the last four years have any tips/tricks/combinations that work well that weren’t mentioned in earlier posts? The scenes are like the Wild West to me. Would be nice to hear about some combinations that work (LFOs, effects, retrig, etc) and then I can build upon from there. I feel like a lot of what I try is random experimentation that sounds bad.
the scratching is a cool trick, but the song itself is awesome!!
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Recently I’ve used cross-fader with scenes having tuned delays or comb filters to match the tracks key(s) and playing additional melodies with it.
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