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Ruso

This is my first article out of maybe a series I will put together.

Today I will cover a very very useful technique for adding unique properties to drums which will make the standart usually badly sounding drums on the emx and give them warmth and dynamics as well as filter effects.

Requirements:
EMX with unused 3/4 outputs (or only one of them if you use panning) and unused audio in.
A mono 1/4 inch cable(short is good, I have 12" ones laying all over for patching my gear)

Recommended:
Smooth tubes.

Now, I will mention before I even begin that the technique itself is not that spectacular however doing certain things will make this one of the most useful drum modifications you can do(in my opinion).

First connect the cable from either output 3 or 4 back to audio in. If you use external effects and want to keep that abbility, simply use the other extra output for mono(emx is basically mono, the effects and panning are the only stereo enchansments)

Now you will need to sacrifice a synth part but trust me it's well worth it.

Program a basic beat.

On synth part 5, set synth type to Audio In + Comb. Now record a note that starts at the begining of the bar and plays through one bar. if you can't get it right, step edit. Make it 16 steps long and starting at the begining of the bar.

Now send all your drums(probably except for hats) to output 3/4 and now you should be hearing them playing through synth part 5.... make sure to adjust audio in level so there's no clipping(if you don't know, it's on the screen).....

Now lets do fun stuff... first of all Overdriving drums is critical because it will make them stand out and be warm... over drive the synth part the drums are going through... depending on what kind of tubes your electribe has you'll be able to turn it up between a lil and all the way without distortion(unless you want distortion).... on my tubes I can turn up all the way and get rediculously good sounding organic warmth. It becomes metalic and dynamic and in your face.

When you got a desired level of overdrive, give your drums some common resonance. This will make them all have a unique tone and they'll be more in tune with each other. Turn up the feedback(osc edit 1) a little under half way up and then tinker with osc edit 2 until you get a good sounding pitch out of your drums... now you can over do this sound but I think that sounds generic and like a very common effect and it seems that i f you turn up resonance where you can't quite hear the effect but does give your drums a different sound it sounds a lot more clean and proffesional.

Now you can obviously filter your drums, this is useful for when you're playing live to take drums out gradually with the filter. But you can also get some very very very good sounding filter effects if you automate the filter cutoff... in breakbeats the best effect is produced by slightly automating it at offbeat intervals(3/16, 1/6...) and it's also best to be done at more rapid intervals. I find the best mode is |\|\|\|\|\ because it lines up the effect with beat peaks.

one other obvious feature is the fact that you can pan the whole set of drums.

So there we have it. I have put together a demo. It starts out with just the drums, then I switch them to outputs 3/4 and go through the different techniques I talk about... including filter modulations, overdriving, resonating , cutting the beat in, and lastly panning.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6368191

Enjoy.

TrrP · Junior Member Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 76

Thanks for your time and effort Ruso. Smile

I think the audio-ins are one of the coolest parts of the MX/SX. I can't remember myself feeding the MX back into the MX though. (I usually use my Moogerfooger) Cool idea though. I've gotta stop being lazy and modulate them drum sounds too. Laughing

I do it sometimes on my kick-drums (..I just use the LFO though because I'm lazing programming the step-edit.. pity because my results are somewhat random ofcourse and miss the tightness..) but that resonance on the rest of the percussion sounds cool too. I must give it a try. Again.. THANKS Smile

Ruso · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:16 pm Post subject:

the most important feature of this is not the modulation but the overdrive, which is the same as for synth parts a nd is affected by tubes. If you pass it through external distortion they are on separate channels and the sound still is separated while if you do it through emx's over drive it goes through the same tubes so the sounds come out the same except the drums are more up in your face.

The problem I found with external overdrive and compression for that matter is that it is v ery obvious and the sound stands out too much.

xmit · Joined: 07 Nov 2007 Posts: 10

I've started using up synth parts for drums ( I'm using the EMX alongside an Elektron Monomachine so I dont need too many EMX synth parts anyway ) but simply by using the PCM samples as a part rather than routing the drums in like Ruso ( though I can see this is a cool idea too ).
This has a couple of advantages :
firstly you can really shape your kicks, snares etc as you have all the synth edit controls at your disposal - LPF / HPF filtering & tweaking the env in particular can radically alter the sound of the familiar PCM samples, which if you're like me anyhow, are getting a bit boring! Also some sync'd lfo effects ( like Ruso has mentioned ) can really enhance your drum sound : I like little 'wobbles' on the tails of my kicks!
Secondly, you can get some really wild percussion effects by using the arp & the ribbon / slider to trigger different sounds - this gives you totally different results to how you'd program beats in normally.
The down side of this is as I've already mentioned its obviously eats into your synth parts, but if you can spare a couple its well worth if for kicks & snares in particular.

SupahFlyRetard · Joined: 21 Feb 2008 Posts: 7

nice tut. I used to route like this through my kaoss pad but I needed the extra synth so I decided to just run the drums separately to my mixer instead.

I don't find the emx drums too bad though, I can usually tweak them to get good sounding drums but I guess it depends on what kind of music you make.

Ruso · Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject:

you don't really need to have an extra synth part to route through the kaoss pads (or any other effects processing for that matter) because you can always just use audio in thru. That way it also goes through the tubes.
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11hz · Full Member Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 111

I was just looking up what the drive that you are talking about is; I don't have and emx and the esx doesn't have that. That nob, as far as i can tell by looking at the block diagram in the manual, does not function like the tube gain knob. It's not a separate tube gain control for the synth parts. It adds distortion but before the audio signal reaches the tubes. But I'm sure the tubes make a difference in how the final output of that distortion will sound. I noticed the reverb sounded better on my esx with the different tubes.
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Ruso · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 2:36 pm Post subject:

yes I know but the tubes on the main circuit respond very well to heavily overdriven sounds.
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Mateus · Joined: 15 May 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Brazil

Hey Ruso, i'm a new member of this forum and been reading your tips, really nice job!!!

So, i've done all the stuff just like you said but it's not working... i connected the mono cable from audio in to out 3 or 4 and the sound of drum sellected parts are going OK through synth part 5, but when i try using the filters (cuttoff, modulation, etc) from synth 5 nothing happens with the drums parts... can you help me, please?

Ruso · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject:

select each drum part, and under part edit menu, under outputs, select 3/4

then on synth part 5, play one note that is one whole bar long, and starts at step 1. This will enable the audio to come through the filter and everything else.
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http://myspace.com/audioruso

Mateus · Joined: 15 May 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Brazil

Man, i everything just like you told from the beginning about 10 times and it still doesn't work.
I'm wondering if there's something in my emx that needs to be programmed, or if it's not working ok... do you have any idea about what this could be?
If you don't, i'll record a video showing all the procedure i'm doing. Cause this is something i really really wanna do!!! Okay?
Thanks Ruso!

Ruso · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:12 pm Post subject:

do you have audio thru toggled? because if you do, disable it, it overrides audio input under synth parts.
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Mateus · Joined: 15 May 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Brazil

maaaaaaaaannnnnn

tks!!!!!!!!!!!

paul_courville · Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:33 am Post subject:

Is there a way to send the audio-input into the effects processor of the EMX?
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travisthered · Junior Member Joined: 25 Jun 2008 Posts: 84

I use my L/R for only my synth parts and use one of my 3/4 for the drums because I like being able to mix them separately.
I imaging patching the other 3/4 into my audio in and then to a synth part that I out back to 3/4 would be a horrible idea.