Roger Linn on Swing, Groove and the Magic of the MPC's Timing (2013)
attackmagazine.com
attackmagazine.com
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dilla-time-dan-charnas/1140...
This is trivially easy to test. Use the pads to record a groove with a standard collection of samples. Replace the samples with clicks. Patch each track to the separate outputs and record into a DAW. Any timing shifts will be very obvious, down to individual samples.
With respect to Mr Linn, he's quite wrong about randomisation being uninteresting. Real drummers play with a Gaussian distribution, even when they're playing to a click. The tiny variations add a surprising amount of interest and liveliness.
But this works best as a dynamic performance effect, and I've never seen it implemented in a drum machine. Baking a randomised uniform distribution into a short repeating pattern is a lot less interesting.
In which case I can understand the thought process of it being uninteresting, in a way. And you're absolutely right that when the randomness is applied into a short loop and repeated it falls into a strange uncanny valley (at least to my ears).
Perhaps another aspect of this is that the randomness, added based on e.g. a seed to the whole track, would be hard to control as an artist. I know when I apply randomness to MIDI I tend to go back with a fine-toothed comb and re-distribute hits that don't go where my mind wants them to.
[0] TEDxZurich - Jojo Mayer - Exploring the distance between 0 and 1
My feeling is that the MPC60 really DOES feel better, but mostly because of its velocity sensitivity. You can really easily get a ton of dynamics without much effort at all. Much much more easily than with a 1000, or a midi keyboard, or any number of pads devices that I've tried. and yeah that for me includes machines which allow for variable velocity curves.
The thing that blew me away was that he told me most of the guys he's selling MPCs use them on FULL VELOCITY at all times. that making sure the pad sensitivity was in perfect condition was not a priority for them. I was shocked... but he was equally shocked I felt it was the velocity which makes the difference lol. Keep in mind these are pretty hardcore old school Chicago producers buying the best of the best vintage machines.
Im not trying to make a point. Just an anecdote. You can check out Kanamit and the work I got done here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CeXOIE0LuvX/
For me, I found the 2000XL gave me the best workflow. It took a while to adjust to the 2500's way of doing things. Everything is hidden behind a menu, but it's easier to move stuff to and from the computer.
I have a Korg PadKontrol (now, disappointingly, discontinued) which has really nice velocity response and even lets you set different response curves to each pad. Not sure why they pulled them when there are very few alternatives.
If you want to make bangers the priority is to get your groove down as fast as possible and add nuance at the mix stage. If you want to craft stuff with velocity sensitivity, layering etc, you're now more into composing than recording and the speed of your workflow is gonna be significantly slower, more half-written abandoned tracks etc.
I am in the latter class btw, because that's the kind of tweaking I enjoy. But the best way to finish tracks is to have a timer running and just bang shit out without thinking too much, pure instinct.
This ^^
Especially in the jamming or "feeling" phase, it's about having your tools (in this case, a few pre-made sounds, or kits) available as quickly as you need them, so you can get into the flow of the track and not lose it. It's also why when I make beats or tracks, I oftentimes find myself composing the peak of the track almost by default and work backwards from there.
Also, USE TEMPLATES!!! Templates are considered a form of cheating by some, but I don't ascribe to that, and I love using templates because it can help me progress so much faster in each phase of production. My default Ableton setup for 4/4 house music literally has every section of the track already set, the default sounds (drums, samples, synths) I need to use to get a groove going, levels pre-adjusted, and everything is color-coded for ease of viewing....and I just go from there.
I saw a video put out by Ableton maybe 2 or 3 years ago that had some artist saying "just get something down in the DAW, and don't worry about what that something actually is - because you'll replace everything later when you're not in the ideation phase of production". The other thing is that if you mix the ideation and production phases, you'll get bored of your track very quickly because you aren't taking breaks, just hearing over and over what you've made so far. It's happened to me literally hundreds of times. I have probably 1k+ ideas (could be a track that's 90% done, or a few loops put together, or just a MIDI sequence that i was goofing around with) sitting on a variety of old computers and hard drives. None will ever be finished, partially due to my inability to set a goal, accomplish it, and close the DAW.
Some of the best production content I've seen has been "Against The Clock" videos where the artist (or artists) have 10 minutes to make something. They just flow for a bit, and then revisit it later if need be.
I find its much easier to just edit velocity manually after the fact.
Feel free to ask questions!
Did you and the designers have any guidelines or rules of thumb about groove that informed your design choices?
Do you recall any design choices made that had a large impact on the musicality of the instrument? Any neat epiphanies or breakthroughs?
Do you have any insights about what kind of swing patterns feel the most musical?
Oh tons and tons of design ideas... I plan on blogging about them at some point once I am more steadily designing my own instruments, right now it would just help the competition. Been writing out articles. I'll post some here when I do
It depends on the bpm and the intention. A swing for jazz is much different than for house or hip hop.
A long time ago now, I wrote a crude Javascript emulation of a Boss DR-110, and when I got to the sequencer part, I threw in the towel because it seemed to be a step beyond the "hobby" level of effort I was willing to commit, lol.
What are your feelings regarding the end of updates ?
(reference for other readers: https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2017/03/13/dave-smith-ins... )
(I have a Tempest, and I'm decent software dev. Wouldn't mind helping maintain a project around it)
I treat the Tempest as a standalone instrument that happens to output MIDI clock. Nothing's gotten in the way of it being my favorite instrument (at least, once free-running LFOs were added - absolute game changer for claps and snares), and if I had a magic wand, the only thing I'd change is to make the 'noise' samples have a random start offset on the waveform playback (something I used to do with Impulse Tracker), which I think would eliminate the phasing that sometimes happens when two voices use the same noise sample. Maybe next time...
Are we going to see a Tempest 2 from DSI?
> I can’t help but imagine a skilled drummer quietly chuckling inside when they see someone going to so much trouble in order to avoid learning to play the instrument skillfully.
In the early 2000s, I joined a punk band at their drummer, and over a couple of years, got to be pretty okay at it.
When, a few years later, I found myself in front of a drum machine again (the Tempest mentioned in this article) I suddenly found the idea of "writing beats" to be absurd. I still recorded patterns, but most of the time, I was tapping them in, in real time. I reflected on how silly it was doing things how I used to, now that I could just... Play the drum beat
Given a MIDI interface and something to trigger, it's not hard to see how counting six MIDI clocks for every trigger will give you straight-ahead semiquavers (16ths) because MIDI clock runs at 24 pulses per crotchet note. With a bit of thought then you can see how pairs of semiquavers will be 12 pulses long, which you can split up any way you like. "50%" is obviously six and six, 58% shuffle would be seven then five, and so on.
But you don't need to stop there. Imagine making a list with a velocity for each hit, and a "time to next hit" in clocks. As long as the total number of "time to next hit" added up to the right number of clocks per bar, the actual notes could be anywhere ahead of or behind the beat. If you deliberately used the wrong number of clocks, you'd end up with your pattern drifting out of step with the rest of the sequence, and if you do that right you've just (re-)invented polymetric rhythm.