Percussion Patches

General
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Whatever your other opinions of the synth, I think many might feel that it lacks percussive elements. Other than Bad Hat, Random Hats, Clap or Snare and Snare and Snare 2, are there any other patches that people have had any luck twisting into anything that sounds like a drum kit? Maybe I am missing something very obvious here, and there are hundreds of the things lurking in the engines that threaten to fry your CPU as soon as you turn them on. And yes, I could buy a drum machine. But it seems a curious oversight, if that is what it is. Any advice, suggestions or perfectly engineered drum patches welcome! Thanks.

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I was just thinking the same thing. Ive been playing with the DWA and GRAINS engines, with the most luck with DWA. I can get some solid techno and house beats with some glitchy goodness here and there. Though nothing very spectacular, they do make for fun jams with friends.

I would love to see PERC brought over to Synth. It’d give more control over those grooves and the toms can be opened up like bass synths so it can be played while holding down a beat on the sequencer. Plus, I think it’s like 5 hits on a single voice. Super versatile for the Synth format, imo.

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So after playing around with a few ideas, I landed on something that generates some interesting percussion grooves with the DWA.

  • I started with a custom sample of 4 kicks and snares (on the 1s and 2s, respectively) and popped that in one oscillator. This sample keeps a “backbone” of sorts
  • Set the loop width of that oscillator so that it captures one of the hits at a time (mine is 11.5) and the play mode to sync loop
  • In the mod matrix, set one of the lfos to shift the loop start of the same oscillator forward approx. 70% or more
  • Add a drum loop to the other oscillator to add some dimension. I opened up the entire loop width and set the play mode to just loop. Same with the lfo stuff. It’s more to taste with this one, so play around with stuff till you find something cool.
  • Be sure to set the lfos to sync and then play with the ratios and waveforms to get some variation in the grooves. Set the polyphony to 2 voices and it will also add variation in a different way.
  • Next, add a few (8 or so) notes to the sequencer to give the groove some movement. You could also try the arpeggiator, but it wasnt quite doing it for me like the sequencer does.

I usually just use the hold function to keep one note held while I occasionally add a second note for extra color and jam away on the other engines. There’s lots of room for interesting design and makes for some cool beats.

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Thanks man.

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