I've heard this effect quite a bit, particularly from Rival Consoles and wondering how I would go about creating it.

Each note/chord of a phrase is repeated and the rate seems to be adjustable as if there is a dial to control the speed of the repetitions. It could be a delay of some kind, but there are no notes overlapping so it doesn't sound like a delay. Sounds like it's maybe more of a midi effect or maybe part of a synth.

From 0s

Can anyone offer any wisdom?

Cheers

 

a) They spent a lot of time on the MIDI itself, adjusting velocities and all that stuff like cutoffs, especially the length and the space between a chord and the next (or a single note? I can't even tell..).
b) There's a simple gate with different patterns that gets triggered when needed (but this is unlikely because the synth is a short sound and not sustained, so the gate won't effect much).

I don't think it's a delay because the notes repeat like a groove, very specific and pleasant way. Try to do that same grooves with snares, after you got it it's just a matter of automating the stuff that you want (cutoff, velocities, resonance, amp envelope? whatever)

Hope this helped a little bit. If it's a delay or something else I'm going to be surprised

 

Thanks, so in all likelihood it's programmed rather than something that's able to be done live. Damn!

 

Don't take my words for granted, as I'm no expert.
But from what I know and understand, I'm pretty sure that is not the result of an effect instrument. Also I think there is more than one layer in the main synth (one is the attack for sure).

You could do it live if you were good with the keyboard I guess? But yeah, wait for other people as well, my opinion is worth almost nothing

WAIT. Now that I think about it, it could easily be a plugin/effect/gear that plays around MIDI instead of the sound itself, or chop the sound and applies different filters. No idea btw

 

Haha, thanks dude...now you'll be as curious as me how it's done! We'll see what other opinions there are on the matter

 

Xfer LFO tool, Cable guys volume shaper etc..

 

I did a quick search and somebody says they are just using tape delay, meh. Not sure they might be referring to that effect though.

 

Maybe not an effect. Watch this:

 

You can do this with any Time/Grain Stretch effect.
I used Point Blank's Monster Timestretch to replicate it.
Load your note/chord or loop sample into the device, highlight the section you want to repeat.
Map the SPEED control to a knob and tweak away.
Like @Backtired said, automating would be the way to go.
If you need to do it live I recommend adjusting the Min/Max range for the Macro in Live to keep it usable and not have it go all spastic.
Also recommend creating a separate clip for this effect unless you have arms like Durga.

The Grain Stretch in Maschine works well for this too.
Stutter-Edit could work too if you customize the patch and disable the quanitize module.

 

Last edited: Oct 28, 2016

Or a sample loop that could either be automated or played manually slower or faster and/or by hooking it up with an LFO to be modulated by random shaped waveforms, or.....

 

Well, the basis of all this is something called "sample and hold". It has nothing to do with a sample, as we know it from the digital world. It is an analog s&h. Such a unit buffers a signal for a selectable period of time, and outputs that new signal at a selectable rate. You can go real deep with it, if you feed back the signal, or parts of it. Analog s&h is rather rare in modern synths. It is often used with noise as input to generate arpeggio-like sequences, but you could just as well generate something like the example you posted.

 

1) Modulated loop length (sampler), like modulating the loop-end position.
2) Modulated buffer repeat
3) MIDI retrigger/loop with modulated length/tempo (so you can set amp envelope on the synth/sampler of choice).
4) granular synthesis
5) manual editing (copy/paste and shortening/lengthen each snippet)
6) ...
There are several ways you can do this.

One fun little gem (envelope-triggered modulated buffer repeater) is the Bouncer by One Small Clue. It's fun to tweak and record in realtime. Instant fun and usable results (and it's free):

First time I heard similar effect (aswell as pan-automation) was in 1998, when this was released in Sweden (awesome duo!). Listen at 0:08:

 

Last edited: Oct 29, 2016

Turns out it was an effect, and it's actually very interesting !

 

BOUNCING BALL




BOUNCING BALL is a stereo delay that bounces like a ball. One can act on the bounce in different ways: by choosing the number of rebound, gravity which will influence their behavior, their decay like a fade in / out, their color by applying a filter (lowpass / highpass) and the time between bounces (synchronized to the tempo or not). To better visualize the action of the delay, the central display shows real time all changes.

• Guitar - Deccelerate
• Piano - Accelerate
• Drumbox - Various Examples
• Wurly - Ghost Trace
• Guitar - compulsive disorder
• Guitar - Waves Ricochet
• Guitar - Analog Behavior

 

In a strange way groove sort of reminded me of some of the cool stuff Andy Mckee did.
Like acoustic played thru delay to get sample and then mess with again.
At about 0.32 sounds a bit like tapping on body of acoustic.
Sounds like time based effect like phase/detuned as well as delay to get sample then messed bout with timing

Interesting sound

 

Bro, I didn't know we were talking Reaktor. These too if you input your own audio:

 

Any synth with a multisegment envelope (massive, alchemy, serum) could produce that efect. And my bet is on this because one can assign to a single macro button (or modwheel) the MSEG depth and also reduce the release in the amp's ADSR so it will sound plucky during the "strum" and more sustained during the normal play. With proper mapping it's just a matter of automating one knob.

 

I've gotten rhythms like that from just noodling on a midi drum kit and releasing the pressure on the stick over the course of the rebounds.

Try on a hard rubber drumpad, try getting two pad hits from one motion (using the rebound), then 3 from 1, then 4 from 1, etc etc, till you are getting 10 or 15, then just release the pressure on the stick slowly after hit 8 and they will slow down. Add second stick in other hand!

You should be able to see how getting a rhythm like that isn't that hard by playing it in.
I guess it's what you trigger it with that makes it tricked out ;D

 

Last edited: Oct 29, 2016

Does anybody have Rival Consoles telephone number? We could all ring them up in together and have a conference call to get to the bottom of this conundrum. Like within so many creative endeavors we are bound to do many things in so many different ways that will inevitably bring us all to the same or near end. That is one reason why I love art so much, finding novel ways to come up with solutions. It is a brilliant way to tick away the moments that might otherwise make up a dull day. Let us not fritter and waste in an offhand way while kicking around while toying with sound, waiting for someone or for that matter, something to show us the way.

Oh, hark, I believe that I hear the softly spoken magic spell....