Many new features means new tricks!
I think it could be a good place to put some light on some overlooked feature you enjoy for a very practical use.
No nonsense, moaning or questions!
No random YouTuber vid.
Only your DNII tricks.
It would be nice to choose a concise title and put two ## before, so that we get what it’s about at first glance.
First, I was finding this nice to have a mean to populate a 128-step sequence quickly.
Then, I found it lacked life. And kind of abandoned it…
But it just need a bit of time to get the most out of it!
If you want the Euclidean sequencer to get more interesting, pluck a few trigs while in Grid mode, before toggling EUC on.
Note, velocity, retrig… any parameter and even Sound locks!
¡Bonanza!
If you set a modulation depth of -8.00 in the Key Tracking source menu destined to an oscillator’s pitch it will negate the effect of the inbuilt Key tracking … you get a steady pitched oscillator for any Key input
Anything more negative will begin to reverse Keytracking (centred around Note64) and anything between -8.00 depth and 0 depth will be in a sort of microtuning territory … this opens up exotic sounds and an easy way to play them in
Of course, pushing the interval between notes further from 100c will allow you to cover a lot of territory on one folded keyboard view, again handy for wide percussive sound variation
Key tracking is excellent on the Comb filters and everywhere frankly, just to introduce small variations to otherwise static percussive sounds in particular
Change Arp notes order randomly with microtiming knob in Note edit page.
Add range, offset with non 4/4 length, 1st trig condition, INF length…
my tip is not really a trick, but using pre-filter srr to further sculpt the texture of a pinged snappy percussive sound is very nice. also works very well on plucked noise exciter into comb filter for string synthesis. i learned this on the dt2, but works just as well here and imo is even more useful
using velocity mod to increase it over a short range naturally is such a nice effect
another one is if you’re doing the karplus-strong style comb filter thing, if you have a very tight bandpass b/w filter, setting it to post, then trigger the “FLTR BW.RT” (BW pre/post routing) to just above 1(?) in Velocity Mod, so it flips to PRE filter, you get a very strong “strike” as if you plucked an open string on a guitar
got an example of that in action here with spread out grain noise (more resonant guitar/mandolin i think maybe?), the notes that pop open have higher velocity. unison helps a lot too obviously
I just discovered this today, and it also applies to the DN1.
If you layer track 10 to track 9, meaning that track 9 will receive it’s notes from track 10. You can then put lock trigs on track 9 to tweak it’s preset as it plays.
The cool part is you can set these to 2 different track lengths. For example set track 10 (the master track) to a length of 12, and track 9 to a length of 7.
The other nice thing is when editing the lock trigs on track 9 the notes are coming from another track, so you don’t have to use any tricks like putting 2 trigs next to each other and offsetting them with micro-timing. You just put the lock trigs exactly on the steps you want to change.
Please note I have not tested this yet with track 9 sending it’s notes to track 10, so I’m not sure if order / precedence matters.
One example is adding a higher pitch preset that compliments what is playing on the master track. The higher tone can have it’s own conditions, track length, and probability. One simple example is starting the higher tones track probability at 0, and then gradually increasing it to layer in the change during a performance.
This is very useful if you want the higher tone to only play when the master track plays (and use the same notes)
anyone care to share some secret techniques or best practices for the comb filter-as-string-synthesis resonator?
i noticed that when you hold func+turn the freq knob its in increments of like 48, 60, whatever, which seem to be in tune when you keytrack at 100%, right?
i have noticed that granular or tuned noise when scattered can be very nice and visceral/gritty and very dynamic as an exciter
i’ve learned as i stated above that sample rate reduction is very useful for sculpting the timbre of the karplus-like output without making it too harsh like it can when using the synth component of one of the machines rather than a short noise burst into comb vcf
but other than simple things like trying to keep the normalled comb filter lpf low and feedback as high as possible without getting away from itself, setting freq to an acceptable value + keytracking at 100, im not sure how else to manipulate it really. layering with other tracks or just the osc page of the wavetone machine maybe while using the noise part of that synth for the main impulse. testing different exciter types. playing with the b/w filter and maybe trying some fm/am on the comb params?
anyone learn any max marco style insider tips for that thing yet?
edit: i guess Ivar is the new Max Marco
Yes, in tune with 60 and +/- 12 increments.
Tip I found using Digitakt 2 : use an lfo on LEVEL to get a pre comb filter amp envelope.
Square LFO, speed 0, use fade in to get a slower attack on noise (flutes, strings).
Wavetone Noise has attack setting, AHR envelope. Lfo can add extra level to minic an ADSR.
OT comb filters sounds very different, amp is before fx. I’d rather focus on DN2 patches than on what have been made with OT…
pretty good. also, i guess its obvious, but i kind of instinctually go for noise as the exciter, but as with the grand piano preset, percussive transients are also important, as well as the noise bw filter
im back on track now though. i had like 3 days straight away from the box and already forgot the importance of transients with physical modelling. that fm drum “transient” parameter is so great, especially with its own filter and envelope
i’d still like to know if there are another high level insights into physical modelling with comb filters that we could apply here, but i can probably find that on Sound on Sound or MW or something like that. i always like to hear elektron-specific techniques though, because here are often elektron-specific ways to do things
What kind of strings ?
Violin ensemble ?
I gave it a try with Swarmer and Comb+, feedback 56, key tracking on BW filter…
That would deserve a thread !
I didn’t find anything very interesting yet, I just do it by ear.
Just a minor tip for those that are wondering where the punch is when designing patches:
If you’re starting from an init (sine/default) patch, check your amp envelope; by default it may not be set to the minimum attack time 
Next to using the note editor for editing chords, it can conveniently be used for navigation between pages, in both directions. Rather than having to press the [PAGE] button multiple times in order to navigate forwards to the desired page, entering the note editor and holding [FUNC] in combination with pressing [LEFT] or [RIGHT] causes the note editor to jump to the next trig. This can be really useful if you wanted to edit a few existing notes on the page just before the current one and could save quite some [PAGE] key presses.
yeah the init patch has an attack time of i think 8? (still waiting for my replacement dn2)
this is likely preemptively done to prevent clicking
i remember the first thing i would do when programming volca fm / dexed / dx7 patches was raise
“eg r1” so it’s nice to have it already done for you
Use Key Tracking to map the 62 transient samples to notes.
Use Key Tracking to map the 62 transients samples.
There is 1 different transient every 2 increments, so Key Tracking Depth is 16 to map them all (instead of Depth 8).
Depth 64 in order to have kicks, snares and hihats with 16 trigs without transpose keyboard.
Use Transient parameter to shift kits.
Keytrack on Comb - and Filter base
A nice use for the comb filter is to use it as a delay for that track. Set the comb filter to a very low frequency and it sounds more like a delay. Feedback and Filter to your liking (are just the usual delay suspects). And voila, a track specific delay!
Downside is offcourse the delay times are very short.
Feedback is surprisingly low at lowest frequency. 3 or 4 repeats…
Edit : My bad, note length was short.
By ear I found 87.9 bpm at 0, 16th delay, 32th at around 17.7.
Would be interesting to make a tempo chart with a formula…
Would be nice indeed. Although my use cases are independent from bpm (today that is 
). When i count by ear it will take a bit more than 10 seconds to fade out. With feedback at max and no filtering. Long enough for a lot of usecases.
Would be nice to have a 100% (or more!) feedback though 
.
I’m dumb, wrong amp settings !
With inf release it seems much longer than 10s ! 99% feedback maybe…
Closer to 14secs indeed! (in a mix with other sounds, so may even be longer in silence…)
Try differently, can last several minutes imho ! Have to go; experiments when I come back. We have to find a formula !
