EditEd4TV's TrifonicPercussive

A few days back I posted a Trifonic video that featured a really cool granular effect. I found out about this video on the Propellerhead's forum and today on the board, Reason Guru, EditEd posted a link to his version of the effect:

TrifonicPercussive.rns

Here's what Ed said about the effect and device:

"Sounds like they're triggering a specific percussion sample, hard to tell, but in any case it's being triggered with a fast LFO, and they ramp that LFO rate down in a smooth manner but it eventually lands on a musically/rhythmically correct value, as opposed to the smooth ramping down that it begins with....

It was tough to figure out what to put where for the Combi control, there's a lot of variables that you can fool around with, particularly on Thor's step sequencer in getting it to do random stuff, it's really really cool. I just stuck with a somewhat standard pattern that begins with the long buzz rolling down in tempo, then stuttering out some 16th notes. But you can do a lot more than that... experimentation is the key... you can change the note length of the individual steps in Thor's step sequencer, change the gate length, etc. Also try different trigger totals from ReDrum channel 9, because as it is now, that one pattern just hits one trigger on the downbeat, beat 1. Put a few others here and there for more fun.

oh yeah, I also used osc 1 pulse wave as an LFO because it gives more options and control. So basically we have ReDrum channel 9 triggering Thor's step sequencer to start, at which point Thor simple goes through it's steps. Every step of the sequencer triggers the modulation envelope which is set to a decay ramp and that signal alters oscillator 1 pitch. Oscillator 1 is set to a square/pulse wave, very low octave, so it's just a series of triggers really, and that gets sent out via CV1 back into the ReDrum to trigger any given channel. You can see that series of routings in the MBRS."

Thanks Ed! Be sure to check out Ed's Website, where you can find free refills, files, and Reason help. He's also currently working on a video called "Understanding Thor" that's going to be essential!

And if you dig granular synthesis, don't forget about my own Granular Refill.