Let's build this 3/2 perfect fifth polyrhythm synthesizer sampler
together.
The first thing we'll need is a snare and a kick sound.
We have this snare.
[SNARE SOUND]
And this kick.
[KICK SOUND]
The key to this whole thing working is maintaining the 3 to 2
relationship between these two sounds.
So one of them needs to have a length of three 16th notes and the other two
16th notes.
To accomplish this, I'll Shift click on both of these so they're both selected.
I'll start dragging.
And while dragging, I'll hit the Tab key to switch over to the arrangement view.
Then, I'll place both samples here right at the beginning.
Then, I'll head back to the Arrange so that the arrangement
view is in control.
I'll set my overall grid to 16th notes, and I'll select for the snare sound two
16th notes.
So we see a grid line there and a grid line there.
I can click and drag to make sure two 16th notes are selected.
Then, I'll edit and consolidate to create
a new sample that's two 16th notes long, and I'll rename that sample Snare 2_16.
I'll go down to the kick, but this time I'll
select three 16th notes, Command-J, which is consolidate.
And I'll rename it Kick 3_16.
And I'll get rid of that little remainder there.
And I'll select the snare and this kick, drag and do
the inverse to what I did before.
While I'm dragging, I'll hit Tab, and I'll drop them on an empty scene.
I'll then hit Shift-Tab to switch over to the detail view
and turn looping on for both clips.
Then, I can play that scene.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And we hear that very specific relationship, Ba bata ta da data da.
Every time that plays twice, the snare plays three times,
a very specific, careful relationship.
Those playing together is giving us the polyrhythm of 3 over 2.
Now, to build the synthesizers.
I'll add a new track--
this will be a MIDI track--
and I'll put a simpler in it.
To do that quickly, I'll hit Command-F for find, Control-F on a PC,
and type simpler.
That will bring up simpler in the find box there, then the down arrow key,
and Enter.
Adds a simpler, and I can place my new snare two 16th clip right in a simpler.
We want to turn snapping off so that the loop lengths are in no way
related to where the zero crossings are.
The snap to zero crossing function makes it so loops will sound smoother,
but it will slightly change the loop length,
which causes problems for this process.
I'll also turn off warping.
Now, I can play a C on my push.
[DRUM SOUND]
And get the looping snare.
And if I bring the length parameter down right here--
[DRUM QUICKENING]
We can get those really cool, slow shifts
from being a snare hit all the way up to being a synthesizer.
That would make a really cool kind of directional cue for the audience
and might be a neat thing to add to a song.
Now, I'd like to do the same thing with my kick drum,
but I want it to respond to the same exact track.
I want to have snare and kick in the same track.
To accomplish that, I'll put the snare simpler inside of an instrument rack
I'll click on the title bar of the snare simpler, right click, and choose Group.
This put them in instrument rack.
I can then show the instrument rack chains,
and we see we have one chain for snare.
I'm going to duplicate that chain with the Command-D key command.
It's Control-D on a PC.
So we have two different versions of this.
In that second chain, I'll drag down the kick three 16th note sample, put it
right in the simpler there.
Now, we have one chain that's snare and one chain that's kick.
And I just want to make sure that snapping is off
and warping is off in the kick as well.
So now, if I play a middle C on this instrument--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We got our polyrhythm, which is great.
As we see here, length is a percentage of the overall sample length.
So that's why I had to make sure that the two samples were exactly
a three- and a two-length relationship because this is a percentage that
will maintain the 3/2 relationship if I change the length
parameter the same in both of the chains.
To accomplish that, I'll have to use a macro control.
We'll show the instrument rack's macro controls right here.
A macro control can be mapped to multiple parameters inside the rack
to control many things at once.
To accomplish this, I'll go to my snare chain, and I'll click on the Map button
in the instrument rack.
Everything turns green that can be mapped,
just like with MIDI mapping everything turns blue
and with key mapping things turning an orange color.
I click on the length parameter to select it.
You'll see the little corners of the boxes highlight,
and then I can click the Map button on macro one.
Once I've done that, if I get out of map mode here,
you'll see that changing this macro control
is also changing that parameter inside the chain.
I'm going to go back to map mode, switch to the kick chain,
choose the length parameter, and map it also to the first knob.
This way, once we get out of map mode, we'll
see that this one parameter is going to change the length of both the chains,
and it will keep them exactly the same.
Let's try it out.
I'll set length all the way up, and I'll play a drum.
[DRUMMING]
We hear the polyrhythm.
Raise this up.
[FASTER DRUMMING]
Maa haa.
Perfect fifth.
Now, I'm finding that the top of the range,
if I go all the way with the loop length here, let's see.
[SQUEALING]
Turns into this tiny squeal.
And I don't want that.
I would rather loop length kind of max out around here,
[SQUEALING]
Or there, or maybe even at 1%.
That would be great.
I can accomplish that if I switch over to the Map button and make sure
I open up the macro mappings browser.
So the browser turns into the mapping browser.
There, I can set the minimum percentage for both of these mappings to be 1%.
Now, I can exit the map mode and close up the browser.
Let me try this out now.
If I take the loop length and go all the way to 100%, we hear the polyrhythm.
[DRUMMING]
And as I bring it up--
[FASTER DRUMMING]
[KEYBOARD SOUNDS]
And I have playable instrument that has that perfect fifth.
The snare and the kick are in a perfect fifth relationship.