Linn Swing

Revok

Hi,

I've read an article here where Roger Linn kind of demystifies the swing function of his early machines and reveals how it works. It's definitely not rocket science, rather the fine positioning of every 2nd 16th note on a grid of 50 possible values between the "straight" position and the next 16th. As I understand, the LXR has a few shuffle values, but for swing feel it all comes down to finding that perfect sweet spot in relation to the tempo and the pattern.Wondering if this finer control over swing feel could be implemented on the LXR, and perhaps be assignable to a potentiometer, like on the Tempest?

I have no idea what the sequencer resolution on the LXR is, though. If it's less than the MPC60's 96ppq, it wouldn't even make sense to try and implement it.

Rvk

Varthdader

Sounds super as a feature request!

I would love to have this swing implementation.

SG88

+1

Revok

As an added bonus, it would be great to have the option to apply the swing to the midi clock out signal, forcing any slave machines to swing along

julian

Actually, that is exactly how the current shuffle is implemented.
Every other 16th note is shifted towards the next 16th note.
The MIDI clocks are shuffled as well, so connected midi gear will also shuffle.
I tried this with my xoxbox. But there is no option to turn the shuffled midi clock output off at the moment

Stuff that would be nice is a swing function.
As far as I know the difference between swing and shuffle is that ione affects the 16th notes, the other every second 8th note. Also a reverse shuffle/swing would be nice, to shift the notes towards the previous note.

Revok

I don't have an LXR yet but somehow assumed that it just had a few shuffle values, not a range of fifty like the MPC60.

Very cool that the midi clock is shuffled as well... you've really thought of everything! An option to disable that would be convenient in some situations, I imagine.

Ok, I'll hold the feature requests for now until I actually have the machine, heheh

Roger Linn's description of "Swing":

My implementation of swing has always been very simple: I merely delay the second 16th note within each 8th note. In other words, I delay all the even-numbered 16th notes within the beat (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) In my products I describe the swing amount in terms of the ratio of time duration between the first and second 16th notes within each 8th note. For example, 50% is no swing, meaning that both 16th notes within each 8th note are given equal timing. And 66% means perfect triplet swing, meaning that the first 16th note of each pair gets 2/3 of the time, and the second 16th note gets 1/3, so the second 16th note falls on a perfect 8th note triplet. The fun comes in the in-between settings. For example, a 90 BPM swing groove will feel looser at 62% than at a perfect swing setting of 66%. And for straight 16th-note beats (no swing), a swing setting of 54% will loosen up the feel without it sounding like swing. Between 50% and around 70% are lots of wonderful little settings that, for a particular beat and tempo, can change a rigid beat into something that makes people move. And unlike the MPCs, my new Tempest drum machine makes it very easy to find the right swing setting because you can adjust the swing knob in real time while the beat plays. I first introduced swing – as well as recording quantization – in my 1979 drum machine, the LM-1 Drum Computer.

toneburst

Anyone think a per-step timing-offset value would be cool? I envisage being able to shift individual steps early or late.

a|x

nightworxx

Like the XBase shuffle can do ? Up to 1/192 note per step...evil and awesome !

loderbast

i think shift per step kind of contradicts the whole substep concept a bit but would be usefull.
i found myself moving steps in increments of substeps trying to get some groove going. this is not very intuative to handle and requires a lot of button presses especially when moving a step ahead of time. beeing able to shift steps with a pot in both directions and in smaller increments than the substeps would be way more usable for this.

loderbast

.. thinking about this maybe instead of steh shift per step another idea would be to have a more complex shuffle/swing algorithm with a few more parameters. like different amounts for different groups of steps (like every other 16th, 8th etc.) this would make it possible to have a mixture of shuffle and swing etc.
 
i think this would make even more sense than the shift per step because the usecase for this is more "i want to twiddle some knobs until the groove feels right" instead of "i want to delay step 11 for 7ms"

toneburst

@loderbast I'd forgotten about the substeps. As I understand it, though, you have to have a 'main step' trigger set in order for a substep to sound, so using substeps as a substitute for per-step offset is fiddly at best. On the other hand, if shifting the main step forwards would cause it it 'bump into' the substeps, as you say, that would be problematic.

a|x

toneburst

@loderbast that idea sounds good, too.

a|x

julian

I have to update the shuffle algorythm a bit before it can handle negative shuffle.
After that different grooves should be doable. It is already based on a delay table for the 16th notes.

fanwander

Just one side glance. There is a second usage for a negative delay: A real cabasa is basically a reverse sound, which starts before the beat, and the loudness maximum is on the beat. If you describe the sound as "sshshshigGgh", then the "...G..." should be on the beat, while the "sshshshig..." should be before the beat.
This means: a cabasa should be programmed with a negative delay. But we do not want the negative delay for the other instruments.

This leads again to the question: is a delay per track possible / thinkable?

julian

I already have an idea how to rewrite the sequencer timebase to allow for more flexible note shifting.
This would also allow for a free shift in either direction for each track if it works out.
Possible at the moment - no
Thinkable for a future update-yes:)

toneburst

@julian does that mean per-step shift (ie note shift as step parameter)?

a|x

matsu

Speaking of swing, how about roland type "flam". It is not a function i use a lot, but it can be nice on weird grooves and stuff.

matsu

oops. guess i should read the manual more carefully first. every single thing i could possibly think of is already there!