CV - Do you use it? I don't.

[Loque]

Visualising what is actually going on is the biggest problem for me . It would be great if there was option to see the knobs moving.

Apologies if you already know this, but if you move your instrument or effect device into a combinator and route the CV signals thru the combi inputs, you can see the knobs moving

https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -analyzer/

[EdGrip]

I'd love to see moving knobs be a global thing to, or at least an option to enable.

[selig]

I'd love to see moving knobs be a global thing to, or at least an option to enable.

When you modulate pitch, say vibrato via an LFO, which knob do you want to see move?

If you are modulating filter with an LFO, how do you grab the knob and turn it up/down (if it's always moving)?

I think automating the knob vs controlling the parameter are two separate functions, which with their own uses. That's why I like synths such as Massive etc. that do NOT move the knob but instead indicate modulation in other ways (such as the "LED ring" approach of Massive).



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[EdGrip]

Yeah, I can see it would be a problem. LED rings is a good shout - I wish there were more of them. Basically, if love to be able to see, glancing over the racks, what was being modulated and how.

[Carly(Poohbear)]

Visualising what is actually going on is the biggest problem for me . It would be great if there was option to see the knobs moving.

Apologies if you already know this, but if you move your instrument or effect device into a combinator and route the CV signals thru the combi inputs, you can see the knobs moving

https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -analyzer/

I find the CV meter a good way to see what is going on https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/cv-meter/

or Panda's skope https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/skope/

and yes I think if there was an option to turn on and off the visual side of movement would be a great option....

[selig]

Yeah, I can see it would be a problem. LED rings is a good shout - I wish there were more of them. Basically, if love to be able to see, glancing over the racks, what was being modulated and how.

Same here, but it's not easy to do with the way REs are built.


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[Raveshaper]

I love building large complex systems where everything is modulating everything else, then just sort of sitting back and tweaking to see what happens.

I agree. This is exactly why I designed that crazy build I've been working on forever. It essentially turns every device control into both a CV out and a CV in, letting you wire things without wires. CV has smoother resolution because it's in the app itself, but the results are good considering my fastest clock rate out of the rack is only 250 Hz (~36.28% of CV's theoretical finest resolution).

I'm working on the demo track for it, I swear.

[ejanuska]

CV is huge for me, it is something special that sets Reason apart.

Visualising what is actually going on is the biggest problem for me . It would be great if there was option to see the knobs moving.

Alternate solution is to get a CV analyzer to see what is going on. There are free ones, like the CVA-7 which is nice.

You can breathe new life into an old synth by using CV to send envelopes and LFOs from various sources to other synths . The stock synth REs have lots of great envelope sources and oscillators. The best part is that you can't fry any components by plugging into the wrong jack, so go nuts and don't worry.

The Pulsar RE is a great place to start for using LFOs, and it has an envelope generator on it also.

When your're ready, the PSQ-1684 awaits.

[Vince-Noir-99]

Writing music and making patches are fundamentally different things really.. Thats why most (pop/rock) people write their songs using just an acoustic guitar and their voice - not by recording each track for the final arrangement and figuring out the guitar amp sounds right away.

So theres two sides to this - actually three. One is writing music - you'll just pull up some presets and go about playing - making a song. Then theres arrangement - you decide on actual patches for the final mix, tweak the sound and even make some CV patches here and there to achieve some goal, like the vibrato you alluded to or gating effects - whatever.

But aside of that theres also making completely new sound patches or devices/combinators that create some effect - I guess even as a musician solely writing songs you appreciate some of the cool ReFills with synth sounds or sampler sounds. Thats where the whole routing and CV thing really shines. Doesn't have much to do with writing songs in the first place though

YES! And while this is so very true, with the popularisation of electronic music, the traditional approach to composition has shifted to what is usually referred to as 'music production', where tweaking electronic gear (and Reason certainly is a playground for that) equals the good old doodling on a guitar or piano to come up with a pop song idea.
And just as before it would have been hella difficult to evolve from a cool riff into a whole structured song, and even better, bringing that into the following stages of production, now each of us probably has tons of saved sessions with some cool beat or whatever

But speaking of CV: not using CV in Reason is like not using Ableton's session view (clips). And by all means I don't judge that negatively at all. In fact I think for the most part I may be one of those people myself..

[Creativemind]

Yeah I rarely use the cv unless I'm following a tutorial which uses it which I'm copying. It would be nice to know how to use it (because I'm a novice on it). I've looked for a good tutorial on how to use the gate / cv/ audio inputs on the back of the rack but yet to find one. If anyone could point me in the right direction.

Tell you what I do use it for mind...Submixing the Kong or Redrum so that each drum has it's own individual channel on the main mixer and then route the whole lot to it's own output buss, deleting the mix channel automatically created for the Kong or Redrum as they no longer require it. The day though, the props add a 'Submix' button for the Kong and/or Redrum, I will no longer require this method. BAM, press button and it creates channels for all drums on the Kong or Redrum and then you just select them all and then create a new output bus. This would be so quick and easy if they did.

[Kuranes]

Well I finally realised the CV stuff just isn't for me. I mean I've used it in a couple of songs for some basic vibrato effects, but that's it.
Other than that it just doesn't fit my workflow and I find it highly unintuitive when actually trying to write music. Everytime I try to get into it or watch videos of CV devices it's like my brain rejects it.
So I've given up on it. I'm better of spending my time focusing on what I do best, writing tunes instead of fiddling around with the technical stuff like CV, cables and shit.

For all you guys that are into the CV thing (which seems to be a lot of people), what is it that you like about it? I'm genuinely interested.
Does it actually improve your music or is it more about the fascination with the technical aspect, having fun geeking out?

Hi Tritone! For me also, CV always seemed to be the opposite of producing music intuitivly. But then I watched the video, the Panda made for that strange thing called "PSQ 1684". And I was baffled. Although, I had no idea, how it was done, I realized, that with this thing you could find beauty in chaos. And so I made my way through the manual of PSQ - and I can tell you, it was worth it!

Because - by using the CV options of the PSQ - you can create melodies and harmonies you'd never have dreamed of. As I said, sometimes - at first - it seems like total chaos what you've produced, but with little tweaks here and there, finally you'll manage to catch a beautiful piece of music, that'll mesmerize you.

For sure, there are countless ways to use CV - but the possibility to use it to bring some chaos into your production, that finally might give birth to a dancing star (to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche) - that is something.

And when I say "star", I am not talking about the stars you'll find in commercial radio. It's more like that, what you possibly imagined, if you thought about the sound a PULSAR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar) would make, if there was sound in space.

But I have to admit, sometimes it doesn't sound like something beautiful, but rather like, as if I - by coincidence - opened the gates of hell, or accidantelly wrote the score for (the upcoming!) "ALIEN V"

Like this one:


But as I said before, you can produce really nice tunes with those CV-devices. Here another one I did with PSQ 1684:

[TritoneAddiction]

Hi Tritone! For me also, CV always seemed to be the opposite of producing music intuitivly. But then I watched the video, the Panda made for that strange thing called "PSQ 1684". And I was baffled. Although, I had no idea, how it was done, I realized, that with this thing you could find beauty in chaos. And so I made my way through the manual of PSQ - and I can tell you, it was worth it!

Because - by using the CV options of the PSQ - you can create melodies and harmonies you'd never have dreamed of. As I said, sometimes - at first - it seems like total chaos what you've produced, but with little tweaks here and there, finally you'll manage to catch a beautiful piece of music, that'll mesmerize you.

For sure, there are countless ways to use CV - but the possibility to use it to bring some chaos into your production, that finally might give birth to a dancing star (to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche) - that is something.

I'm not doubting CV can do wonderful things. I can see how some the randomness could be useful.

I remember reading the description for PSQ. It was one of several moments that convinced me CV wasn't for me. I did watched some videos of it also, didn't help much. Sorry Panda, I'm sure PSQ can do awesome things but it's just not for me, at least not for now.

I'm sure I'll get into the CV thing at some point. But right now every time I've watched a video of anything CV related I just want go and do the opposite, just grab a synth and start playing melodies or try to come up with something with my voice, basically keep it as simple as possible.

I do sometimes question my DAW of choice since most Reason users make a big deal about CV. But at this point I've invested quite a bit of time and money into Reason, so I'll most likely stick to it for a while.

[jonheal]

It's all about the CV.

[Kuranes]

I'm sure I'll get into the CV thing at some point. But right now every time I've watched a video of anything CV related I just want go and do the opposite, just grab a synth and start playing melodies or try to come up with something with my voice, basically keep it as simple as possible.

But ain't that cool: Even if you don't use ControlVoltage, it triggers your creativity - by just letting you appreciate your intuition once more and go with it, to create fine tunes.

To be honest, mostly I also prefer doing it old school and to just rock my Synths, Guitar and Bass, because I still am a total newb to the world of CV. But the glimpses I got showed me, that there are some truly strange worlds to discover.

[selig]

CV can be a great creative "tool" for those days you want to mess around musically, but you just can't seem to get an idea going. I can't tell you how many times I've sat at an inspiring synth messing with the controls, only to come up with a patch that inspires a chord progression or melody, and then I'm off to the races with a new song idea. Great for getting the juices going, at least for the way my brain works on those occasions.

[Noplan]

Toilet paper. Do you use it? I don't.

[rcbuse]

I remember reading the description for PSQ. It was one of several moments that convinced me CV wasn't for me. I did watched some videos of it also, didn't help much. Sorry Panda, I'm sure PSQ can do awesome things but it's just not for me, at least not for now.

You do not need to be sorry about anything. This platform is wide open and there are a million different ways to do things. I'm the exact opposite, I'm totally lazy and the very last thing I want to do is play a keyboard. I pretty much just make things that let me dig through the ocean of sonic randomness until I find things I like, then record it. I do that a bunch of times the assemble those recordings into a sound collage. I don't even know if I would call it music.

[Kuranes]

I don't even know if I would call it music.

That, good Sir, is priceless! Because isn't it that, what makes being a musician or even just a listener really great? Getting lost in sound, and forgetting to give a shit about all else.

[jonheal]

Toilet paper. Do you use it? I don't.

Yet another post SCREAMING for the "like" button.

[dvdrtldg]

When your're ready, the PSQ-1684 awaits.

Its got a reputation as a device that requires a PhD to understand, but the more I use PSQ 1684, the more it strikes me as a very user-friendly device. It does a lot of very complex stuff but the basic architecture is amazingly well designed and straightforward. I don't fully understand how e.g. shift register or klee mode "work", but I can still set the device to them, start tweaking and get great results. Hook PSQ up to a Kong and a bunch of instruments, hook some LFOs up to the quantizer CV ins, and you're set for the afternoon

[ejanuska]

Now you're going to get me gushing about the PSQ-1684.
If you're new to it and find yourself experimenting with the sequencer, iterating CV notes and gates to a synth, do yourself a favor and enable the quantizer. Then you can twist the knobs on the sequencer range without worrying about whether your in key or not.

I've been purposely limiting myself to one PSQ-1684 to control the overall timing of a piece. I like to squeeze everything last pulse out of it. There are plenty of gates to send somewhere to trigger an arpeggiator, sample, pad, etc.

Lately I've been making short looping soundscapes rather then complete songs since I hadn't figured out a way to slowly run the sequencer while playing faster melody lines and having some variations before the PSQ reset, but that changed yesterday.

I would like to be able to label the grid since it can be hard to remember which trigger is doing what. Especially when you have to break away for some time to do some menial task like eat, work, talk to family members, go to the bathroom, etc.

[ejanuska]

Actually the PSQ-1684 is like four pieces of gear in one. Lectric Panda could have easily sold each section separately.

BTW its on sale, just saying.

[Chizmata]

of course i do, and im starting to get deeper into it like scaling a malström lfo with a scream autofollow via the thor Matrix and send it to the combinator cv... but i still feel like im barely beyond touching the surface.

[ejanuska]

of course i do, and im starting to get deeper into it like scaling a malström lfo with a scream autofollow via the thor Matrix and send it to the combinator cv... but i still feel like im barely beyond touching the surface.

Now you're talking dirty!

[dallasknight]

Lately I've been making short looping soundscapes rather then complete songs since I hadn't figured out a way to slowly run the sequencer while playing faster melody lines and having some variations before the PSQ reset, but that changed yesterday.

Im very intrigued by this, if you don't mind sharing what have you figured out?

Im in love with the PSQ and I have became addicted to it, so many possibilities, everything I start now begins with a PSQ and I changed my starter template as a result

Im currently using it in combination with Ochen's CV tuner and a LFO editor modulating the quantizer CV's, amazing!

Wish had Octorex had the capabilities to allow slices to be triggered via CV, that would be insane