Beat Chop / Slicers / Glitchers...

[eusti]

I like (in theory) these effects a lot. But am not really good at making them happen...
So, my questions are: Which one do you like best for what effect?

- Buffre: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -repeater/
- Glitch Effect: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/glitch-effect/
- SB Slice Arranger: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -arranger/
And then this one which is different, but can do some glitchy stuff too...
- GSX Graphic Shaper Effects: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... ereffects/

And here's another question:
How is this one different? (or is it?)
BeatChop: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... me-slicer/

Thanks!

D.

[freeQlow]

Have you considered Synchronus?

If you haven't already you should try it.

[JNeffLind]

Glitch I like mainly for the tape stop and reverse. Buffer I would use for stutters except that I kind of see it more as a live performance tool. If I want a straight stutter in my music I usually just program it manually in the sequencer instead of using a RE. More intuitive/more control for me that way. GSX is the most versatile of those listed I think in that it has the added benefit of being able to do different things on different frequency bands which can allow for some cool effects using different delays on different frequencies of a single hit, etc. As Free mentioned above though, Synchronous is the one true RE. It's the beginning and end for creative "movement" effects for me. If you're going to master one, I'd say go with that one. I usually just audition different presets until I find something close to what I want and then tweak it until I've got it nailed.

[eusti]

Have you considered Synchronus?

If you haven't already you should try it.

Yep. Got that one... And I like it for the ability to influence effects... But always thought it wasn't really helpful for glitchy stiff where one goes into the samples and messes with that... But I could be totally off here... Please correct me if I'm wrong!

D.

[JNeffLind]

Oh, and as for slice arranger, I haven't much gotten into that but it seemed more geared towards adding randomness to your beats for variation, taking all the hits in your beat and just randomizing their order. Not my cup of tea but I'm sure some can make it do great things.

[eusti]

Thank you both for your replies! I guess I just need to dive deeper into Synchronous then... Any pointers to good tutorials?
And in comparison then how is Shape? That brings me back to Synchronous: Are you guys using the built in FX or as a CV generator?

D.

[JNeffLind]

The tutorials I used were on askvideo.com but they required a subscription I think it'd be about $15.00 for single synchronous course. I'm not sure it's really necessary though. If I were you I'd start with setting up a synchronous on a master bus channel of a finished song on a single two bar looped section and then just let it run and start scrolling through preset patches while watching the graphic display on the RE. You'll easily be able to track how the changes in sound are mirroring the graphical patterns. Along with ten minutes with the manual you should be good to go. For me at least it is VERY intuitive and user friendly. You obviously need to understand the basics of how it works, but I think it's very well designed in its interface so the basics of what is happening are pretty easy to handle. I use the built in effects though it's quite easy to substitute other effects via CV.

[eusti]

Thank you, J! Will look into it further... Am checking out Hydlide's tutorial at the moment...

D.

[freeQlow]

Reason101.Com
has both Synchronicity Refill and 2 part tutorial.
Their refill expands the re: patches a good bit and is quite inspiring to make your own fx.
And its on sale right now for Black Friday.

[MDTerps2015]

I can tell you the GSX i have and nver use it because after each edit or what ever you want to do with it, you have to go back and eq. In other words i used it once in a song and i was eqing for days to try and get the sound back to the original track. It does some really cool stuff though. I went ahead and bought glitch from Ochen along with repeat looper which i use in conjuction with glitch with out all of the garbage i had to do with GSX. Maybe i was using it wrong but i had good results and it did what i wanted it to do.

[eusti]

Reason101.Com
has both Synchronicity Refill and 2 part tutorial.
Their refill expands the re: patches a good bit and is quite inspiring to make your own fx.
And its on sale right now for Black Friday.

Thank you, will look into it!

D.

[eusti]

I can tell you the GSX i have and nver use it because after each edit or what ever you want to do with it, you have to go back and eq. In other words i used it once in a song and i was eqing for days to try and get the sound back to the original track. It does some really cool stuff though. I went ahead and bought glitch from Ochen along with repeat looper which i use in conjuction with glitch with out all of the garbage i had to do with GSX. Maybe i was using it wrong but i had good results and it did what i wanted it to do.

Thanks for your reply. I think I ran across this too... I had to make a separate track for this and do extra EQ and levels if I recall correctly!

D.

[Goriila Texas]

Good thread I'm looking for the same things. I thought buffre did tape stop.

[freeQlow]

Have you considered Synchronus?

If you haven't already you should try it.

Yep. Got that one... And I like it for the ability to influence effects... But always thought it wasn't really helpful for glitchy stiff where one goes into the samples and messes with that... But I could be totally off here... Please correct me if I'm wrong!

D.

Imagine bouncing your audio to Rex and each rex pad and or output to a Synchronous...... Yep Wikid Mahn!

Now if a developer could mash up a Dr SyncroPropulsion Rex, I'd be in Glitch Heaven!

[Jagwah]

I like (in theory) these effects a lot. But am not really good at making them happen...
So, my questions are: Which one do you like best for what effect?

- Buffre: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -repeater/
- Glitch Effect: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/glitch-effect/
- SB Slice Arranger: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -arranger/
And then this one which is different, but can do some glitchy stuff too...
- GSX Graphic Shaper Effects: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... ereffects/

And here's another question:
How is this one different? (or is it?)
BeatChop: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... me-slicer/

Thanks!

D.

As a standard practise I automate the dry wet signal of something like Slice Arranger from 0% to 100% immediately, completely vertical kinda thing. Do that where you want it and more often then not I find it's necessary to back off the point where it comes back to 0% just a smidge so the kick from the next bar or whatever will hit like it should.

Always loved Buffre but it's become extremely dusty even though I love my stutter effects. There was something about triggering this device from my midi keyboard that I found much better than triggering via sequencer, which I do with my other stutter devices.

Glitch, $9, lots of sub effects that are all useful and work the way they should, absolute bargain.

SB Slice Arranger, nothing random about it as was mentioned earlier, it does have a decay setting which could mess with the timings. With the 0% to 100% method even just using the stock patches is a joy imo.

GSX and I never got along, never thought I would pass up a so called stutter effect but it is what it is.

Beatchop OMG. Works very differently from all the others. Took me a while to get my head around in the beginning, I found the dev super responsive and helped me understand it via emails. In a sense it's like laying out your stutters via sequencer programming. Being able to change resolution and start and end points and pitch lets you speed things up and slow things down and the funny thing is everything is always seamless. I always thought this device must be using transient detection technology or something, never had it operate in a fashion that wasn't seamless in the way it joins slices. Really have to try this one out for yourself and I hope you get along with it because it's the cat's pyjamas.

Synchronous doesn't vibe with me I don't like the pretend freehand thing, would love to see what it can do in the stutter department.

The Echo is kick ass at stutters, doesn't take much to nut it out and there is also the lovely breakout jacks to boot.

You can always stack these devices on top of each other, stutter the stutters, or delay fade things or whatever you can think of.

I think the onus is on the devs if people are questioning what these devices can do.

I am personally waiting for a new stutter device, it's been a while and they usually spark creative juices especially upon their shop arrival. Would love to see one from Props.

[eusti]

Thank you both freeQlow and Jagwah, for your input. Appreciated!

Will dig deeper with the new info!

D.

[MDTerps2015]

I can tell you the GSX i have and nver use it because after each edit or what ever you want to do with it, you have to go back and eq. In other words i used it once in a song and i was eqing for days to try and get the sound back to the original track. It does some really cool stuff though. I went ahead and bought glitch from Ochen along with repeat looper which i use in conjuction with glitch with out all of the garbage i had to do with GSX. Maybe i was using it wrong but i had good results and it did what i wanted it to do.

Thanks for your reply. I think I ran across this too... I had to make a separate track for this and do extra EQ and levels if I recall correctly!

D.

Exactly and it corrupts workflow and creativity all at the same time. The frustration was not eqing but the fact that you had to eq after creating an effect. If they could fix that and i dont know what its called (artifacts or null) that would be awesome because its an awesome piece of equipment but i dont have time to match values sound for sound. Thx for the question because i thought i was using it wrong but its in my arsenal to at least play with.

[electrochoc (PRX-A)]

I like (in theory) these effects a lot. But am not really good at making them happen...
So, my questions are: Which one do you like best for what effect?

- Buffre: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -repeater/
- Glitch Effect: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/glitch-effect/
- SB Slice Arranger: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... -arranger/
And then this one which is different, but can do some glitchy stuff too...
- GSX Graphic Shaper Effects: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... ereffects/

And here's another question:
How is this one different? (or is it?)
BeatChop: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... me-slicer/

Thanks!

D.

I have them all!!! Because I like to play with those things...

Before answering your question, let me state that there are two ways to consider these effects: from a performance point of view or from a patient, sequencer-based edition point of view. My point of view is of the second kind: I don't look at these devices for their performance value, since I like to edit everything in the sequencer. In other terms, I write music, I don't play music!

So, from that point of view, my favorite devices are Slice Arranger and BeatChop.

Like BeatChop, Slice Arranger slices an incoming audio into small pieces, and then re-arranges them accordingly to one of its 50 available patterns (while BeatChop lets you arrange the slices the way you want). Some re-arrangements are basic, and some are crazier with effects on pitch, repetition of half-slices, and so on. To prevent the use of always the same patterns, I've take the habit of using Slice Arranger within more complex Combinators, like this one:

SAMixers.jpg (282.2 KiB) Viewed 4702 times

In this setting, one beat line goes into 8 Slice Arrangers, routed to the mixer. Using the keyboard, I can "play" which Slice Arranger I want to hear at one precise moment (channel 5 and 7 together on the picture)! While using Kong or ReDrum, I will sometimes route to Slice Arrangers only some of the drum sounds, or split the drum sounds between many instances of Combinators like the one above. The big advantage of Slice Arrange is that it gives you good and inspiring results pretty fast. That's why, of the devices you mentionned, this will usually be the first one I use to get started. This is more radical than the technic what Jagwah has suggested to you, a technic that I also use from time to time.

I will most of the time use BeatChop after the Slice Arrangers to do some micro-editing on the beat that have been created this way. I will even sometimes use many instances of it at different resolutions. What I do is I record audio with it, then lock it with the (automated) Roll button. The desired sounds (slices) are then ready to be used and tweaked with the different options available on BeatChop. BeatChop is, in other terms, the way I use to get a more precise result out of what Slice Arranger yields. Its precision makes it possible to get almost any result you want.

Thanks to its gate and note CV-ins, BeatChop can also be "played", so it can become a sort of "Slice Arranger" on which you play your own patterns!

Buffre and Glitch are secondary to me. I will use Buffre when I want to repeat a slice of beat: I find it more flexible, notably if you want to play with the lenght of your slices... I use Glitch even more rarely... I use it mainly for its tape stop, its external effect routing and, sure, when I want to add some random glitch/stutter effect. But I recognize that, for occasional use, this is by far the best bargain! But I personally feel I have more control when using the Slice Arranger/BeatChop couple.

The main difference between Buffre and Slice Arranger or BeatChop is that Buffre doesn't slice the incoming sound. It's more a "repeater": it repeats the sound it has just recorded or the sound that's currently coming into it. Same for some effects of Glitch, although some of its effects bring back "slices" recorded earlier.

I won't talk about GSX: I got it almost free, bundled with ReVival, and almost hasn't used it up to now. It's more like an improved Glitch to me (without randomness), on which different effects can be applied to different bands of the incoming sound signal.

I'll just add that my settings involving Slice Arranger and BeatChop are most of the time crowned by a copy of G8 Gate, which is excellent to give any beat that very "curt" sound of the beats you can find in drum'n'bass. A little bit of bit crushing is also often nice!

[gak]

BTW, the GSX is "pretty cool" but it doesn't always work as expected. I should put in a ticket, but I experience times when the keys don't correspond to what should be happening. However, if you work at it for a while, then it somehow starts to work. Strange. Not used to this with RE's.

[ljekio]

Hi guys, show me interesting combinators for Buffre please.
My combi with 8-channels looper is there:
https://ozdyx.wordpress.com/patches/x-looper-8/

[eusti]

Thank you for your elaborate reply, electrochoc.

It's so interesting how we all are different and all are using Reason and its devices differently...
I too am a person who writes music instead of performing it... Yes, there are parts that need to be transformed, like vocals and guitars, etc, but in general I tweak those after the fact as well... So, while it is liberating and invigorating for some to get into the groove and play with certain devices to create an instant remix of the piece the are working on, it is not for me... If I cannot reproduce what's happening, I'm not a happy camper!

But still I am fascinated by distortion FX and these Slicers, etc...
So, I came across this and found it quite interesting...

D.

[wishinghand]

Neutron: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/neutron/ is also glitchy goodness. I just wish there was an RE like Glitch that could do resolutions measured in milliseconds rather than subdivisions of the beat, like an MWFX Judder guitar pedal or Squarewave Parade Teaspoon.

[GRIFTY]

Buffre is great and super fun to use. Glitch is great for generating glitchy stuff with CV. Also good tape stop. Beat chop is very promising but ends up kind of disappointing. The buffer length is too short IMO. Slice arranger is ugly and seems too limited compared to the others. I haven't used it though. I recommend buffre

[eusti]

Thanks wishinghand ad Grifty!

I have Neutron and like it... Should pull it out more often.

D.

[MannequinRaces]

I love love love Buffre!! Check out my track for Buffre craziness: