PSQ-1684 Rack Extension Appreciation Thread

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cognitive
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23 Nov 2018

artotaku wrote:
23 Nov 2018
It is so simple and effective but not that obvious. Did you know that you could apply some ongoing variations to the volume of your drums or any other instruments by modulating the velocity by the shift register value?

Here´s the routing:
Instead of using the shift register pulse use its value as a source in the mod matrix to modulate the velocity of the sequencer. You need to reduce the sequencers velocity value a bit otherwise you won´t notice it.

Btw if you route the shift register value to any CV out you can get get some interesting (stepped) curves like an LFO.

Nice tip! Thanks for that. :thumbs_up:

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artotaku
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24 Nov 2018

To bring this idea even further the shift register value modulates the sequencer´s pitch value as well. Since you can switch between drum samples with note changes on a kong, the shift register value effectively controls the selected sample.

Note that you have to use a quantizer on the sequencer so the pitch/note range fits the kong´s note range for specific samples (in my example below it is to trigger pads 1 to 8 loaded with hihat samples).

Now change the SR bits and SR patterns and you get really cool rhythm and sould variation. Synths sounds by the new Noise Engineering REs btw.


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mjxl
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24 Nov 2018

I purchased RND 2 weeks ago, today i upgraded Reason to the full package (i've had Intro for a few months) , also immediately bought this !
It looks so damn awesome, the possibilities look near limitless with that PSQ.. :thumbs_up: :P

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Loque
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24 Nov 2018

mjxl wrote:
24 Nov 2018
I purchased RND 2 weeks ago, today i upgraded Reason to the full package (i've had Intro for a few months) , also immediately bought this !
It looks so damn awesome, the possibilities look near limitless with that PSQ.. :thumbs_up: :P
Uh...sounds you are new to Reason and you directly start with a heavy CV device. :D :thumbs_up:
Reason12, Win10

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Ahornberg
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24 Nov 2018

Yesterday I went on the PSQ-1684 to improve my ambient and drone music.
I need some time to get comfortable with it but I really loved it right from the beginning!

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mjxl
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24 Nov 2018

Loque wrote:
24 Nov 2018
mjxl wrote:
24 Nov 2018
I purchased RND 2 weeks ago, today i upgraded Reason to the full package (i've had Intro for a few months) , also immediately bought this !
It looks so damn awesome, the possibilities look near limitless with that PSQ.. :thumbs_up: :P
Uh...sounds you are new to Reason and you directly start with a heavy CV device. :D :thumbs_up:
Well i finally have the full version of Reason 10 , i'm not new to Reason though (years back with v5 on some old warez disk, that's how i found Reason hehe)

I basically tried it a couple of times and then never thought of it again, until a couple of months ago, i looked what the Propheads were doing atm with Reason, saw Europa, Grain, Synchronous, Players, Radical Piano, KLANG , PANGEA, HUMANA.. THE LIST JUST WON'T END !!!

I've been grinding VST after VST the last couple of months, but had no motivation to get started with 3rd party stuff.
In the meantime i've been doing a lot of derp-sound engineering in Europa, and every now and then i've booted up the demo for the full version, just to mess around with Grain and the other instruments/effects :P

Then now with the Black Friday deal, it had to be done. I couldn't let this oppurtunity go by, so bought R10, PSQ, Pump, Synapse GQ7 and the ST100 Strumming Machine.

This should suffice for now :D

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Catblack
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24 Nov 2018

I love your video! I'm going to have to check out this technique more. I really wish there was a way to get at the individual bits in the PSQ.

Maybe LectricPanda will grace us with a spreadsheet of what the patterns are?




artotaku wrote:
24 Nov 2018
To bring this idea even further the shift register value modulates the sequencer´s pitch value as well. Since you can switch between drum samples with note changes on a kong, the shift register value effectively controls the selected sample.

Note that you have to use a quantizer on the sequencer so the pitch/note range fits the kong´s note range for specific samples (in my example below it is to trigger pads 1 to 8 loaded with hihat samples).

Now change the SR bits and SR patterns and you get really cool rhythm and sould variation. Synths sounds by the new Noise Engineering REs btw.

If you ain't hip to the rare Housequake, shut up already.

Damn.

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Loque
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24 Nov 2018

mjxl wrote:
24 Nov 2018
Loque wrote:
24 Nov 2018

Uh...sounds you are new to Reason and you directly start with a heavy CV device. :D :thumbs_up:
Well i finally have the full version of Reason 10 , i'm not new to Reason though (years back with v5 on some old warez disk, that's how i found Reason hehe)

I basically tried it a couple of times and then never thought of it again, until a couple of months ago, i looked what the Propheads were doing atm with Reason, saw Europa, Grain, Synchronous, Players, Radical Piano, KLANG , PANGEA, HUMANA.. THE LIST JUST WON'T END !!!

I've been grinding VST after VST the last couple of months, but had no motivation to get started with 3rd party stuff.
In the meantime i've been doing a lot of derp-sound engineering in Europa, and every now and then i've booted up the demo for the full version, just to mess around with Grain and the other instruments/effects :P

Then now with the Black Friday deal, it had to be done. I couldn't let this oppurtunity go by, so bought R10, PSQ, Pump, Synapse GQ7 and the ST100 Strumming Machine.

This should suffice for now :D
You made some good decisions, except the GQ7...you rather had bought the whole bundle for 99 - amazing deal, amazing devices.
Reason12, Win10

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mjxl
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24 Nov 2018

Loque wrote:
24 Nov 2018
You made some good decisions, except the GQ7...you rather had bought the whole bundle for 99 - amazing deal, amazing devices.
Unfortunately i couldn't spend too much :P, i aimed for buying just Reason but my wallet couldn't resist those few extra RE's XD

Don't worry though, by the time I've made anything remotely close to a track, I will surely have invested more. Timing couldn't let me just now :)

I've seen the GQ7 in videos from Hydlide, so i went and grabbed just that for now (it's 25€ now instead of 100, for me that's already a good catch :P)

Besides that, i want to buy everything from ElectricPanda aswell (well almost everything), seeing my previous moneydrains, i won't bother paying a little extra for some stuffs later down the road. Heck, the developers even earn that extra to be fair :) !

Nielsen
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28 Nov 2018

I know my way around the controls on the front panel, but I probably need to read the manual closer in order to better understand euclidean, drum pattern density and shift register bits. I can get something passable going by carefully tweaking knobs by ear, but for the most part I create chaos with this device even before reaching for the chaos knob.

I haven't even started to consider the possibilities with the modulation matrix and CV routing, but in general these aspects aren't some of my greatest strengths in Reason.
artotaku wrote:
22 Jul 2018
Great stuff! Year 2006 vibes. :)

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artotaku
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28 Nov 2018

Nielsen wrote:
28 Nov 2018
I know my way around the controls on the front panel, but I probably need to read the manual closer in order to better understand euclidean, drum pattern density and shift register bits. I can get something passable going by carefully tweaking knobs by ear, but for the most part I create chaos with this device even before reaching for the chaos knob.
Great stuff! Year 2006 vibes. :)
Thanks! Some make more experimental and noisy, atonal stuff with PSQ but if you intend to make "nice", harmonic (Berlin school) stuff as I did the video there are some tricks.

First, use one sequencer, e. g. S1 to define the scale and chords harmony of song by sending its gate/note CV output to a scales and chord player and let it create chords.

Second, and this the main trick. Put a CVPT player after the scales and chords player, so you can split up the individual notes of the chord and route it to the note/gate input of a Select CV RE.

Instead of using the note CV output of other PSQ sequencers to create a note use it as a selector for the notes that have been created with the scales and chords player. This is done by routing the note CV out to the Select CV RE select input CV. Now you can switch between the individual notes of the chord.
Actually, you just built your own arpeggiator!

I was suprised that you can generate some nice and not quite boring melody lines by varying the speed of the note selection. And it´s always in perfect harmony because you never create notes outside of the chords.

Of course a triad chord is boring but you can spice it up by letting the scales and chords player create more than a triad and use inversion.
I did it in the video by controlling the inversion and color parameters of scales and chords player with the Aux outputs from PSQ for each step.

Nielsen
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28 Nov 2018

artotaku wrote:
28 Nov 2018
Thanks! Some make more experimental and noisy, atonal stuff with PSQ but if you intend to make "nice", harmonic (Berlin school) stuff as I did the video there are some tricks.

First, use one sequencer, e. g. S1 to define the scale and chords harmony of song by sending its gate/note CV output to a scales and chord player and let it create chords.

Second, and this the main trick. Put a CVPT player after the scales and chords player, so you can split up the individual notes of the chord and route it to the note/gate input of a Select CV RE.

Instead of using the note CV output of other PSQ sequencers to create a note use it as a selector for the notes that have been created with the scales and chords player. This is done by routing the note CV out to the Select CV RE select input CV. Now you can switch between the individual notes of the chord.
Actually, you just built your own arpeggiator!

I was suprised that you can generate some nice and not quite boring melody lines by varying the speed of the note selection. And it´s always in perfect harmony because you never create notes outside of the chords.

Of course a triad chord is boring but you can spice it up by letting the scales and chords player create more than a triad and use inversion.
I did it in the video by controlling the inversion and color parameters of scales and chords player with the Aux outputs from PSQ for each step.
Are you using the ChordSet RE to define scales and chords?

Thanks for sharing the technique. I can see it being useful in a variety of electronic styles, and I will definitely give it a try.

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artotaku
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30 Nov 2018

Nielsen wrote:
28 Nov 2018
Are you using the ChordSet RE to define scales and chords?
No, I don´t. Just Reason´s stock scale & chords player.

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artotaku
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30 Nov 2018

Now, to step the game up a little bit... I wrote a custom codec for my Akai APC40 Mk2 MIDI controller to fully control the PSQ-1684.

Heres a little live jam, completely controlled by the APC40. The sequences itself were prepared but "edited" with the APC40 and changed a little bit during the performance.
I´m basically using a lot of tricks from this thread, even a second PSQ as a "helper" device to have more pulses available which need not be remotely controlled by the APC40.
Synth sounds by the new Noise Engineering REs.


seqoi
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01 Dec 2018

artotaku wrote:
30 Nov 2018
Now, to step the game up a little bit... I wrote a custom codec for my Akai APC40 Mk2 MIDI controller to fully control the PSQ-1684.

Heres a little live jam, completely controlled by the APC40. The sequences itself were prepared but "edited" with the APC40 and changed a little bit during the performance.
I´m basically using a lot of tricks from this thread, even a second PSQ as a "helper" device to have more pulses available which need not be remotely controlled by the APC40.
Synth sounds by the new Noise Engineering REs.

Very cool

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theshoemaker
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07 Dec 2018

artotaku wrote:
04 Sep 2018
This time I had a go with the drum pattern parameters (DP dens, DP X and DP Y) merging them with other pulses. This allows to have control how much and when which pulse pattern is applied.

As with my other examples one sequencer (S1) plays the root note sequence which is sent to my bass instrument and other instruments where I build the chords on with the scales and chords player.

The rhythm for all non drum instruments is generated by pulse P1.

I'm currently working on a drum device in a combinator where I use PSQ with the Grid as pattern for the PADs. I'm not connecting to the gate inputs fo KONG but using a CV Player Tap on top. The GATE is comming from the GRID the NOTE CV, which triggers the PAD on Kong comes either from a rotary or from a matrix, which allows for switching the pad that is triggered on the fly while maintaining the same pattern.

I'd love to incorporate your dynamic volume by the shift register technique into it. Would you mind sharing your setup in a combinator here? I'm also going to share the Drum Device here. With the PSQ in place this probably will allow some more variations on a rotary, similar to the new Quad Note Player.

And finally as it is connected to a player you can render the patterns to the sequencer. The setup allows for switching patterns per PAD, i.e. just switch the pattern from the snare while maintaining the rest ... similar to the Drum Sequencer Palyer
:PUF_figure: latest :reason: V12 on MacOS Ventura

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artotaku
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08 Dec 2018

Ok, here you go. This is a combinator patch with a PSQ modulating velocity by shift register.
If it should affect more than one pad on a kong, the gate out from PSQ S1 should be connected to the global Gate in of the kong.
PSQ-1684-sr-reg-modulates-velocity.zip
(7.18 KiB) Downloaded 283 times

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MrFigg
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13 Dec 2018

Sorry. I posted a question in the wrong thread. Have now started a new thread. Sorry about that.
🗲 2ॐ ᛉ

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cognitive
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14 Dec 2018

artotaku wrote:
30 Nov 2018
Now, to step the game up a little bit... I wrote a custom codec for my Akai APC40 Mk2 MIDI controller to fully control the PSQ-1684.

Heres a little live jam, completely controlled by the APC40. The sequences itself were prepared but "edited" with the APC40 and changed a little bit during the performance.
I´m basically using a lot of tricks from this thread, even a second PSQ as a "helper" device to have more pulses available which need not be remotely controlled by the APC40.
Synth sounds by the new Noise Engineering REs.

I can see what you have going on here! Nice work and a fun listen.

Great use of the Noise Engineering stuff too.

I don't have an APC40, but this gives me some ideas about controlling PSQ with either my Novation Lanchkey or maybe using one of my Circuits.

But first I might hook up one of Hamu's CV Mod Panels as a virtual control surface.

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artotaku
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18 Dec 2018

cognitive wrote:
14 Dec 2018
I don't have an APC40, but this gives me some ideas about controlling PSQ with either my Novation Lanchkey or maybe using one of my Circuits.
You have to make some decisions what to control since the PSQ has so many controls. Actually, you would use two or three midi controllers mapped to the PSQ.
The advantage of the APC40 is that it has LED encoders which makes it possible to map all of the PSQ sequencer knobs to multiple encoder pages but still giving you visual feedback on the LED of a knob value of your current selected page. Provided you programmed your custom codec as such.
There is no support by Akai for Reason codec-wise since the APC is primarily aimed for Ableton so you have to do it on your own.

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FLVZ
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18 Dec 2018

artotaku wrote:
18 Dec 2018
cognitive wrote:
14 Dec 2018
I don't have an APC40, but this gives me some ideas about controlling PSQ with either my Novation Lanchkey or maybe using one of my Circuits.
You have to make some decisions what to control since the PSQ has so many controls. Actually, you would use two or three midi controllers mapped to the PSQ.
The advantage of the APC40 is that it has LED encoders which makes it possible to map all of the PSQ sequencer knobs to multiple encoder pages but still giving you visual feedback on the LED of a knob value of your current selected page. Provided you programmed your custom codec as such.
There is no support by Akai for Reason codec-wise since the APC is primarily aimed for Ableton so you have to do it on your own.
This is my biggest beef with Reason, we have so much control over the chaos that happens at Rack Level with CV and devices like PSQ, but we dont have the hardware support to supplement it. I would love a piece of kit like the APC40, but having to buy the kit then needing to learn to code so you can programme it to work favourably in Reason kills all the creativity of wanting to use it. Why do hardware manufacturers never build anything for us :cry:

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artotaku
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19 Dec 2018

Flavolous wrote:
18 Dec 2018
This is my biggest beef with Reason, we have so much control over the chaos that happens at Rack Level with CV and devices like PSQ, but we dont have the hardware support to supplement it. I would love a piece of kit like the APC40, but having to buy the kit then needing to learn to code so you can programme it to work favourably in Reason kills all the creativity of wanting to use it. Why do hardware manufacturers never build anything for us :cry:
Absolutely. There have been some cool ideas around here in the forum how a dedicated Reason controller could look like.
It will most likely not go without having pages of controls but you need feedback either by LED rings or displays for each control. I find just 8 LED encoders are not enough, better more as in the Behringer BCR/BCF2000.

Also it would be cool to have a pad matrix and dedicated support for it. On my APC40 or Launchpad I had to implement it in the codec to have a multiple value switch (aka button group) consisting of 5 pads.

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mjxl
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20 Dec 2018

Put a QNG + RND on Klang, comb filter, lotsa delay and reverb then put it in Grain with a PSQ attached, creepy stuff :d hope you like it
Image

Try out some grain lengths, rates and x-fades, or different oscilator/generator modes if you want :P

Code: Select all

http://rsn.mjxl.net/KalimbaPSQ-Creepy.cmb
and the bounced wav file:

Code: Select all

http://rsn.mjxl.net/Kalimba%20Percussive%20Bounced%204.wav

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artotaku
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31 Jul 2020

Let´s breathe some live into this thread.

This time I´ll show you how you can generate interesting polyphonic arpeggios from a chord progression that is put into PSQ. So PSQ is not only capable of creating note/gate signals by itself but also processing notes coming from outside and apply differnt ryhthmic patterns. Since the notes are controlled from outside we are always in key but we could also transpose the notes at will.

Setup
We have chord progression created on a MIDI track or a player. Here I use Sequences player.
The chords are split into its individual notes and note/gate CV. This is done by CVPT player. We have chords with up to five notes.
The note/gate CV outputs of the CVPT are connected to CV 1 to 5 on the PSQ.
CV 1 to 5 are routed to S1 - S5 with the PSQ mod matrix.
I reserved two steps for sequencers S1 - S5 to allow an octave pitch of the first or second step. The pitch of the sequencers must be zero if you want to avoid any transposition. Here we have 9.9 to have a an octave up.

The interesting part is now the Pulses. Each sequencer is triggered by its own Pulse so you can have complex rhythmic variations on each note of a chord.

Finally, the note/gate outputs of the squencers are joined with another CVPT which is attached to an instrument, here Subtractor.

In the video I´m changing the Pulses to different patterns, delays and widths.



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