Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

know i could pull this off recording separate takes, but i'm wondering if there's any adapter or anything out there that'll make a slaved piece of gear run at double the speed of its master. would be really useful for drum fills. anyone know of anything like that?

If it's pulse trigger gear, I bet the Garfield Electronics Mini Doc could do it. Maybe even a Roland SBX-10 or 80.

It is also my understanding that Korg's DIN sync runs at 48ppq as opposed to Rolands @ 24ppg. Maybe you can make a Roland run faster with a Korg sync signal.

I dunno. Has anyone ever tried these before?

EDIT: You did say MIDI gear. Guess I should go to bed.

yeah, know there are some tricks with other sync methods, just curious if there's any hardware other than a computer that can double a MIDI tempo.

loop pedals sort of made me think of it...used to messing w/ that on my DL-4 since you can record something then switch it to double or half speed and record something else over it, though it switches you up or down an octave. repeater's actually more impressive since you can change tempos or pitches w/o changing both.

anyway, main reason was to find something that'd let me chain one drum machine running twice the speed of its master.

Why not just do the obvious...sequence one of the two using shorter or longer note values.

You could build this device relatively easily with a midibox CORE unit and a bit of help from their forums if you have any programming experience. http://www.midibox.org.

meatballfulton wrote:Why not just do the obvious...sequence one of the two using shorter or longer note values.

talking about making one drum machine run twice the speed of another...

th0mas wrote:You could build this device relatively easily with a midibox CORE unit and a bit of help from their forums if you have any programming experience. http://www.midibox.org.

that's weird, second time midibox has been mentioned to me in the past week. i could assemble a kit, but know jack about programming...

My Yamaha RS7000, and I believe its older brother the RM1X has some great beat stretching capabilities that might flip the bill. I say might, not 100% sure it'd do exactly what your wanting and for the costs. It affects its phrases which in turn send out the events in percentage times of 25%, 33%, 50%, 66%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 200%, 300%, 400%, it can be done realtime or processed as a job. I believe that includes the midi events (note step time, gate time, all event locations, etc., - are expanded or
compressed.), However, I don't think it includes the master clock signal, just the events, so maybe something to think about, maybe if can't find anything else to do it.

Its pretty cool feature if you get it, I usually use that more for lengthening. Thing is, when shortening or making faster then you've got to be somewhat carefull when its done in a song and not just looping patterns because then for whatever track its on it'll be half as long, or twice as long too etc. in those multiples. Longer is usually OK, just hit stop or fade it out, but shorting can result in that track ending prematurely at an unexpected time, so then you have to remember to lengthen it out and copying moving so normally its something like twice as long as the rest of the song if your speeding it up by half. If your beat streach tweaking in real time who knows where it will end or not.

Zam

weird...i actually have an RS7000 headed my way, look forward to checking that out...

space6oy wrote:

meatballfulton wrote:Why not just do the obvious...sequence one of the two using shorter or longer note values.

talking about making one drum machine run twice the speed of another...

??? How does that invalidate his suggestion?

Drum machines are easy, just set one to half the tempo when you're programming it, program it however you want and then when you sync them back together it'll be running at twice the speed of the other.

Stab Frenzy wrote:Drum machines are easy, just set one to half the tempo when you're programming it, program it however you want and then when you sync them back together it'll be running at twice the speed of the other.

i guess that's true, i could achieve what i'm talking about by running the master double speed and programming it slower...
that'd just complicate anything else i chained as well though, making everything need to be programmed half speed except the one drum machine i'm wanting to run faster...which would take up more space in everything instead of just in that one double speed piece of gear...right?
hope that makes sense...both showing that you're right but also that that's not what i want to have to do...

space6oy wrote:weird...i actually have an RS7000 headed my way, look forward to checking that out...

Sweet! I hope you like it as much as I like mine. Was thinking some more about it, what you may be able to do also instead is if you've already got your drum loop built into another machine, syc it up with the RS, double the RS's bpms and then you can put each track on it at 200% slowing it back down to normal tempo while whatever other machine synced to it plays double speed, would work in pattern mode, and whalaaa!

Of course, if you had some other gear you wanted to keep at same tempo then that might be a prob, but its an idea to try once you get it. I don't think I'd do all my songs this way, if I knew one needed to faster as I was creating stuff then I'd sequence in my notes in to it at that speed.

I've read or heard of doing such things with seqs, more arpegiattors, termed as "subdivide" too if that helps any to know or not.

Happy RSing!

Zam

space6oy wrote:that'd just complicate anything else i chained as well though, making everything need to be programmed half speed except the one drum machine i'm wanting to run faster...which would take up more space in everything instead of just in that one double speed piece of gear...right?

No. The one you want to run at double speed gets programmed at half speed so when you run it back at normal speed it's going faster.

Anyway, that's how to solve your problem but if you'd rather search for a piece of gear that doesn't exist, or make and program something to do it for you then be my guest.

You actually do have to put some effort in to make music though, it won't write itself. Or you could just buy a groovebox and play with the presets, I guess that would work for you too.

Going in the opposite direction (slaving gear at half of master's tempo) is much easier to do. I built a device to do it, running my x0xb0x at half of the drum machine's tempo in order to avoid programming rests to halve the tempo...lame.