 Hello, Oscillator Sync here. The Nudler is maybe a difficult device to classify. It's not a traditional sequencer But it certainly does sequence things. To call it an arpeggiator would be to undersell it significantly But arpeggios are very much an intrinsic part of its DNA. It is obviously far away from a traditional MIDI controller But it offers hands-on control over MIDI instruments So I think that it's maybe better to think about the Nudler in terms of how it influences your Relationship with your instruments When you use a keyboard controller, you are playing the role of performer When using a sequencer your job is more that of composer with the sequencer than in charge of the actual performance With the Nudler, you're more acting like a bandleader during a jam You set up a musical environment with rules and as the performance happens You direct the flow of the music with broad strokes. The details are left up to the performers Jamming away inside the Nudler. This blurring of the line between composer and performer really speaks to my interest in generative music In generative music your role as composer is to set up a musical environment where you're bouncing chance elements or randomness With a set of rules and parameters that govern the facets of the music such as note choice rhythms to timbre and so on Then as performer your job is to listen and react Guiding the flow of the music by adjusting those parameters and locking in rules that create something special You're there to be surprised and embrace the unexpected So in this video, I want to start with a blank slate and explore how Nudler's unique combination of features can be used to create generative music I don't intend for this to be a full demo of the complete feature set Loupop has a predictably great video on that topic. I'll link to that in the video description Nor am I trying to imply that this is the only way to use the Nudler Rather I want to demonstrate a particular workflow and try to highlight some of the features that I find really cool for this musical context So get comfortable dim the lights grab a drink in a snack. It's time to Nudler and chill Okay, let's start by talking about what the setup looks like. So obviously in the center of the setup We have the Nudler itself the Nudler has two MIDI outputs, but for simplicity's sake I'm just taking one of the outputs and it's going into A Kenton through five, which is a MIDI splitter And it's from there that everything is hooked up So in terms of the stuff that I've got laid out to do the sounds We've got the mini Brut 2s, which is going to be doing the drone sound which will sound something like That when it happens Lovely nice and droney Uh, that's running through the lovely Korg NTS1 new tech so The effects on that are coming from the NTS1 and that's also going to be making its own sounds something like like that Isn't it crazy that 99 bucks gets you a synth and an effects unit that good Lovely The singing over here. Yes There is the Korg monologue been a while since I've got it out But that is going to be doing our other motif sound which will sound like this And that's going through Curse the zoom Multi stomp over there Nice nice nice and then finally Working in tandem with each other. We have the mini log and the micro freak Working together the micro freak freak is actually rooted through the mini logs external input. So it's A really basic patch on the micro freak and the mini logs doing all of like the envelope type stuff That's going to be giving us our pad sound and the effects in that case Are coming via the Focus the tc electronics flashback 2 and the digitech Polara And then panning round over here we have A pretty good beer a very good scotch And the brush they use to get the dust off my synths Okay, so let's start by talking about some of this stuff that we need to set up Let's get this all to work. So if we go into the menu and go into the first system menu here And we've got our midi um channel setup so in this case For my drone motif And motif one and motif two they're just on one two and three, which is what the various synths set to So in the case of the pad, I've got this set to midi channel 10 Now my mini log is set to midi channel 10 But my micro freak is set to midi channel 11 and the reason for that Is that if you come into menu three here, uh, we've got polychain turned on which means that for the pad sounds Each note is going to be spread between in this case Channels 10 then 11 and 10 then 11 and 10 then 11 Which essentially gives me eight notes polyphony across the two synths, which is really really cool So allows us to do great big spread chords if that's what we want to do and we won't always be doing that There's also nice interplay between the two different synths that I think is Is nice as well. Anything else that's worth talking about in the system menus for the way that I've set this up Um, I will come back to human eyes, but I've got human eyes set to 10 Right, so Let's come out of our menus just for a moment So the next thing I want to do is define the tempo key and mode. So if we click on this knob here We have access to those three settings tempo key and mode. You show me click the knob You'll see that this arrow here is switching and that tells you which of the three items here you're adjusting with that knob Now we're going to make some Very very slow ambient now. I'm not going to go all the way down. This goes all the way down to like 10 bpm, which is Really slow. I'm not going to go all the way down At the moment just because it will help us hear what's going on. I will slow it down for the performance But yeah, we'll go for 30 bpm, which is still really slow I'm into slow music at the moment Going down to the key You'll see the key Is being selected as I turn this round. I'm just going to a Let's try a today And then the one that's kind of really important For the feel is is the mode So we have a major at the start there. We're going to be nice and Optimistic with our sound But we have various different modes all the ones you would expect you can see it changing up at the top here Including when we get to the end things like whole tone and then literally just The tonic and then intervals which is quite interesting today Because I want to feel Optimistic and there's nothing more optimistic than a major scale. We're just going to stick with major for the moment So the goal here is for me to set up a musical environment Which is unpredictable and surprising in some ways But that is predictable in other ways so that there are things that are happening which always sound musical But those things that are happening Are unpredictable and surprising For my money the place where that magic happens if you like is in the motifs so These twinkly friends here Lovely So Taking sort of simplistically the motifs are kind of arpeggiators, but they are more interesting than that actually and to think of them just as arpeggiators is For this kind of performance kind of missing the point So our motifs are made up of two things are made up of the pattern and the rhythm The pattern are the notes that are being played And the rhythm is the rhythm in which those notes are being played Now what's really interesting about the motifs is the fact that our Pattern and our rhythm are independent of each other and can be sort of tweaked independently of one another And that allows us to do some really interesting things in terms of Creating overlapping patterns. So let's start by heading over to one of our motifs here So just touching one of the motif knobs there. So we're in motif one at the moment Uh So, let me just start so that going we'll just talk about the the general parameters here. So the first parameter On this knob with the thingy pointing up there. Here's the position of the motif. So How high or low it is basically so we've turned it down. So now it's a lower arpeggiator Uh, the next one here is the pattern length here now that our pattern is Made up of seven notes rather than the eight notes it was before Nice so on this knob When it's pointing up we have different Uh Ways that the pattern has been played So you can see the shape up at the top here changing. So now it's a descending pattern an ascending pattern ascending and descending Just go back to ascending for the moment And finally we can Choose different patterns all together And by changing the patterns and the pattern lengths and the way that they've been played We can get interesting Relationships happening But we can deep dive into those Attributes and that's where I think a lot of the power is really held. So if I go shift a menu Now I have the extended menu. So basically what's on these? Um That's sort of call outs if you like here So down this side, I could get access to the chord sequence and the midi controller But up here where it are in the pattern edge Okay, so inside the pattern editor. Let's start Taking a look at what we can tweak So the way that this interface works is a little bit tricky to get hang of When you first see it but once you've done it a couple of times. I think it's really easy. So one two three four values here One two three four knobs here and same thing down the left hand side as well So what I'm going to start by doing is setting the length of my pattern Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go for a prime number. I'm going to go Let's go for 11 So now if I play this back We have this Ascending thing happening here So what we can do by turning this knob is choose which of the steps you can see I'm cycling through there I'm going to edit and from this point I can edit Their value now we go all the way back past the first one here We can choose what type of pattern we're dealing with whether it's based on the chord Based on the scale that we're in Or based just chromatic now from this performance I'm going to stick with the chord that means that as I change the chords around the noodler The pattern is going to move with it. If I was on scale then the notes would not Move with the chord, but they would all fall within The scale that we're currently in which is a major I think remember And then we have chromatic which is chromatic each note. It's just a chromatic note which for This is not necessarily what I want I'm going to stick with chord trans and To be with them. I'm just kind of Going to set it going and kind of feel it out a little bit Um, so as you can see this is just incrementing The uh, just straight I wish what we're hearing But we can come in here and something do more interesting jumps perhaps Turn right those repeating ones there Let's go to these repeating ones here as well Which is pleasant enough. We might come back and tweak that but Yeah, I think that's nice So where things get really interesting now is if we head into the rhythm editor So you can see here in the rhythm editor. You can see that we have the steps cycling around here And we have similar controls as we did on the The pattern editor we can change the length for example now. I'm going to change the length What do we have this all set to? 11 Let's go for another prime number prime numbers always work well for this kind of thing. Let's go to 13 Now at the moment every single one of these steps is exactly the same So it just doesn't really sound like the rhythm has any impact whatsoever But what we can start to do here Is adding ties and rest so again, I'm just going to add some of these And now each time it's going round The note that again picked out And how they been played starting to be a little bit more interesting and less Predictable. One thing we can do here as well is change the division here And slow things down by half, which I think sounds nice. Okay, so let's um Come out of here for a second And switch over to the other motif Instead of going and we'll do the same thing So back into the pattern editor We'll pick another prime number for our length What's the next one along 17, isn't it? I can't go up that high can we so let's go down to seven instead And same things before we can start to program Our steps and we start getting these beautiful things happening We really didn't touch the rhythm editor yet And I'm already in paradise This one's going in reverse, um, because we could Go for a Up and down one in which case Super seven Okay, so we'll go into our rhythm editor. Is he already on this one that we have rests scattered around? Uh, that's set the length. I think in this case we can go up high. Let's go to 17 And let's make this a little bit Less Stop start stop start At the moment we're setting everything either to rest or on full But we'll get to why I'm doing that In a second I'll add some ties maybe on this one. Is it actually is it worth for this patch? No, I don't think it is And we'll drop that That's nice isn't it? Very easy just to get lost in But at the moment despite the fact that we have these interesting overlapping figures happening Uh, there's still an element of predictability to it in terms of the Rhythm is always on where it is the Note choice is always exactly the same. So let's have a think about how we can make that Even more interesting, shall we? So let's take a brief foray into another area of the new loafers thing So I'm going to hit the menu key here So into the standard menus not the shift menus and I'm going to go up to this knob here, which is our LFO configuration So I'm going to see here that we have three LFOs are actually more than three LFOs It's just that these are the three that we're able to configure And similar interface here For elements down here for elements down here So you can see here that we have three LFOs we can choose their shape and their Period how long it takes them to go around so on Oscillator Don't know what I've chosen three first. I'm going to switch it over to a random sample and hold if you like type affair And I'm going to define its length in terms of beats Uh, and I'm going to go with five beats Yeah, why not five? That just feels right LFO two Let's set that to a Back over here So a sine wave perhaps Stringle Let's go sign and let's just make this one Really slow Slow go which is 40 seconds I'm going to go 39 Because less of a round number and that feels more random. I guess and this last LFO here We're going to have another one that is Going to just loop around a little bit faster We might tweak these values as we go on so Let's start one of our motifs again and have a quick drink So When we're in the menu like this These four knobs down here allow us access to the mod matrix And this is where the magic happens Oh, yes indeed. So, um, let's think about our, um Motif as it's happening here what would be good to happen to it to make it More or rather less predictable more Uh, uh, more surprising to us So one thing I think would be really really lovely Is if the position of the motif was shifting around so we weren't always getting exactly the same note choices. They were always Related in the same way, but it would be shifting as it goes So let's choose our very Very Slowest sine wave one that we just set up there And uh What I will do. So here we have, um In terms of the control here, we've got this knob here is what the uh the mod Sources this one here is the mod amount, which we'll get to in a second This one here is what is modulating and this one here is the destination value, which is um Allows us to center the LFO if you like So I'm going to whiz across here to motif one position So this is going to be moving where our motif is currently centered And if I start turning up the mod amount, you'll see here that the mod range has been represented here You can already hear that we're getting Notes that we weren't getting before Including very high ones And some much lower ones Which means if we bring in the other motif now the interplay between them becomes more complex And surprising And wonderful beautiful So let's pull a similar trick with our other motif as well So mod source, let's take our slightly Faster one our triangle here so this one And we will set This to motif To position and we maybe won't stretch this one out quite as much Because it's moving faster, but we'll turn up our mod amount So you can see here as I've turned up the mod amount because this is unipolar It's only going up so six to eight is going to take us too high And we can just use this knob here to adjust that back down so that it's centered where it was awesome Okay, so The note choice is now becoming more interesting. That's lovely Let's think about our rhythm a little bit So we'll come into our next mod matrix. There are eight mod slots all together, which is awesome So I'm going to choose Our random source now and for the destination I'm going to Choose the clock division. So that was what we turned down to make it go slower So what I want to do now is turn up the amount here So now our mod range is one to three, which means it's going to go half as slow some of the time and Twice as fast sometimes And that's going to be chosen every five beats randomly and because the random source is not always going to be changing it So now mod motif one occasionally is going to speed up go slower so that rhythmic interplay between our two motifs becomes Again more interesting So we could do a similar thing with Our second motif as well So if we uh this time choose so we've got some um Some straight up hard coded mods slots as well. So we've got a 40 second long Triangle here Which sounds good to me It's going to be predictable because it's a triangle, but with everything else going on at this stage We won't notice it necessarily so much So again motif two clock division Up that mod amount You can hear that already went faster there. We happened to hit on it there I want one two three again lovely Okay, so let's come out of the menu here and let's um Just head back in to uh He this one sorry So on this knob here, we have the accent rhythm and offset Well, what I'm particularly interested in here is the accent. So at the moment it's set to rhythm vel So that means that it's the velocity that I've set in the Rhythm which as I was doing it was the full Each time But I want to make this a random as well and that was why if you remember earlier, I said In here, I have human eyes set to 10 and I said don't worry about it. We'll come back to that Here I am going back to it And we're going to turn this so it says Human velocity and that means now that the Human eyes function, which is basically a randomizer function is going to be taken care of our motifs Velocity and we'll do that with the other one as well so now we're having variations in The loudness if you like of those motifs as well So one of the other really amazing things that you can do in the mod matrix on the new lures You can actually have control over your synth sounds if you like by way of midi cc messages Which is pretty awesome So if we head into the mod matrix here and going to When five and six hits that's a spare slot here And what I'm going to do is I'm going to set it to be looking at midi cc message 16 16 Overshot come on encoder And I'm going to aim it at the nts one which is on midi channel So Two on I'm just set it to all calming actually doesn't make any difference So this is going to affect the attack on the envelope of That's on midi channel too. Yep So if we set the shape in here now that We're getting those violins while sometimes and then Other times we should be getting Wait for it Something a little less violin swallowing So lower the spin more actually rather than using In bipolar one, let's use a unipolar one because then that's just going to go from zero up So the sine wave on the mod matrix is always bipolar so it starts in the middle and goes outwards Whereas the triangle wave is always unipolar so it starts at the bottom and goes up. So here we go We have some plucky sounds Then we should get some violins as far as we go up There we go So now we have some generative things happening even Within our synths that can't usually do this So there's no way to modulate the attack rate on the NTS one otherwise other than turning the knob off obviously But now we're doing it. So we're getting variation in the in the timbre as well as in the Patterns that are happening so we can bring in the other one Okay, let's um, let's think about our pad then There's our pad there. So pad is on these two knobs here So what do we got control over? So we have control over its position much in the same way as we did with our Motifs so And obviously these are going to follow So this next parameter is strum which will alter How the notes are played in whether they're sort of spaced out as they get played in So if we change that to a different strum pattern You can hear there. We've got a bit more of a staggered start. It's not so obvious with a paddy pad sound like this, but It's happening on this knob here. We have a range and spread so Range is pretty easy to understand Turn range down we get fewer notes So we get more concentrated down to just two notes all the way up to eight in this case So the spread changes how the notes are picked um, I think probably One of these two spread modes are the most interesting or useful musically And basically they give different emphasis to the um upper and lower notes So if we move the position now when we're down at the bottom there, you can hear that the notes are more sparse So even though we've got eight notes chosen here we're only getting two or three So it doesn't get quite as clouded and up at the top more dense Clustered chords There's also a random mode which will randomly choose which notes within the range to actually play in in terms of, um How many of them whether or not they get played at all So that's pretty interesting as well And because we're into randomness, perhaps we'll stick with that spread Now I don't intend to necessarily be playing in the different chords in terms of changing what's being played too much during the performance So again, we're going to head to our mod matrix to get our pad moving around So into our menu Come down to this bottom slot here And we'll Look at a lot of the stuff that we were doing before so let's go pad position Let's choose One of our slowly undulating LFOs here And start to apply an amount a little bit too much for a range Perhaps we want to just set it lower in general And the other thing we'll do I think is Take a look at the range So how many notes have been played in again choose A nice slow Something And then of course we can just bring in the drone Let me drop it down Maybe we can modulate that between those two positions there So back into our mod matrix Spare slot here drone position That's okay for one of the randomizer ones there Uh, I want it right. Well, let's uh Head back over here And let's set our tempo And now we're free to bring in parts as we please And tweak our synths and head to a happy place So anyway, thank you for joining me on this Long meandering Exploration of how we can make generative ambient Soundscapes centered around the needle I hope you enjoyed it if you did and you're still here at the end then well well done and please do give the Video a like and make sure you subscribe to the channel Because there'll be lots More in in terms of exploring Synths and Ambient soundscapes, I'm sure lots of ambient soundscapes very soothing in these slightly more interesting times Sometimes I like to just set these up and have a sit And have a listen and not bother recording anything I'll see You soon. Take care