One Synth Challenge #141: Monique by Monoplugs (z.prime Wins!)

[ELEX]

In addition to the previous post: When not logged in to Google, downloading worked for me as expected. When logged in, right-clicking the filename and selecting download from the drop-down menu was required.

[gethiox]

For all those who have problem with "legato" glide mode, make sure "K-SNC" button is enabled (on top of first oscillator).
At first glance I didn't notice there is a glide option, now making a decent kick is much simpler.

[ELEX]

For all those who have problem with "legato" glide mode, make sure "K-SNC" button is enabled...

Thanks very much for solving that one !!! I'd never have suspected that connection. Major improvement..thanks again.

[doctorbob]

Right click on a knob can bring up a big menu, and you can adjust the knob sensitivity, which I found helpful. Look for "Global Slider Handling".

dB

[z.prime]

Hi all, I was thinking we haven't had one of these types of posts in a while...

Making kicks and snares with Monique

It took me a little while and various techniques to find a way that actually produced a usable kick drum sound. So, I thought it might be good to have a refresher about how to do this.

Monique is a particularly unique beast. It's like with the same amount of work but on just slightly different features (like modulation with the envelope instead of the LFO), this could actually be a crazy good synth. I might perhaps suggest quite a few tweaks to the UI, but I digress...

Anyway, because of this unique feature set, I couldn't figure out a way to apply an envelope to any oscillator pitch. The next thing to try would maybe be cranking the resonance up to 100% and using an envelope for the cutoff. That just wasn't working well for me, either, for whatever reason. Next up: using the portamento... and... success! How does this work, you ask? Well, if you have Bitwig Studio, it is so very easy to set up a useful midi effects rack to help with this. Quick example is:

https://soundcloud.com/z_prime/monique- ... R0FTxksIpe

First, I'll explain how this works, just to be sure everyone can apply this with their DAW of choice, then the slick Bitwig way. It's simple: use portamento to make a high pitched note ramp down to a low pitched note.

In any DAW, you simply make a patch with a sine wave or similar and appropriate amplitude envelope, adjust the portamento time to taste, and then add some MIDI notes that are high pitched, followed almost immediately with much lower pitched notes, maybe 3 or 4 octaves. This bit is actually basically the same between snares and kicks, it's just that snares are higher pitched, and often less of a pitch drop. Where kicks depending on genre might be upwards of a 4 octave range, snares are more likely to be in the 1 or 2 octave drop.

Here is a VST3 patch that I used as the base for the drums in the snippet:

Monique Kick Drum.vstpreset.zip

You can see how one may place the notes in piano roll:

Screen Shot 2020-11-07 at 1.54.50 AM.png

... just make sure you're using good starting and ending notes to get the punchiness (or lack thereof) and the right body tuning!

Bitwig!

In Bitwig (and quite possibly in Live and other DAWs using a similar method), all you need to do is create a MIDI processing chain that slightly delays and outputs a second note for each you input, which is also down +/-3 octaves or to taste. This is all you need to do in Bitwig:

Screen Shot 2020-11-07 at 1.51.00 AM.png

Don't forget...

Some finishing touches:
* Noise. Using noise for various parts of the percussive sounds is often very useful. For a snare, you'd want to layer a bit of a splashy noise with the body created above. For a kick you might want to add a noise-based click with another instance of Monique with a very short like 10ms envelope, or lots of things in between.
* Compression: some people might think this is blasphemy, but: don't use standard compressors on your drums. Compressors reduce sound after an attack period so you end up with a loud transient which kicks off limiters on the master but then the body gets quieter AND the master limiter gets quieter, so you lose a lot of volume on the drum and it gets lost in the mix. Instead, you could try adding a hard clipper (like the nice Venn Audio FreeClip), as the attack tends to be noise which doesn't really sound much different when clipped, but the body of the drum can be pushed louder without triggering the master limiter to drop levels.
* Haas Effects: careful with this - a number of "stereoizing" types of effects delay one side of audio a little bit to create a nice stereo sound. while this effect works great for a lot of things, for percussive effects, avoid them! especially if using a compressor! you end up with one side loud and the other level dropped by the compressor. just don't. please.
* OTT, Saturation, Reverb: use it! but sparingly. a little bit of OTT will help brighten drums but too much will just ruin stuff.

I know I've been guilty of pushing things too far plenty of times, usually out of rushing to finish something the last day of the month , but when I do actually spend time on getting a proper mix, I still don't win!

One could probably go into a significant amount more detail on many aspects of this. Let me know if y'all find this sort of information helpful.

Cheers!

[Dirtgrain]

Thanks for explaining all that--great post.

[ELEX]

Let me know if y'all find this sort of information helpful...

Most certainly helpful ! Thanks ! I applaud you for taking the time too write all that !

I'd like to add to this that in the case of Monique one can even play kicks like these manually. With 'K-SNC' engaged and 'LEGAT' off, glide only occurs downwards( edit: incorrect. It goes towards the held note, so it works from both sides ). So,when one holds down a note so low as to be inaudible ( use OSC 2 or 3, probably best to filter out the low note ), kicks can be played in higher octaves. Does need 5 or more octaves on the keyboard, though.

[FrogsInPants]

First, I'll explain how this works, just to be sure everyone can apply this with their DAW of choice, then the slick Bitwig way. It's simple: use portamento to make a high pitched note ramp down to a low pitched note.

Nice. Maybe not as slick or easy as in Bitwig, but it's not too difficult to automate this in Reaper either. Here's a JSFX script I cobbled together for all the Reaper users.

Monique Kick Helper.zip

[z.prime]

Maybe not as slick or easy as in Bitwig, but it's not too difficult to automate this in Reaper either. Here's a JSFX script I cobbled together for all the Reaper users.

That's another great approach (I may have also whipped up a similar thing a long time ago when I also used Reaper!)

[Eauson]

cool idea for the kick
as an alternative
https://www.codefn42.com/chordz/

this can be used in the same way Z & FIP have listed

[doctorbob]

Thanks @Eauson - I completely forgot I had this already in my "arsenal"! I usually need to simulate a bass drum though which has a pillow inside (common practice!), rather than the hard 4-on-the-floor EDM hard kicks. The basic ideas are much the same, but the EQ/compression process may be a bit different for me.

dB

[Eauson]

@db
it just helps to play the drum, i know what you mean with the eq’ing, i like the resonance available on the eq on monique, a decent mod matrix on this synth would be cool, but using ccstepper, also by codefn42 helps to set up some good automation

[Neptune]

Thanks z for explaining how to get the kicks done and Thanks Eauson for the hint with Chords.

[Medniex]

My track is still in a rough state, but I'm loving the morph feature so far. The midi mapping is not that hard either, at least in Ableton.
[deleted]
Didn't use the legato trick, but that "K-SNC" was essential to get anything consistent for percussion. Thank you gethiox for the heads-up!

[bh9090]

Hi all, I was thinking we haven't had one of these types of posts in a while...
Cheers!

Thanks Z, now I want Bitwig