Roar as comb delay, Serum 2 arp, blind bass
Tonight’s session has a trick that repurposes Ableton’s Roar—a saturator—into a dual-comb-filter delay with envelope and noise modulation. Tom VR walks through his drum design: process something wild first, then drop in the kick. Serum 2 users get a gnarly melodic techno arp, and a blind bass-loop chop technique might save you an hour.
published today
▶ Turn Roar into a dual comb filter delay
Roar isn’t just saturation. By switching its filters to comb mode and routing noise and an envelope to bias and frequency, you get a metallic, tempo-synced delay that spits out rhythmic artifacts.
◢ learn
▶ Tom VR: process chaos first, then add drums
Tom VR builds drums by processing chaotic sources first—flangers, Infiltrator, outboard pedals—then anchoring with kicks and percussion. He also uses Ableton Raw’s saturation with modulation to add movement.
▶ Serum 2 melodic techno arp, Massano-style
A from-scratch Serum 2 patch that layers three oscillators, free-running LFOs, and a custom arp to create a dark, evolving melodic techno riff. Modulation touches pitch, noise pan, and filter cutoff; the effect chain includes asymmetry distortion, ping-pong delay, and multiband compression.
◢ the word
▶ Blind chop bass loops to write a bassline fast
The blind chop method: drag in unrelated bass loops, chop them up without listening, and shape the rhythm with clip fades that mimic sidechain pump. The result is a bassline you wouldn’t have written by hand—fast, and genre-flexible.
- 1. Drop a vocal sample into Bitwig Sampler. Right-click it and choose 'Set Root Key to Average Pitch', then enable the 'Dynamic' option next to Root Key.
- 2. Turn on 'Pitch Tracking' (set to Dynamic). Now the sampler adjusts the playback pitch automatically, locking the original pitch bends to the key you play.
- 3. Select the 'Analog' Re-Pitch mode to add the stereo wobble the source shows.
- 4. Slow the attack slightly and dial up the release a touch to soften the note envelopes.
🔮 Producer Horoscope (for fun) — Mercury is in retrograde inside your delay plugin—expect tempo drifts. Tap tempo accordingly.
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covered in this issue: serum 2