Pigments Dub Techno Chords

Here’s a step by step guide to setting up a dub techno chord in Arturia’s Pigments VST:

1. Set up the midi

   First you want to make a long midi note at C3 – make it one bar long and loop it for a bar, so you have one long continuous note playing. We won’t make a chord in midi, we’ll set this up in Pigments. This way you only have to play one note to generate the chord.

2. Start with the Default preset and set it up for a Sawtooth with some FM

   You want to start with the default preset then click the drop-down and select analog so it’s an analog engine. This does analog synthesis, but also does FM as well so we can add in some FM later.
   You want you want the saw tooth selected, it makes a great harmonic chord sounds for dub techno. The saw tooth should be selected by default for oscillator one.
   Change oscillator three on Engine 1 to a sinewave. The volume for this is down by default so we’re not going hear this, it will be used to frequency modulate the other oscillator. We’ll add in the FM later.

3. Set up a minor Chord

   Then we want to set up the chord: go to the unison section and click on the word Unison, and change it to Chord. Now, whenever we press one note we automatically get a minor chord.
   You want to change the voices dial to 3 (or more) and then the Chord to whatever sounds good.
   If you if you press play you can see what sounds good but I would go with M7 start with. Then you’ll have a nice three note Minor cord which sounds great with dub techno and the sawtooth oscillator.
   

4. Set a tight filter envelope

   Then we want to go to Filter 1 and turn the cut off all the way down so you won’t hear the sound anymore, it is totally filtered out. The we add a filter envelope to let the cord through only for a short time only. Drag Envelope 2 to the cut-off. And then turn the modulation amount up to max. You should now hear the filter envelope working as it makes the filter open and shut quickly for every note you play.

5. Add in frequency modulation

   Then I’m going to add in a slight bit of FM on oscillator one. If you turn the FM amount up fully it will get too harsh and noisy so what we’ll do is we set it quite low perhaps only quarter of the way up. But then you can drag Envelope 2 to the FM amount knob (this the same envelope used on the filter). This will give the chord a lot of movement, the FM gets harsher as the chord plays.

6. Tweak the filter to taste

   Then go to envelope two and shorten the decay and the attack slightly to taste. Make sure the DAW is playing so you can hear the changes as you make them. The attack should be zero, then shorten the decay to taste and you can hear the chord shortening. That’s the basics for making a short and plucky dub techno chord.

7. Start the effects chain – add in delays and reverb in FXA

   Then go to the effects panel and you want to select delays and reverb so I would add that delay in the in the first panel, reverb in the second and then tape echo in the third. Then make sure the wet/dry is turned up to about 40% on all of them. You can start to hear the spatial effects.

8. Tweak them to taste

   I would make the time on the first delay doted 8th and on the second one dotted 16th. Whatever sounds good. Now turn the feedback up on slightly on the first delay and the intensity up on the tape echo to get more feedback tales. And switch both the delay and the tape echo to ping-pong so you get a wide stereo effect.

9. Add some timing errors

   Change the ‘fine’ tuning on the delay and tape echo units to be slightly off so you get a weird feeling to the timing so it’s not quite quantized. I turn one up slightly and one down to get some ‘off delays’

10. Add filtering and distortion to the chain

    Then I like to add a distortion in FX B, just to give it a tiny bit of drive, but also to add filtering… The great thing about the Pigments distortion is the filter. You can set it to band pass and set the cut-off so it’s about halfway and turn the resonance up to maybe like two. Then set LFO one to control the cut-off of that distortion and you should be able to see it and hear it moving. Then you can turn LFO 1’s speed right down to dotted two bar timing for example, and and then turn the modulation amount down so it’s a subtle effect, constantly moving the delays and reverb chains before it. And you should start to hear that filter effect.

11. Add final delay and reverbs to the effects chain

    Finally I add another tape echo after the Distortion, and I set the timing to taste. Then I add a Shimmer Reverb, which is a really nice effect that has pitch shifting on the reverb. Tweak it to taste.
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12. That’s the basics, but here’s some other things to try…

    That is it for the basics of a dub techno chord in Pigments, but at this stage there are tons of other things you can do…
    You can switch the utility engine on and add a tiny bit of noise to the chord to get a bit analog grit in it. Quite a good one is “running old tape”. Take it off loop and turn the length down so it’s quite short and turn it down so it’s subtle and in the background to add some crunch.
    You can also add a sub oscillator under the chord in the Utility section too.
    You can thicken the chord further by adding in Engine 2 – I click ‘copy engine’ and copy Engine 1 to Engine 2 with all the modulations So now both Engine 1 and 2 are the same, which is a good starting point. Then You can move engine 2 up or down an octave for a thicker chord.

13. Tweak the chord and automate it so it comes alive

    To play the chord you want to automate or modulate the main envelope (env 2), the main filter cutoff, the FM amount, and all the effects in the FX effects chains, especially the delays feedback and wet/dry.
    

14. Set up macros and make them cover a sweet spot

    I like to do is find like a sweet spot if you turn a delay up for example all the way right to 100% wet it’s not great, or all the way dry, lets say you find it sounds best between spot is between 20% and 60% wet, then you can map to to a macro where the macro’s max is 60% and min is 20%. This way the Macro is the whole sweet spot. Then you can paly and jam and tweak the macro around as much as you want and it will always sound good.