Make Noise Rene 2: Implied Harmony (eurorack techniques)

[@jeffjfindley4802]

Wonderful video! Just one little thing.... FAD is actually an inverted D minor chord, the ii chord in C. :) That said, you've taken a very deep and perplexing module and done a great job of making it make sense. Bravo!

[@castelmau]

Bravissimo! A gem video for all Rene owners!

[@Bostich]

This is great, thank you. Practical examples are so much better than technical walk-throughs.

[@danieltx7066]

This is a fantastic video! I watched a Make Noise video on the use of the Z channel and was confused enough to “put it aside for now.” This video gave me enough of an understanding to begin experimenting with it. Thank you.

[@PatternMusic]

This is really excellent. There really isn't much advanced tutorial material for Rene except the stuff from Make Noise. You should do more tutorials.

[@michaeldulsky8492]

Awesome video, I have Rene 2 but no idea how it works until now. Very cool. Thank you.

[@jbanales69]

Thank you for this easy to understand this explanation!

[@paulbremer3692]

Great and very clean presentation! Your tutorial videos are really enjoyable and easy to follow.

[@whatintheworld6501]

Great tutorial, this is excellent. It made so much more sense than many other videos. Thank you!

[@WolffP]

Super clear. Thank you !

[@williamthazard]

fascinating! I'm planning on setting aside some of my next paycheck for a used Rene v2, and this just made me very excited for that. Thank you

[@neckofthewoods728]

Great Video. Are you not making music anymore? You explain this well, you should keep doing these videos...

[@djnightmaneuver]

Excellent vid dude! Excatly what I was after after purchasing one of these.

[@HousePlant_Ambient]

Definitely getting the Rene2/Tempi. All I need for my Eurorack to be complete

[@Larry30102]

Sweet! Very informative. Many thanks

[@norwinp.8351]

nice and calm way to explain :) thanks man

[@spdycar13]

Best Rene 2 video I’ve seen. Super helpful!

[@alexbarn]

Really well explained, thank you!

[@rhialto39]

Clear and really useful, looking forward to more

[@ferrycollider]

Glad it was helpful!

[@bengineer_the]

Love it! Feel's like the minimum setup for music. :) Very nice.

[@eifuas85]

THIS is what i’m looking for. Been puzzled how to move those states :( Thanks!

[@LittleAmbientMachine]

very useful info. Thanks so much !

[@charlescowper]

Great video more please!

[@jonathanyoung6397]

You just blew my mind. Just got a Rene and was trying to figure out how to do chord progressions with a mono synth. Thank you!

[@heiner_kruse]

best Rene video, many other lose whats the whole purpose of using this

[@walrtbstudios5430]

Nice idea. Unfortunately my recently acquired Rene is faulty, so I can’t try it for myself…

[@calderwood9641]

Great video! I found it extremely informative. Subbed!

[@ferrycollider]

Awesome, thank you!

[@guymross]

The cognitive model of eurorack enthusiasts is fascinating. They’re so much like humans!

[@GeorgeLocke]

If you want a book that dives deep implied harmony, check out the Berkelee jazz theory book, which has modes associated with chords. This is, like, II maj9sus4 type chords, where II represents the second note in the base scale of the base scale. It's basically an algorithm for modal jazz.

[@joshstrauts8358]

That is E mixolydian, or A major my man. E maj has a D# and no D. Either way, great video. I always said 2HP only made a good envelope. I'm getting me a pluck.

[@someduder5786]

Greer video! Can you please list the other modules you use in this video w/ René?

[@ferrycollider]

Hex Inverter Mutant Brains for clock pulses Noise Engineering Bin Seq for clock division 2hp Pluck as a sound source Befaco Out v3 for line level output Strymon Magneto for delay effect

[@calderwood9641]

Can you copy and paste stored scenes?

[@jonathanyoung6397]

Yes you can, Rene 2 is very powerful like that. You use the m-paste mode

[@Molluszk]

Hi, What is your random source? Thx!

[@gmusic240]

Thanks for the great videos. How would you compare the Rene 2 with the Vector? Which one do you tend to use more?

[@ferrycollider]

While they're both sequencers, they really are completely different beasts. Vector is like a hybrid between a traditional eurorack sequencer and Ableton live. It gives the vibe that it's trying to be the central hub of your modular setup, being a clock source, having 8 layers, MIDI I/O, chord sequencer, all that. Vector is great if you want to do bread and butter sequencing across multiple channels, setup multiple "scenes" for live performance, control external synths over MIDI easily sync'ed with the rest of your sequences, or have access to a really rich randomization system. If you do live stuff and you need a central hub that also acts like a scene sequencer, Vector is in my opinion the best pick for that use. Rene 2 on the other hand is trying to be nothing of the sort. Rene is quite a bit more modular, in the sense that you need to supply the trigger or clock impulses that drive it. It offers a derived "cartesian" channel that outputs, well, sometimes it's hard to know. You could use Rene as a central hub, but to me the scope is a lot different. It's not trying to be the heart of your entire setup, it's just trying to be a fun sequencer for a voice or two which encourages experimentation. As for which I use more, I don't own the Vector any more. For complex sequencing and scenes I've mostly moved over to using Bitwig for all my composition. Rene is my pick for live fiddling. Despite not having anywhere near as many features, it, especially when combined with something like the Noise Engineering Bin Seq, is a lot more hands on, and encourages a lot more experimentation and discovery. I hope you can see they're really in two different camps with different approaches, and the answer to which is preferable has to do more with what you want to accomplish less so than what the sequencer offers. In my mind, Rene 2 is more comparable to a Intellijel Metropolis or Ryk M185, where as the Vector is in the space of Winter Modular Eloquencer, Xor Nerdseq, or a software-based solution like Ableton Live or Bitwig Studio.

[@gmusic240]

@@ferrycollider Thanks, I see what you mean. I never really considered the Rene before your video. It just looked confusing. Btw, I like the style of your tutorials; Not too much talking, not too much jamming.

[@gmusic240]

@@ferrycollider I noticed that people pair the Rene with a Tempi. What do you think? Is it worth the money and HP?

[@ferrycollider]

​@@gmusic240 just as with Vector vs. Rene, Tempi vs. other options comes down to what you want to achieve. I haven't owned a Tempi, but I've watched a handful of tutorials enough that I get the gist of it. Feels like the strength of Tempi is a combination of being able to tap in a tempo on the fly AND support for select bus. If you haven't encountered select bus before it's a state change protocol where you can set one module as the S-bus host (say the Rene) and it will broadcast state changes that other modules will follow. Say you were using channel X and Y on Rene, and there was 2 clock signals from Rene advancing them. When you change the Z-state on Rene, it could change the state of the clock BPM on Tempi, so that you would get both a new pattern on Rene and a new tempo on Tempi. You could use that cleverly to, for example, keep the X channel going at the same BPM but halve the BPM of the Y channel making it sound like it went from 1/8th to 1/4th notes temporarily. To me, it's the way it can change state and/or follow Rene that makes it so popular. There are other ways to mix clock signals, for example I'm a fan of clock dividers combined with Noise Engineering Bin Seq. Bin Seq allows a hands-on 8 step clock sequencer, allowing you a more physical interface to remove 'ticks' from a clock signal. Combine that with logic modules or a switcher like 2hp Rout or WMD SL3KT and you can create a lot of variety with a small amount of hp. Where as Tempi will get you more explicit state changes that encourage you to vary up the clock rate (ie. encouraging polyrhythm), clock dividing, sequencing, and logic modules will encourage you to vary up the rhythm. Again, it's more so what you want to explore or what you expect to get out of it. This illustrates though where Rene is a more modular approach: that you can even make this decision of Tempo vs. clock dividers+logic+clock sequencing shows the philosophic differences between Vector and Rene. I should mention, Vector has an expander (for $359!) that gives you 8 trigger ports, which can optionally be used to advance the sequence just like they do on Rene. To set that up though you're going to need to dive into the menus and scroll around a little bit, so it's kind of a question of how much you prefer to fiddle with digital module setup, vs. how much you prefer to just patch and experiment. I've been leaning stronger towards the latter these last 6 months.

[@gmusic240]

@@ferrycollider I'm leaning towards the Rene too. Either that or the Stillson Hammer. Thanks for the advice. Very helpful.

[@dr.eville]

The ability to have chord progressions is pretty much the only reason why I want a Rene. Does the state of the knobs also get saved? so when you jump between states does it apply the quantization to current knob position? The X, Y and Z axis can have different knob positions correct?

[@ferrycollider]

Yes, the state of the knobs is saved. Basically everything that isn't a part of the "global" config changes when the Z state changes. In the video they're similar because before I was recording I used the "scan knob" feature to capture the state of the knobs so that they all had the same state (effectively copy/pasting knob positions between states).

[@doverbeachxyz]

Did you sold the vector? I loved your videos about it : )

[@ferrycollider]

I did, but not because the Vector was bad. I've mostly moved over to using Bitwig studio now as the central hub of my music making, and the Vector was just a lot more than I needed or was using as much.

[@willhurt3446]

You can also have Rene unquantized, correct? Too bad flxs1 can’t be.

[@ferrycollider]

Off the top of my head, I'm 90% sure you can, but I don't remember where in the manual it says that

[@willhurt3446]

@@ferrycollider I’ve looked and looked and asked and asked ....

[@ferrycollider]

​@@willhurt3446 I tried it out just now. If you de-select all of the octaves on the "QUANT" page, it appears to be outputting unquantized voltages.

[@ferrycollider]

@@willhurt3446 Keep in mind, the values will still be stepped, but it doesn't appear to be snapping it to a specific voltage. With very delicate adjustments, I seem to be able to pick an arbitrary voltage. This is a place where a slew limiter (like Maths) might be of assistance too, as it can make it smoother, more like a sequenced LFO.

[@willhurt3446]

@@ferrycollider Yeah, I remember that. But sorry, I meant trying to get FLXS1 to play unquantized. It’s amazing how mall Rene V2 are all sold out at the moment.