Tonal Kick (Tutorial)

In LSDj it's possible to create a kick with a tonal tail, i.e. a tail that plays a note. this might be useful for, e.g., dub sine subs, or if just want your kick to be in tune with your melody and bass.

The trick is to use a combination of the P and L commands, P being "initiate pitch slide" and L being "slide to note". First you have a note that immediately slides down. On the next step you have a lower note with an L command, that "catches" the pitch slide and lands it on the target note. This way both the start and target pitch can be controlled. See the lsdsng.

Things of note: (Read!)

• Unfortunately, there's no good way of doing this with a table, so you need to enter everything into the phrase view.
• Depending on what notes you're playing, and your taste, you may need to adjust the values for the P and L commands. Don't make the values too extreme so the pitch "wraps around". If you make the P value too high, there's also a risk that it goes too low before the next step plays, which makes the pitch slide up to the target pitch. Change the P values to P80 to hear how this sounds.
• The example file is using the wave channel, which I recommend since it goes one octave farther down, but the technique works for the pulse channel as well.
• Note that I have deleted the instrument number for the second note. This is intentional and stops the instrument for retrigging.
• If you select both the notes simultaneously, you can transpose them in synch. As a bonus, the instrument number won't be re-added for the second note.
• When using the wave channel, to get a clean sound, you probably want to set PLAY mode to MANUAL. Using the E command to decrease the volume will probably just sound ugly. Use the K command instead.
• When using the pulse channel, use a 50% square wave, as always for kicks.

The save contains three different example waveforms.
1) Lowpass, cutoff 14, vol 18. Not distorted. Adds a little bit of the second harmonic in there.
2) Hand drawn triangle. Smooth and clean.
3) Overdriven (clipped) waveform.