Looking for a synth patch that does all of the rhythmic heavy lifting? BazilleCM has got your back…

With Roland Schmidt

Roland Schmidt is a professional programmer, sound designer and producer, who has worked in collaboration with a number of successful production teams over the last 25 years. He can also be found delivering regular and key-note lectures on the use of hardware/software synthesisers and production, at various higher educational institutions throughout the UK.

The use of sequencers within synthesiser patches is nothing new, but it can be a contentious topic. As we’re scrolling through the myriad presets that accompany most commercial synth plugins, chances are that you’ll happen upon a collection of preordained sequences, wherein somebody else’s composition could be implanted on your own.

Leaving the issue of copyright to one side, we can be far more creative by programming our plugins to play a rhythm that we decide, allowing us to imprint our own chord sequence on our tracks. This was commonplace even in the earlier days of the commercial use of synthesisers. The track Let Me Go by Heaven 17, relied on the hypnotic and thoroughly effective use of a CV sequencer to provide both rhythm and alter filter-cutoff position. Any software plugin synth with an inbuilt sequencer can generate a rhythm specified by you. The net gain is an exceptionally tight pattern that locks perfectly to your track and DAW.