Polyrhythms by Virtual Riot BLEW MY MIND

now the last couple of weeks this amazing poly rhythms video has come from virtual Riot the tune he's produced is absolutely sick so I wanted to break it apart explain it and see if we can create something similar and this is what we're going to create [Music] today as usual you can download this project file completely free below this video so without further Ado let's hop into the door and get it done so before we get stuck into the tutorial I'm just going to explain what a poly rhythm is it's when you have at least two different rhythms with the same note lengths but a different amount of notes within the same time frame now I know that sounds a bit complex so let's just look at this 44 Rhythm and 44 beat four beats in a bar which is standard for house and techno so let's just change this to Triplet mode and then what we're going to do is the same notes evenly SP based but instead of four we've got six evenly space notes in this time frame so together they sound like this so that's a pretty simple poly Rhythm now the genius of virtual riots video is that he uses loads of different poly rhythms all together and just keeps them looping throughout the entire track so that's what we're going to do I've got a 44 beat programmed in with some drums that's going to tie everything together so the first thing I'm going to do is write a nice descending scale you could choose to write it in a I key but I'm just going to do it by ear and I'll start on a and I'll play basically a seventh chord split apart so it sounds like [Music] this and we can just keep going down and that's what's going to create that really nice cascading effect so let's start programming them in we a and now all I need to do is just copy and drag those down so it's going to make a horrible noise when they're all play together but in sequence this how beautiful so let's copy those down and up a few octaves copying up as well and that's about as far high as we want to go okay so now for the boring but the essential bit what we are going to do is copy all of these over so this is a big chord at the moment and we're going to copy this over to happen on this beat so it sounds like this at the moment they're just all playing at the same time and what we want to do is now push and offset each of these notes separately so that when we duplicate each note over the duration of the track the regular space between each note is different and it's going to be getting bigger towards the bottom I'll explain as I go so I'm going to zoom in I'm going to choose a pretty high resolution grid setting I'd say 1 over 512 like that and what I'm going to do is just push each of these notes over by one of these increments like so as we go down I think we'll probably fast forward this bit because it's going to be a bit boring hey no one said it wouldn't be timec consuming right and if virtual Riot has a faster way that he did this hats off to you sir because I'm not that good so we can see they're cascading down so each note will be played in sequence oh he made them all nice and rainbow colors as well but I'm trying to do this quickly so I'm not going to do that okay so now we have this effect and we can hear those are very quickly being played in sequence now this is where the magic happens if we zoom out and we extend this midi clip we want to make sure it doesn't Loop so we'll turn off Loop and let's extend this out the duration of the track what we need to do is duplicate each of these notes or rather more accurately duplicate the distance between each of these notes across the length of the track now the easiest one to do is going to be the first one because it hits exactly on the beat so we'll just go back to a broad grid setting like this and we can't copy and paste them all because then it's not going to create the effect that we want if we try that we'll see that it just repeats this sequence in fact I'm going to hit fold cuz that'll make it easier so it just shows the notes we're working with if I just duplicate that we can just [Music] see it's not going to do much over the duration of the track so let's duplicate these first notes across the duration nice and easy because they're all on the beat so even over here it still happening on the beat now this is the painstaking part the second painstaking part we're going to zoom in well let's get rid of these cuz we didn't want to do that we'll zoom in and now this second notes down this G what we're going to do is get rid of that clip thing it's just going to get in the way and we need to copy this space between these two notes so when we hit control and D or command and D it's going to duplicate perfectly so I'm going to again make that grid to 1 over 512 which is is what we offset each by so now I can grab up to there so I'm not grabbing the note like this because that's going to select much further and if we duplicate it this is going to happen and it's just going to duplicate the note right next to the old one so let's go back and we're going to grab this note like so and then grab up to this first spot here just before the note starts now at this point we can zoom out we can hit command and D if you're using apple and it's going to duplicate that space so what's going to happen it's going to start drifting out of time from that first note like this and if we zoom out we can see that occurring I'm just holding D and we can see it's drifting I'm going to have to extend this midi clip because what I want this to do is drift so far that it ends up going back in time with the initial note and that's exactly what happens in the virtual Riot track so the way I'm going to do that is just extend this midi clip zoom out I'm going to extend it to about 6 minutes I think cuz I think that's roughly how long it's going to take to loop around extend okay that'll do so now let's grab the first note and continue duplicating it out that's the easiest one because it's nice and on the grid so I'm just going to do that for the duration of that midi clip like so now let's go back into the second note we were working with select the right grid size which is 1 over 512 select the first note and select the space just before that note repeats whoops not that one that one and now we can continue duplicating that second note like so and we're going to see if I hold down command and D it's going to start drifting across like so until it's back in time with that initial a because the space in between each note is the same in between each note but the space between these notes up here is different from the space between these notes down here and that's why it's drifting back in time okay so we've gone a little bit over that's fine we just go back to where they're absolutely in sync again which is this point and then we can delete those ones afterwards and that's all we need to use at the moment so let's get rid of that and now we have to repeat that process for all of the notes so I'll do that for the next one and then I'm just going to fast forward it because you know Life's too short so we zoom in make sure we've got 5 12 one over 512 select just before that e again so we've got the correct length and then we just hold D and we duplicate until they drift back in time again so we'll see them drifting out of time but after a while they're going to sink up again underneath each other we can see a it's really nice to just watch to be honest it's going to get back in time we're just going to repeat the process now for all of them we're going to fast forward this and it's going to look pretty crazy crazy okay so let's have a listen what we've got so far horrible but we can hear these notes are playing in quick sequence and as we fast forward they're going out of time and then those poly rhythms will end up going back in time so that's the taste of what we're aiming for today oh I want to say a quick shout out to flexi spot who gave me this lovely chair very comfortable as you can see they haven't sponsored this video but I just wanted to say a big thank you and I really like their products I'll put a link to it below and I also use their standing desk as well because sometimes I like to stand up to produce or sit down to produce so thanks flexi spot good that's bloody ages but it's done now so if we go in we can see I've continued that and if we zoom in and zoom out we can see that pattern repeats they kind of drift out of time and then over time scroll scroll scroll scroll you see this oo maybe I did something a bit wrong for it to go curved but anyway it's close enough right so that that's what's happening with the poly rhythms now let's play it but the important thing that virtual Riot did with his track over and above this is a bunch of automation as well because this is going to sound pretty vanilla I mean if we Zoom forward let's just repeat these beats as well so we can hear them start drifting out of time and cascading and when you get s points in the track it's a completely different vibe listen to that that's already cool but I want to make this more interesting with the automation but first let's tweak this serum to get some more interesting shape now it's going back the other way so let's change the envelope of this make it more of a PLU with some release add a filter envelope I think like so so it's more like a bell now let's add some Unison nice perhaps another oscillator an octave below [Music] above and of course we can automate that d over time as well now the next most important thing we're going to do is add a delay because if we can delay that signal it's going to double up that cascading effect so I'm just going to choose uh I think 1/8 should be fine or we could do it quarter note add some feedback allow those high frequencies to come through and I'm just going to add some ping pong so it pans left and right as well so let's add this toay from the beginning and we can hear what [Music] happens maybe I'll do eight time actually add some [Music] feedback and let's do a little bit of EQ on [Music] this oh nice and now we can automate this dry and wet we can automate this feedback we can automate the filter we can automate the dun all of these parameters it's going to create that really interesting Rhythm let's try and add some base as well done a couple [Music] of nice there's the base let's turn it up a bit you can just keep [Music] going o and if you were to assign some of these parameters to macro knobs then you could change multiple parameters at the same time time okay I'm going to try something I'll turn off some of the drums yes let's play with that oh let's add some Reverb wash yes I accept oh nice and we can hear as that Rift kind of goes back in sink again okay I think you get the ideas guys oh that's brilliant like full props to Virtual Riot for doing that it was so much fun apart from the constant uh duplication to make this trap you can download this I'll make it sound a bit better but I do recommend going and checking out the virtual Riot track I've linked to it below this video you can buy his whole project file as well now I mentioned polymers earlier which are very important when it comes to music production so you can check out that video here to really nail them and it's going to make your music way more interesting if you want to get your music to a professional level as quickly as possible you can check out the accelerator program below this video where our students are getting signed to some of the world's biggest labels and touring the world thank you so much for watching I will catch you over at that next video

Channel: EDM Tips

Views: 75,716

Keywords: how to play polyrhythms, polyrhythm, how to make polyrhythms music, how to make polyrhythms in ableton, polyrhythms virtual riot, how to animate polyrhythms tutorial, how to master polyrhythms, blender polyrhythms tutorial, virtual riot polyrhythms tutorial, programming polyrhythms, perfect polyrhythms, polyrhythms beat, virtual riot, virtual riot ableton, if virtual riot did polyrhythms, music theory videos, complex rhythm, EDM Tips

Id: dBSKB9qBlsI

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2024