Xio Thing 1

Today’s tempo: 100 BPM

Now the basic introductions are out of the way, it is time to move on to the main purpose of this blog: demonstrating the abilities of the Novation Xiosynth 25. I will not call these posts “tutorials” on purpose, so I decided on the charming name, “Thing.” Today’s Thing is a metallic Devo-like rhythm.

I: Start with a three saw Moog-style bass patch, with the portamento at 25. Very 70s.

Thing 1a by TJ Porter

II: Bring in the Arpeggio, with a short gate time, 2 octaves, Up-Down 1, sync’ed to 16ths.

Thing 1b by TJ Porter

III: Sounds crap, so now add the X-Gater. I will keep coming back to the X-Gater (a wonderful feature, not found on many synths), so let me introduce my Gate Pattern notation system: each “block” (there are two rows of 16, giving us 32 blocks) of the X-Gater is made up of seven turns of the knob. So, I will notate from 0 (zero) to 7, so an X-Gate row might read like this: 5720 3434 5720 3434. Clear as mud, but anyway…

X-Gater Pattern:

7770 7373 7770 7373

7770 7373 7770 7373

Level full, no delay, Edge and Decay 100, keysync on, and again sync’ed to 16ths. Considerably more interesting.

Thing 1c by TJ Porter

IV: Now for the metallic edge: the Boss DM-3, with the repeat rate and echo set full, and the intensity at zero.

Thing 1d by TJ Porter

This effect will not work with the on-board delay in the Xio. If you do not own an analogue delay, the time to ask yourself “why?” is now. Actually, the time to buy one was last week, so get on it.

Peace

TJ