Elektron Musical Instruments

with the sidstation, try making two parallel tables...make one
thats a short loop, e.g. 
+00
+03
+07
Loop 00
with speed of say, 6.  That will make a texture or background or context for
your sound to exist in.

Then make another one with a slower speed, like 12 (always try and
use speeds that relate to each other in some way)
Try to keep rhythm in mind....I've solo'd out some sidtune tracks to
reverse-engineer the tables they used, and often, they're quite simple,
like: +7 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0...just think about the rhythm...

(alternatively, you may consider triggering sync for 1/8 of the time, 
 as opposed to transposing)

If you get good at that, try making a third parallel table, that's really
slow, and contains a melody...something like Budokan's...The key here is
to not use a radical number of notes in every space....just spread out a 
few rhythmic, melodic changes.

Once you get a nice double/triple wavetable going, try playing it with
different notes, it can sound extremely beautiful!

Now, here's an advanced technique, I discovered playing with Hippel's tunes
in Future Composer: make two sets of your table, in both a minor and a major
version.  This is important because it will allow you to tranpose more
harmonically across the whole keyboard. e.g. one version has the minor
(0,3,7) arp, and another major (0,4,7).  Then, apply music theory...e.g.  if
your song is in G Major, use the major version of your wavetable patch when
trigger with notes G,C and D. Use the minor for A,B, and E.  Finally, make a
third version, so you can use F# for the diminished sound.  I recommend
this, because it can really provide harmonic space/color/variety/etc when
bouncing back and forth between major and minor chords.  a diminished
version of your wavetable will look like: 0,3,6.  If more people are
interested in this, I can make a complete mulit-octave chart of which values
are properly available in each version of your wavetables...


> So I have had my sid a while and have messed a little bit with the tables. I 
> have a basic isead of how they work, but I have yet to create what I am 
> looking for. I have listened to older video game stuff by ron hubbard and am 
> astounded.  My question is how in the heck does one pull this off. Is there 
> a way to see those tables and learn from his techniques?

try to solo channels using sidplay, write them to disk and analyze
with e.g. Cool Edit

-N