Berlin School Ambient-ish Jam - Zoom R8, Gen R-8, ELZ_1 play, PSS-380

video upload by ChrisLody

"Full Disclosure: I occasionally take on freelance work at Sonicware and Stylophone on an hourly rate producing synth & sample sound design, beta testing, checking English text, video manuals, promo content etc. This video wasn't paid for directly but as a result of my work with Sonicware and Stylophone it is marked as Paid Promotion

So I feel very lucky this year to have worked with a few wonderful companies, mainly Sonicware and Stylophone. Obviously I've been sent the gear I've worked on for Sonicware as you'll see it all over my channel, but also Stylophone were very nice to me and sent me a Gen R-8 from their vaults!

I'm also lucky that my wife (and in-laws) appreciates my second job/hobby and buys me music gear for Christmas, that's where the Zoom R8 multitrack recorder I'm using here came from. I bought a Zoom Livetrak L-6 this year for my dawless jams which I love, but it records all it's channel simultaneously so layering is not possible. Layering is an interesting way of working which I've often used on the channel with a four track tape recorder, mixer and a send effect (most often a Zoom 1201), but this replaces the need for all that with a lot more features to boot.

What surprised me the most about the R8 is that you can record, mix and even master a whole track without relying on a DAW. All effects etc you hear are the R8 alone here. It has a send reverb slot, a send chorus/delay slot and then a single insert effects chain. The insert effect can only be doing one thing at once so you'll typically record through it onto an audio track or you can record dry and re-record (bounce) through it later if you prefer. There are a number of algorithms which are just a number of effects slots in a chain which can be configured to your liking. You switch algorithms, channel, contents and settings or preset of the insert effect depending what you need it for and when. This information is not well presented in the manual though so I geeked out and made a spreadsheet to show more simply which algorithms can contain which type of effect and which can be synced to tempo. That's available here: https://mega.nz/file/quxm3CoD#H1-u2Db... (I printed and laminated these, yes I know how to nerd)

Perhaps the only let down about the R8 is there's no sync options, though it's not really expecting you to work that way. You can have the metronome on headphones only which may be the way to do things, but I suspect I end up recording and panning a click from a Volca/Liven as a way around this.

By the way the small glockenspiel was part of my present from my in-laws. I've never had much luck recording them because of the huge spike in volume when the bar is hit (transient) so I almost gave up, but after studying the effects I saw the R8 has a 'slow attack' effect which was perfect for this as it completely kills the clackiness of the hit. Nice one. I'm recording through one of the two built in mics for that btw.

A quick word about the Stylophone Gen R-8, it's a dirty little beast. It's been kind of wild to get to grips with and I'm finding it's not suited to quite a lot of patches I'd normally make, smooth basses are out of the question for example because it sounds like the oscillator resets at the start of each new note (maybe the envelope, idk) so there's always a percussive click. Plus the filter sound is agro with settings that would normally tame it, it refuses to be calm. But for more aggressive tones it's very nice so I'll probably use it mostly for that!"

https://chrislody.bandcamp.com