How to work with different instruments?

I'm hearing you! I too am not a proper musician but have been currently working to get multiple instruments together with Ae.
Here are some things that I do.

Clock the external gear with Ae as master.

Even if this isn't working run the external gears audio back through Ae 2env so you can control from Ae. This way it sounds like it's all one instrument.

Have an external or internal Ae mixer with Ae on one channel and external gear on another, set your Ae level then slowly bring in the external gears level until comfortable mix.

If you are playing along with a drone maybe play the pads in time with the Seq16 steps if that makes sense.

If playing in Key is something that is difficult like me when running the audio back in run it through the quantiser module.

Use a mixer like mm33 to mould the 2 gears sounds together.

I'll keep thinking on this.

moruial , I have the exact same problem. I'm also not a musician, so I find it much harder (almost impossible even) to get creative with a keyboard instrument like my Korg Wavestate. It's a beautiful machine, but I don't know what to play!! And when I find something then it sits on its own and doesn't sound good with the AE. Finding the proper tuning to adjust AE to play with other gear is really hard, I think.

So I've done the following to include other gear:

1. Use external beat makers, eg. Volca Sample, Volca Drum or the Deluge to provide all drum parts. This works well, because there are no tuning issues. Using MIDI clock binds it all reasonably well together.

2. Use external gear as only a single part, eg. I used the Behringer Neutron as a bass line. I spent some time getting the tuning right and because it's a bassline it was restricted to only a few notes anyway. I also used the Volca FM to great effect to provide bass lines on top of an AE drone.

3. Use external gear as background drone. The Neutron makes fantastic drones and because it's basically only one note, it's easier to tune right.

4. Make your external gear the star of the show and use the AE as backdrop, either with a drone or sound effects, eg. Algodrone, GRAINS, etc.

5. For longer performances I move parts of the music from instrument to instrument and cross fade the transitions. On my A Day on Mars album I started with the Wavestate, faded in a drum track from the AE and then cross faded to a longer drone/rhythmic part on the AE and then introduced more and more of the Deluge before fading out the AE completely. This way I could concentrate on each instrument and only had to take care of the transitions.

6. Start small! Don't look at all your instruments and think: all of this has to go into this track! I'm guilty of that, and it seriously stifles creativity. Start with the AE and then only add ONE OTHER thing to it. The more you do it, the easier it will get.

Now ... let's all have another look and listen to this incredible piece by Malibu Interface where he shows that it IS possible to combine so many instruments with the AE ... it just takes time, dedication and years and years of practice

forum.aemodular.com/thread/1654/modular-live-studio-session-sound

Lots of great points mentioned here already, so I'll just add my own experience after a year of using AE both solo & with other instruments.

If you are first start jamming out on another instrument (eg I often start on my Digitakt), than it is fairly do-able to add the AE. Make sure you have something to clock reliabely (but not needed if you want to drone away), and try to tune AE as much as possible before you start introducing note sequences. If all notes are on the 'ground' tone, its easy to add new melodies on top with the quantizer. Otherwise, a lot of them will just sound off (imo, some people are into that of course ). If you just want to drone/soundscape, its def possible to tune along the way.

However, the main problem is when patching on AE, and thinking along the way 'hmmm, this would be a great track to add my Volca FM to'. Problem is, a lot of digital and also software synths, like my Volca FM or Microfreak, they don't have a dedicated tune knob. They are tuned to the convention that (if i'm not mistaking), an A note is at 440Hz. Now, chances of your AE being tuned on that 'grid' of conventional notes are very slim. If you're tuning AE notes by ear like me, making them sound good relative to eachother, you are probably for example at 442Hz, and your notes will NEVER line up with the digital synth.  This is a problem that I find very destructive of my creative process. So when I make music, I now most of the times choose my instruments from the start. If I want to combine Volca FM with AE, than I have to tune the AE to the Volca before I start patching.


Thats just on the 'make it not sound terrible' part, for the 'make it sound good' part, which is way harder, I think lukylutte has made a VERY good point with the 'tessiture'. It also took me listening to recordings of jams with friends, or listening when finishing tracks in ableton to realise how important this actually is. 'Carve out the frequency' for each instrument is really the way to go. Got that nice synth line melody in the mid range? Cut out all its <200Hz frequencies to make room for the bassline/kicks underneath. Got that nice sub going? Cut out all its highs & try to EQ out some of its frequencies at the kick level (or sidechain it). For all my hihatts/cymbal sounds I cut out everything but the high frequencies. 

Funny thing is, if you listen to only that synth melody, you enjoy hearing that lower frequencies with it, it makes it sound more full and fat! But in a total mix however, its your bassline that carries that frequencies, you wont even hear that 'fatness' of the synth melody anymore in the total package. So it's better to cut it out so you can crank up that bass a bit more without clipping the mixer. And maybe, if you want an epic moment of the synth melody playing without anything else, then you can turn up its EQ for the full range.

Of course these are rules that are fun to break from time to time too, so don't take them too seriously and trust your ears   but thinking about these frequencies and carving out 'space' for each instrument has really improved my tracks in my experience. It helps that the Digitakt now has a bandpass filter feature since the last update   and its just very counter-intuitive, still often is, that a bass can actually sound LOUDER when you remove more bass from other parts. 

Always with the front one, I'm really talking about tuning the frequency, not calibrating or something (haven't done that either haha).

So what I've found easiest: think of the lowest note you're going to play and tune that one to the other synth you want to make it play together with. I think the quantizer & midi keyboards 'add' CV to the frequency you tuned, so if i'm not mistaking you cannot play your Osc lower than the tuning you set it to. (again, not at home right now, but i really think its like that?)

So I like to tune my oscillators reaaaaally low (just inside the hearable range). And I'm personally not too exact with this. It would probably be best to use a tuner (ableton has a nice standard one), or a guitar tuner. But I just do it by ear, as for most of my Techno i think its fine to sound a little bit off-key 

If you want to tune the oscillators to actual notes, you can also use any of the many smartphone tuner apps out there. Just make sure nothing is plugged into the CV controls, and this note will be the lowest note that your osc can play (and will play if provided 0V). That will also give you an idea of which notes to play on another instrument.

same boat over here... all my friends growing up had mastered music and i never did in the same way per say. i think inevitably the more exposed you are to the usage of synthesizers, midi controllers, computer programs like Reason or Fruity Loops, euroracks, modulars or whatever eventually you are sort of exposed and forced into fragments of music theory. the theory really helps put all the pieces together of how to make many things sound better together but I can tell you from experience first hand, even if you don't know your learning music theory, your ear ends up learning.

for me the inspiration definitely can start with a sound or patch.... noodling around with modular.... and it may just click in that same jam what sounds good for it, and it may not click at all. As for layering and putting it all together, I find that if you can "jam" and somehow get as close as possible within your jam setup to having a "groovebox" type of an environment "bass, lead, pads, effects or ambience, drums / percussion" then this makes it vastly easier. with AE, i have gotten pretty close to it, using things like the algodrone, drumkit with topograf and multifx, VCO's, etc.... I think if i had the new TBD and the CIRRUS i'd probably be set to be honest. doing a long recording of your jam at the very least makes it sound good at that time / moment... doesn't mean you have a song... because you may revisit and think man this sounds like crap... but either way your learning and your ear is developing. I personally have learned that having a central device doing the sequencing / mixing has help tremendously which is why i swear i'll never sell my MC707. It allows me to keep everything on beat, create sequences, layer cool effects on the 2-4 inputs, and has multitrack computer interface recording just in case i want to master on the computer, even though it has mixer like levels for each channel.

I would love to show you something I contributed on the upcoming waves volume 3, and what i added onto it to make it a more "complete" song.... I hired a drummer and then overlayed a small eurorack setup that I have... i think if you hear the transition of how something that sounds like a ambient and disorganized groups of sounds can all come together with a good drum pattern and a few more layers of things that help create the rhythym. Even within chaos, you still need that beacon of light to help differentiate from just pure random noise. I'll wait though until waves vol3 is released lol.

I would also suggest as "shortcuts" using things as sequencers, arpeggiators, and even more advance midi devices such as the NDLR which is basically a chord progression tool that layers arpeggiations that are on the same scale... just using all these kinds of devices helped develop accidently just enough music theory to help mix together the experimental with all those bleep bloop sounds.

but most important, remember this is a journey... and every step in the journey is needed as you build that musical foundation. I can't count how many times i've had those Aha! moments where things start clicking.... 

Sync etc. has been covered elsewhere but one big thing I would add is the mix - the volume of each individual part can make a major difference to the whole; brighter sounds (& Strings) need to be quieter amongst quite a few other things! One thing I do is use the same reverb patch on all the sounds in a piece, and adjust the amount each received via the mixer FX send. This can bind things nicely as they are in the same "room".  I can also use the reverb on my digital recorder which can be different levels on each input, I do this when direct recording rather than through the mixer....

Tuning has also been mentioned, but I adjust my AE oscillators to the external instrument as it's (usually) much easier.  The digital synths are unlikely to need tuning. I also tend to just adjust until it sounds good, and don't worry about what actual pitch it is; it may be a D on the keyboard when I play, but be a A or F# for all I know...

Appreciate you are doing soundscapes but I often start with a rhythm &/or bass line when I'm stuck - sometimes a sequence/arpeggio. These could all be in soundscapes, just maybe lower tempo..... I then just doodle over the top, sometimes you get lucky and some of my published pieces are just this Jam edited

Ok I'm hungry now 🤣

Fries and ketchup is a crime against my Belgian palate  Mayo is where it's at.