Rolling Pigments 3 Tips & Trix

This sounds like a really cool update

Yeah, it needed more features. :P

Cool! I made an acid track with the sequencer the other day, really fun.

stoked!!

ayyy https://musictech.com/features/awards/best-soft-synth-2021/

So I was trying to record the midi output of the Pigments sequencer so that I could use it to control my Reface CP, but for the life of me couldn't get it to appear as a midi input on a midi track.

Forum sleuthing says that maybe it just doesn't work with the VST3 version, and I can't be bothered to get a VST2 version installed just for this. So my new solution is to multi-sample my keyboard and use velocity to control which sample is triggered, and do it all within Pigments. So while it would be incredibly convenient if the midi out worked, it's also cool that Pigments is flexible enough to do this alternate solution that wouldn't work in most other plugins.

Funny story, I sampled my Rhodes sounds, but no matter what I did there was some sort of crystallizer-sounding arpeggiation happening on top of the basic sound. I turned off every single function in Pigments except for the basic sampler, I even read the manual, and it kept happening, it was driving me crazy.

It turned out the solution is that I'm a complete idiot, and I had a Pigments arpeggiator unmuted when I recorded my original samples (so it was baked into each sample).

ahhah, late reply but Jordan I salute you. I wish my life wasn't turned upside-down TWICE in the past month. Things will be fine, but I've been wish for a better space and more time to similarly critically fuck up in Pigments as well.

Commendable that your troubleshooting took you as far as reading the manual, heh. I got partway thru it... Were there any especially spicy sections of reading that you'd recommend?

*been wishing* fuck i'm tired

The sequencer section was worthwhile, although it's relatively intuitive. Although it's slightly annoying that when using a custom scale, you always have to enter the notes in C, but nbd.

Still need to mess around a lot more with modulation and wavetable stuff. I find the fx section oddly inscrutable, I usually just turn it off and use external fx.

While going through some of the presets, I learned a fun alternative way to build unusual and morphing sequences using a sample and the function curve.

1. Choose a sample with a tone you like
2. Turn on Granular and set Size: Time to a shorter duration depending on how long you want each step to go
3. Set Dens: to Sync mode and choose the rate of your sequence
4. Under TUNE, set Q to on and use the little pencil button to select a scale you like
5. Draw or choose a Function curve and assign it to the TUNE Coarse knob, make sure the Function is set to Loop or Run mode
6. You can use the Function Rate knob to control how quickly it cycles through the sequence
7. The Function Scale knob can be used to modulate the Function, which changes up your pattern. If you assign and LFO to the Scale knob, you end up with an endlessly modulating sequence.

to add some fun texture, use a wavetable as your 2nd engine. Apply the same Function to the Position knob. Then apply a square wave LFO to the wavetable Volume set to the same Sync rate as your sample.

Ooh I'm going to try this

Anyone mess around with the cross-engine modulation in 3.5 yet?

Ok I did, and it is easy to use and very fun.

There was a page on the Arturia site that explained CrossMod very simply, which has now been deleted for some reason. But basically you go to Modulation (lower right of the main panel for each engine) and can select Engine 2, and you get different options for each engine type.

A frequent Pigments experience is happening upon something that instantly sounds great (like choosing a wavetable as a modulation source and the default wavetable sounding perfect), but feeling like I should be exploring all my options first. But then often it's hard to beat that first thing, and hopefully I've saved it properly. Trying to embrace those moments and not overthinking something that works.

There are a stupid amount of wavetables, and so many of them sound similar to me. Scrolling through them all to find the best one just isn't happening. I have similar issues with presets. Just give something that's close to what I want, and then I can tweak until I'm all the way there.

Word. Also I always thought any sample wav could be used as a custom wavetable, and apparently they can...not.

Moodles, you are a genius.

It's a very clever way of building a sequencer within Pigments without using the sequencer. I'm not sure yet if it has advantages over using the sequencer, but it has its own flavor (and wait, what if I controlled the evolving Sampler engine WITH the sequencer, maybe at a much slower rate?).

definitely not something I invented, just uncovered it while digging through presets. I'm guessing there's a ton of interesting stuff like this in there.

Ah cool, did you reverse engineer it from a preset? That can be tricky sometimes (following all the modulation).

I'm making a track in the mold of the intro to Billy Cobham's 'Stratus' with sequence and drum solo, with more interesting synths and worse drumming.

yes, exactly, figured this out by digging into the preset to figure out how it worked, and then built on that to try a few other things

Pigments 4 out now!

https://cdm.link/2022/12/new-in-arturia-pigments-4-soft-synth/

Not quite as huge an update as version 3, but I do like the drag and drop modulators and other UI improvements.

Pigments 5 out now!
https://cdm.link/2024/01/arturia-pigments-5-hands-on/

Downloaded earlier, but I haven't really had a chance to see what's new with it