Quick patch: the Legio drum kit
Today, we’re exploring more of the new Legio firmwares, and how they can be used. If you haven’t seen all 16 new firmwares yet, you can check out our overview blog to learn about all of the fun new additions.
A couple of weeks ago, we went over the history of the Legio drum modules, and dove into our development process. In this post, we’ll be checking out the drum modules – affectionately known as the Legio drum kit around these parts – and how they can work together.
Step one: chaining
(Almost) all of the Legio drum modules use the Legio audio inputs as a mix in. This means that you can chain together the inputs and outputs of any number of Legio drum modules in series and the final output will be your whole drum mix, no dedicated mixer required.
There are just two outliers here: Cowbell Legio uses the audio inputs for FM, so you can make even more absurd cowbell tones with external oscillators. If you want a cowbell in your drumkit, just make sure it’s the first module in the mix chain. Kick Legio adds some special sauce, too: it features a mix input, but it also ducks that input using the kick synth’s envelope to create that cool pumping effect. This means that you can change how your drum kit behaves depending on the order you patch the modules. Let’s say you have Kick, Snare, Cymbal, and Tom Legio, and you only want the Cymbal to be ducked. You would then patch them Cymbal -> Kick -> Snare -> Tom. If you wanted all of the drum voices to be ducked, you would patch them Cymbal -> Snare -> Tom -> Kick.
Step two: sequencing and effects
Since Legio can cover all of the sound and mixing needs of our patch, all we need is one or two sequencing utilities to get a jam together. A great starting point would be Multi Repetitor: it has an internal clock as well as four trigger outputs and four accent outputs, so it can handle all of our sequencing by itself.
We can add a level of performability with a simple utility: Muta Jovis. This goes between our trigger sequencer and our drum voices, and allows us to bring the voices in and out at will.
Finally, we can use a stereo effects processor like Librae Legio, Desmodus Versio, Roucha Legio, and/or Polydactyl Versio to really kick things up a notch.
Hear it all in action
Noise Engineering’s POB made this jam to show off what the Legio drum kit can do, using a few of the Legio drums and a Versio for some mix processing. If you’re using some Legio drums (or any of other new Legios) in your patches, we’d love to hear! Head over to our Discord and share it with the rest of the Noise Engineering community.
