Plonk kits

Eurorack
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#1

I use a traditional drum sequencer a lot. It has great eurorack compatibility to combat the terrible presets it has. But I don’t want to buy a full kit. So several questions:

Do you guys know of any cheap and easy eurorack hacks for drums, specifically intellijel products? I know the one with white noise and an envelope set to gate but you send it a trigger (hi-hats) . I’ve heard some discussion about the uFold as well being able to make sort of drum sounds. What else can I do like these?

Is there any easy painless way to navigate the plonk’s virtual kits using just the trigger and mod input? If so, how? I do not want to use a sequencer to the mod input seeing as it means no serendipity. My drum machine has multiple cv trigger and accent outputs, but I don’t know how to make that plonk compatible. Also, it can combine velocity and trigger using some sort of vca. Can current plonks be configured (even through alternate firmware) to do this and free up the velocity input for another mod source or even a trigger for the second drum voice at the same time? If not, would you guys be interested in this? It seems like an easily reconfigurable thing for Tetrapad in drum mode to be able to output variable intensity triggers. Maybe with the expander?

I have noticed that the plonk can only do two sounds at a time. Even with choke turned off, how would you do a continuous sound like a hi-hat that requires a gate for the noise exciter? Even with some quick hacks for other drum sounds, even if I buy a couple cheap drum voices, the plonk seems to never be able to cope with fast drumming from my current setup that painfully changes the voice via mod input every stinking time I hit a drum. Moreover, I cannot hit two drums at the same time without making everything exponentially more painful (the only solution I can come up with is to expand my kit with lots of possible combinations). So if intellijel made a new plonk with more than two voice polyphony, or multiple trigger inputs (even if velocity is separate! XD) would you buy it? I don’t have space for a second plonk.

Final question: did any of this make sense at all? I will not be offended either way.

#2

I came to the board today, to update a post I made about plonk back in April, when I got it. Plonk was my first module and I didn’t even know how to make the drum presets change when I first got it. I had a beatstep Pro to Sequence it, and things just didn’t add up to me. For weeks I tried to figure out how to implement the suggestions given.

Long story short, fast forward to this week, as I received a make noise pressure points and brains. I bought both on reverb for less than $200.

Let me just say this, I don’t think there could be any more perfect match than the two. The pressure points control and sequencing, with plonk drums is nothing short of incredible.

The reason pressure points is so perfect is because you can set 4 parameters per trigger. So that gives 4 individual controls per trigger. Then you can have a parameter for pressure. It really covers all bases and breathes the life into plonk that it deserves. It changed my entire plonk world, haha.

The way I have pressure points set up is as follows:
-the “all gate out” is patched to the plonk trigger. The first row of knobs in pressure points goes to mod. Turn each knob on pressure points row 1 to dial in which preset it will trigger. For me, I’ll either set it to pad 1 kick, pad to snare, pad three hat closed, pad 4 Tom or hat open (I’ll explain this later).

The second row of parameters goes to x, which I have set to control pitch. The second row of knobs gives me full individual control over the pitch of each drum.

The third set of knobs goes to y, which I have set to control decay. Same as above, individual control over each drums decay. That’s what I’ll use to dial in an open hi-hat. I select the same voltage for pad 3 and 4 (from row one) so that both pads trigger the hat preset. But, the third row knob for pad four opens up the decay of the hat. And remember that knob controls just decay of that trigger, so you can adjust the decay of each drum individually.

And the cool thing about pressure points is the pressure part. So you can mult the pressure output and patch one mult to velocity and the other to a parameter like tone, stiffness, or malletnoise. So you can control one or two parameters with pressure of the hit.

Without brains you can only play the kit by hand, but with brains you can now sequence the kit.

I highly recommend it. Over the last six months as I’ve kearned more about the eurorack world, I’ve built a rather large system. I thoroughly researched hundreds of modules, i didn’t come across any other modules that would have nearly the same level of control over plonk. To achieve the same result, you’d need easily 3-4 modules.

The only part I’ve yet to figure out is the 2 voice thing. I can only trigger one voice at a time, which is workable, but not ideal

2 Likes
#3

Great setup! Thanks for the description.

Afaik you can only ever trigger one sound at a time, but the next triggered voice will not cut off the previous one (if that has a longer decay, for example).
That’s what the 2-voice thing is about with Plonk.

2 Likes
#4

@MikeLeeBirds what happens when I try and trigger a third sound? I can’t get mine to function as I want but I barely understand my Plonk, as I’ve made clearly obvious. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

#5

Plonk can layer two sounds simultaneously.
But you can only trigger one sound at a time.

  • So you trigger sound 1.
  • Then you trigger sound 2. Sound 1 can still be heard (assuming it has a long enough decay).
  • Now you trigger the next sound, number 3 so to speak. This will then stop sound number 1, while 2 can still be heard (assuming it has a long enough decay).

Does this make it more clear?

It‘s like Rings from Mutable Instruments. It can layer up to four sounds, but only produce one at a time.
So you can trigger four sounds after each other and they will all be layered on top of each other.
But as soon as the fifth sound is triggered the first one will stop. And so on.

2 Likes
#6

On Reddit I asked the same question to the guy who makes their excellent YouTube videos and this is what he came up with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIhepLatoOg. Just a Plonk, Quadratt and Steppy for 4 voice drums. Brilliant.

#7

That guy is @ScottMFR :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#8

Hey guys - jumping on this thread to ask a Plonk question. The kits functionality on the plonk seems pretty straightforward to me: for instance, using the “hiphop kit” I send variable CV from MI Stages in step mode into the MOD input of Plonk. My issues are twofold:

  1. The plonk module is seems so inconsistent and, for lack of a better term, “scattered”. For instance, sometimes when I’m adjusting different parameters, and I exit a parameter mode wihtout adjusting the parameter variable, it will still apply to the current sound - just randomly. Then I go back and reload the “init preset” setting to clear it.

  2. Secondly, when sending CV to the MOD input from MI Stages, Plonk will inconsistently produce a preset sound of kit, even when I don’t adjust the incoming CV. (Video below - about the third cycle through the snare turns into a kick…?).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QQv9m2qj2ZAgkBiuSYPTBXfIrhHJ4v6R/view?usp=sharing

I hope that makes sense, but I’ve had this module for sometime and struggle with it. As a side note - I’ve also had to tune the module in order to get it’s quantization to work for the marimba sounds.

Thanks so much!

#9

Hmm, yes it should not be inconsistent. It’s possible there’s something wrong with your unit, or it may be something to do with your case/power.

If you’re able to send more information to support@intellijel.com they may be able to sort out your issue.

#10

Okay, thanks, Scott. I’ll send the same note to the support email. Hopefully I can get this thing fixed!

#11

A customer with a similar timing issue with MI Stages was able to solve it by adding a lag to the incoming CV signal. This reminded me that Plonk has an adjustable Gate Delay setting that can help to stabilize signals from sequencers that may send the gate before the pitch stabilizes.

The gate delay was added in v1.11 of the firmware and was covered in this video: Plonk's New Features In Firmware 1.11 - YouTube