harmonic bpm
If there is one thing that every electronic music producer should try at least once, I would say that it is synchronizing your bpm with the root key of your track. When you do this, you will find that the "tones" generated by modulating or slicing audio with high "straight" quantize settings will be octaves of this root key. You will also find that the amount of peaks in these tones and in the wave forms of your synths when they are playing octaves of your root key, will always have 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 etc peaks in each bar.
With this kind of control you can do interesting things, like using any audio sample to make a bass line that is perfectly in-tune with your synth's root key. In the following image I used a single peak from a longer saw tooth wave and repeated it so that I could adjust the volume of each peak. This way I can adjust the envelope of the bass in a way that is not normally possible. You don't need to use a tuned sample for this, any sound will become in tune when sliced in this way, but only some sounds will produce nice bass frequencies.
Here I have made a typical low growling darkpsy bass line, only the 3 bass notes after each kick are really a single tone with just the right waveform. The top image shows and full bounced audio while under it you can see the kick and two long midi notes for the bass.
Listing all the ways to use this will take all day, so if you just want to try it, here is a "cheat sheet" with the octave matched bpms for each of the 12 notes in the standard equal temperament scale. Simply choose a bpm of the right, and use the key on the left as the root key for your track. This may not be as accurate as with proper micro-tuning, but it is close enough that most normal humans won't hear any problems.
If you want to make a track at a certain bpm but find that the matching key is not right for you, you can also set things up so that the tones generated are other musically useful notes. If for example your track is at 122.636 bpm, but you play in A instead of C, then the "quantize tones" with straight settings will play octaves of C, which is a minor third above A. This will sound very nice in a track that is in A minor. Another example would be to make a track at 122.636 bpm in F, then straight quantize settings will make C tones that are octaves of the fifth of your root frequency / bass-line.
You can also use "triplet" quantize settings instead of "straight" ones. Then the tones generated will be perfect fifths of the actual matching frequency for your bpm, and the peaks in their waves will always have 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 382 etc peaks in them. This means that you could make a track at 122.636 bpm in G instead of C, then triplet quantize settings will generate octaves of your G bass-line. These fifths are not exactly the same as equal temperament fifths, but they are close enough to try the concept. If you want to try more precise scales that do have perfect fifths Mathemagical Music Production has micro-tuning tutorials for Omnisphere 2, Serum, Kontakt 5, Zebra 2, Alchemy, Spectral, Albino 3, Cronox 2 and 3, CrX4 and some other synths.
Even if you don't use obvious glitches and rolls in your music, you will find that using synced Hz and bpms still makes your music more pleasing to the ear. This is because your brain find is easier to process aligned vibrations than it does unaligned ones. If you want to hear a good example of this, here is some amazing psychedelic dub music that Hedflux made using harmonic bpms:
You can also use "triplet" quantize settings instead of "straight" ones. Then the tones generated will be perfect fifths of the actual matching frequency for your bpm, and the peaks in their waves will always have 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 382 etc peaks in them. This means that you could make a track at 122.636 bpm in G instead of C, then triplet quantize settings will generate octaves of your G bass-line. These fifths are not exactly the same as equal temperament fifths, but they are close enough to try the concept. If you want to try more precise scales that do have perfect fifths Mathemagical Music Production has micro-tuning tutorials for Omnisphere 2, Serum, Kontakt 5, Zebra 2, Alchemy, Spectral, Albino 3, Cronox 2 and 3, CrX4 and some other synths.
Even if you don't use obvious glitches and rolls in your music, you will find that using synced Hz and bpms still makes your music more pleasing to the ear. This is because your brain find is easier to process aligned vibrations than it does unaligned ones. If you want to hear a good example of this, here is some amazing psychedelic dub music that Hedflux made using harmonic bpms:
You can learn more about doing this yourself here: