Yes you can play Angine De Poitrine on a keyboard synth if you really want to

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Hello, this is Giovanni here at Raptor's and today it's time for me to jump on the hype train regarding the math rock duo Angine de Poitrine.

[00:00:08]>> [music] >> Now, if you have lived on this planet over the past a few months, you will surely have stumbled across this Canadian duo that plays very weird math rock with weird time signature and weird tunings.

[00:00:27]So, when I watched their viral performance, I thought, well, maybe I can give Magnolia a try. So, I prepared this very simple bass sound with a lot of drive.

[00:00:37]>> [music] >> Kind of a fuzzy tone, very close, very nasal.

[00:00:43]And what we are going to do today is to mess around with the keyboard tracking over the oscillators. Now, by default, the value is 100, which means that an oscillator tracks one-to-one with the keyboard.

[00:00:59]So, if you play a C and then a C one octave higher, the oscillator will play an octave higher. Now, let me mute >> [music] >> oscillator number two.

[00:01:08]And the default value of the keyboard tracking is 100, which means that it is completely in sync with the keyboard.

[00:01:18]So, if I play a C, it will play a C. And if I play a C one octave higher, it will play a C one octave higher. But, if I alter this value, >> [music] >> I will change the ratio in which the oscillator interprets the signal coming from the keyboard. So, if I set it to 200, I will have two octaves in the space of one.

[00:01:48]>> [music] >> Which means that if I set it to 50, I will have one octave over the space of two.

[00:01:58]>> [music] [music] >> Which means that my semitone has now become a quarter tone.

[00:02:12]>> [music] >> And if I apply the same uh behavior to oscillator number two, level set it to 50 to fatten up the sound, >> [music] >> I will obtain a microtonal 24 EDO synth bass. However, since my keyboard halved its tracking, I will not be able to go very low. So, I will need it to transpose it down by what it looks like two octaves, but instead it's just one.

[00:02:52]Which allows me to play this.

[00:02:58]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Now, the tricky part here is that the keyboard will no longer show the notes that you would expect to find except for the middle C.

[00:03:23]And so, if the riff, for example, starts on D, I will not find it here because this is a C sharp. The D, on the other hand, will be here. So, C, C and a quarter, C sharp.

[00:03:36]And that's pretty much it. So, now you can start your own microtonal uh synth pop duo. This is it for today, and I will see you next time.