Synths and Synthesis MkII: All gear is shit, Hail Satan

Flipperwaldt · # ? Oct 24, 2015 11:55

Well, it was actually a very good suggestion, I don't want to be on record disputing that.

With my workflow, I'd consider editing the samples way less of a pita, even leaving out that there are a bunch of dedicated glitch/stutter plugins out there, but that (what's less of a pita) is just opinion and point of view, I guess.

Ducking/gating in hardware maybe becomes less feasible if you want the amount of control that a gate on every single output of the 707 would give, but I suppose that's sort of a strawman talking point in real life scenarios.

Anyway, I thought the zero velocity note thing was pretty creative thinking of myself, so I just wanted to cram it in the conversation somewhere

Really because I'm curious whether it would work at all.

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stillvisions · # ? Oct 24, 2015 20:15

Flipperwaldt posted:

Ducking/gating in hardware maybe becomes less feasible if you want the amount of control that a gate on every single output of the 707 would give, but I suppose that's sort of a strawman talking point in real life scenarios.

Remember, limitations only enhance creativity when you're buying Real Analog gear - otherwise it's a horrible shortcoming

Laserjet 4P · # ? Oct 25, 2015 09:09

MockingQuantum posted:

so I admit my experience is really colored by the ability to do a whole shitload on a computer and nothing else,

There is no neutral experience here, everyone's experience is biased

quote:

but (and here's the simple question) what's the advantage of a hardware sequencer?

I'd say the most important thing is to keep in mind that not every hardware sequencer is equal.

Tactile experience doesn't play a role with a Roland MC-80 or something. A QY-700 is kind of like an Atari ST in a different box (in terms of graphical information displayed, that is. An x0x is not an MPC. So, the advantages differ with every unit.

Are you looking for something in particular?

Dotcom Jillionaire · # ? Oct 25, 2015 19:18

I'm beginning to think these are the perfect Eurorack cases. Here's my second creation, unironically a Stormtrooper skiff:

Can be closed while patched, storage for power supply and cables, slim and sturdy, and this one seems to be a rare color on the Halliburton cases. No power set up yet on this one but I think I'm going to put this one up one eBay for sale. If anyone is interested in purchasing, contact me first.

Skeletron · # ? Oct 26, 2015 04:39

Fors Yard posted:

You'd need an actual sampler and be able to change how the unit treats the sound. on the S1000 I can specify play to sample end, or play until release so it would work with responding to shorter MIDI notes. you don't have that control on the 707 (I wish). The 808/909 has decay controls since it is actually synthesizing the sound with oscillators. No idea if the 505 gives you any additional features like that but it's basically the same sounds as the 707

I completely get the hardware preference, but if you are sequencing in ableton and the 707 is really no different than loading samples why not just sequence all that in ableton?

Aw, thanks! Sure, I'd like to do that eventually. I have all my effects setup outboard in a rack and all my gear runs through a hardware mixer, with everything controlled via MIDI through Ableton. If I use samples in the box I'd need to route the Ableton output out to the mixer and back into the PC to get outboard effects on it. For that I need more ins and outs on my interface. Just not setup for it.

Edit: Just noticed the other replies. Interesting. Thanks. I guess I have hardware options. Hmm...

Skeletron fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Oct 26, 2015

minidracula · # ? Oct 28, 2015 19:26

Dotcom, I really want one of your Zero Haliburton Eurorack cases. Those are awesome.

Speaking of Eurorack, a friend of mine and I are getting geared up to start making some of our own modules over the next few months. I know it's an open-ended question, but since this is a knowledgeable and friendly community of Eurorack users, does anyone have any suggestions on what kinds of modules they'd like to see exist in the world? There's so much stuff out there from so many different small manufacturers (and we'd be adding to the "noise", in some sense), it can be hard to keep track of what's already available, but we're not necessarily trying to only make modules no one else is making, just things we think are interesting and that others do too. If we come up with something unique or unusual (but useful) as part of that process, so much the better. I figure people here with more Eurorack experience have ideas though.

AxeBreaker · # ? Oct 29, 2015 05:06

Bob Moog, 2003 posted:

�I got a copy of Midnight Cowboy the other day, and Walter Sear did a lot of that score with the Moog Modular. There�s a psychedelic scene where everybody�s stoned, and that�s where they used the Moog. You know, you really couldn�t get stoned back then without having some synthesizer music playing. You had to do things right.�

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQSdi-UfGrU

The history section of Moog Music is a goldmine! Also, I am a sucker and backed Arpeggio on Kickstarter. They are like $1000 away from making it and actually getting one as a reward is $179 + $5 shipping in the US. So they have 5-6 to go before Sunday. I don't think they will hit their stretch goals, though.

EDIT: The movie scene for whoever's interested.

AxeBreaker fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Oct 29, 2015

posting smiling · # ? Oct 29, 2015 20:23

hey, hello synthesizer thread, i've been writing a sequencer program for a little while and i released it yesterday and i'm looking for testers/feedback. it runs on a launchpad pro, using the open source firmware they released for it, so i don't know if any of you have a launchpad pro, but maybe someone does. i'm posting in here because i mainly wrote it to control the korg volcas more easily than the built in sequencers, so i'd be interested to get feedback from synthesizers people who have good opinions about sequencing synthesizers.

you can download it here if you'd like https://github.com/jrcurtis/subsequencely and here's a video of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G3-Z9f-Xr0

cubicle gangster · # ? Oct 29, 2015 21:23

sold my echophon & phonogene, got myself an erica dtech vcf, hexinverter battery acid & 909 rim, and an MI clouds with $50 left over. boom!

(mostly diy kits)

AxeBreaker · # ? Oct 30, 2015 05:26

The Arpeggio reached it's funding goal, but it doesn't look like it will reach it's $105k Stretch goal which would add an SD card reader. Still, it's pretty cool for a mono sequencer/VA synth. 128 notes as opposed to steps.

AxeBreaker · # ? Nov 2, 2015 02:20

Mabi on korgforums has done a really cool thing in transposing all of Adventurekid's single cycle waveforms to C4 from D2, and to the electribe sampler's native 48k sample rate. He got permission from Adventurekid to repost them, so go here to find the samples.

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=665651#665651

I'm messing with a few and they seem consistently 5 cents sharp, which about the best you can do without going to 4 cycles. It's pretty easy to correct on the electribe sampler, when I tried the same thing with audacity the results were kinda hit an miss. I don't think I got the tuning this close.

Skeletron · # ? Nov 2, 2015 07:05

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtxHuNLSh0

Here's how the set I put together for the Halloween party turned out! This was my first live electronic gig. I think It took having a deadline to get me to finish something. I had a lot of fun. I really had to pare down my setup to get something manageable. I ended up limiting myself to just the Prophet 08 and 707, a couple reverb racks, and a delay pedal.

AnnoyBot · # ? Nov 2, 2015 07:21

Skeletron posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtxHuNLSh0

Here's how the set I put together for the Halloween party turned out! This was my first live electronic gig. I think It took having a deadline to get me to finish something. I had a lot of fun. I really had to pare down my setup to get something manageable. I ended up limiting myself to just the Prophet 08 and 707, a couple reverb racks, and a delay pedal.

I'm going to put this bluntly: your music is really loving good. I've liked your previous videos, but goddamn son. Nice job.

sea of losers · # ? Nov 2, 2015 07:42

does anyone have a novation circuit or electribe 2? how do you like it? i was contemplating getting one to accompany my ipad. the circuit has a way more attractive sequencer but the electribe seems more capable...

Flipperwaldt · # ? Nov 2, 2015 11:45

AnnoyBot posted:

I'm going to put this bluntly: your music is really loving good.

Agreed.

net work error · # ? Nov 2, 2015 13:37

Skeletron posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtxHuNLSh0

Here's how the set I put together for the Halloween party turned out! This was my first live electronic gig. I think It took having a deadline to get me to finish something. I had a lot of fun. I really had to pare down my setup to get something manageable. I ended up limiting myself to just the Prophet 08 and 707, a couple reverb racks, and a delay pedal.

This is impressive as hell and you are very good at synthesizers.

dj bobby bieber · # ? Nov 2, 2015 17:01

Skeletron posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtxHuNLSh0

Here's how the set I put together for the Halloween party turned out! This was my first live electronic gig. I think It took having a deadline to get me to finish something. I had a lot of fun. I really had to pare down my setup to get something manageable. I ended up limiting myself to just the Prophet 08 and 707, a couple reverb racks, and a delay pedal.

I died and went to arpeggio heaven

Skeletron · # ? Nov 2, 2015 18:51

Thanks ya'll! Appreciate it. I just kept thinking "people should actually want to dance/nod their heads to this" and it kept me on track for the most part. I had a short time to prepare so I was adding poo poo all the way up until party. There are a few big sections sandwiched together. The arps at the beginning, the acidy 80s synth 'n bass stuff in the middle, the cooldown, and the chillwave/chiptune at the end. I'll have to do some more writing with live shows in mind. Very inspiring.

dj bobby bieber · # ? Nov 2, 2015 19:01

Skeletron posted:

Thanks ya'll! Appreciate it. I just kept thinking "people should actually want to dance/nod their heads to this" and it kept me on track for the most part. I had a short time to prepare so I was adding poo poo all the way up until party. There are a few big sections sandwiched together. The arps at the beginning, the acidy 80s synth 'n bass stuff in the middle, the cooldown, and the chillwave/chiptune at the end. I'll have to do some more writing with live shows in mind. Very inspiring.

In 09 I switched my performance up and had similar limitations. It really changed the way that I produced and performed music. For me, there was a point in which instead of adding stuff I just learned how to improvise with a safety net. It's incredibly fun. Everyone should do it

Mr. Glass · # ? Nov 2, 2015 19:01

Skeletron posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtxHuNLSh0

Here's how the set I put together for the Halloween party turned out! This was my first live electronic gig. I think It took having a deadline to get me to finish something. I had a lot of fun. I really had to pare down my setup to get something manageable. I ended up limiting myself to just the Prophet 08 and 707, a couple reverb racks, and a delay pedal.

holy crap this is really good. i particularly enjoyed the really minimal breakdowns that you peppered throughout, and the overall flow is just really nice. thanks for sharing!

Bolange · # ? Nov 2, 2015 19:12

Skeletron posted:

Thanks ya'll! Appreciate it. I just kept thinking "people should actually want to dance/nod their heads to this" and it kept me on track for the most part. I had a short time to prepare so I was adding poo poo all the way up until party. There are a few big sections sandwiched together. The arps at the beginning, the acidy 80s synth 'n bass stuff in the middle, the cooldown, and the chillwave/chiptune at the end. I'll have to do some more writing with live shows in mind. Very inspiring.

Any way you could film a short how-the-gently caress-does-he-do-that video about your setup/workflow? Using minimal gear you're knocking out some awesome live music and I'd love to pick up whatever tips/techniques I could!

Skeletron · # ? Nov 2, 2015 20:02

Bolange posted:

Any way you could film a short how-the-gently caress-does-he-do-that video about your setup/workflow? Using minimal gear you're knocking out some awesome live music and I'd love to pick up whatever tips/techniques I could!

Sure! I'll try to do that this weekend. For this show I sequenced everything in Ableton Live clip view. Ableton is controlling the 707 and Prophet via MIDI. I set the Prophet to Multimode so I was able to control two patches at a time on different MIDI channels. So at any one time, there are at most 3 MIDI clips active: 2 for the Prophet and 1 for the 707. Using "follow actions" in each MIDI clip, the whole set could play on its own from beginning to end like a player-piano if I just let it roll.

The day of the show I realized this could lead to disaster so I set hotkeys tied to important scenes to immediately repeat a section or jump to another section. My wireless computer keyboard = a cheap midi controller. It would probably look cooler if I got one of those blinky light pad things...but meh. This leaves me free to twiddle knobs on the Prophet and mess with effects on the mixer most of the time, repeating sections or jumping around in the set however I like with a press of a button. That being said, at home I'm usually messing with live looping and loop pedals so this is my first time doing it this way (just programming everything in Ableton). It seemed to work out well though.

If I had more time I would have written a section open for improvisation so I could play around on the keyboard a bit.

Mr. Glass posted:

holy crap this is really good. i particularly enjoyed the really minimal breakdowns that you peppered throughout, and the overall flow is just really nice. thanks for sharing!

Thank you for listening! Yeah, I love those bits of calm. Gotta have some rest here and there.

Skeletron fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Nov 2, 2015

WorldWarWonderful · # ? Nov 2, 2015 23:43

Soooooooooo what do you guys do when you find a synth on kijiji / craigslist for a suspiciously low price, like 800 CDN for an Analog Four price, hypothetically -_-

cubicle gangster · # ? Nov 3, 2015 00:08

if it was ebay they'd get an extra 250 minimum with no effort so i'd be suspicious.

Sizone · # ? Nov 3, 2015 00:51

WorldWarWonderful posted:

Soooooooooo what do you guys do when you find a synth on kijiji / craigslist for a suspiciously low price, like 800 CDN for an Analog Four price, hypothetically -_-

People occasionally need cash in a hurry/don't want to deal with shipping things/don't know what they have. If it's something you're interested in, it might be worth looking into. I've gotten stuff via craigslist for 1/2 (or less) the going ebay rate on a number of occasions. It's not like market price for second hand items is objective in any way. Just don't get murdered in the process of testing it out/picking it up.

250 off from a 1000$ synth is not really that shocking of a "discount" especially considering the hassle of dealing with ebay, the hassle of dealing with exo-Canadian shipping and that rent is probably due.

Sizone fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Nov 3, 2015

breaks · breaks May 12, 2001

If it's one of the older ones with the paint chipping issues that takes some value out of it too. Doesn't hurt the functionality though if you don't mind it being a bit ugly.

AxeBreaker · # ? Nov 3, 2015 04:50

masked sex hero posted:

does anyone have a novation circuit or electribe 2? how do you like it? i was contemplating getting one to accompany my ipad. the circuit has a way more attractive sequencer but the electribe seems more capable...

I have both an electribe 2 and an electribe sampler and both are the subject of endless bitching on the part of current owners. They are good grooveboxes, but people complain about only having 4 bars. They are also drat near identical hardware, but for paint and ROM sounds on the electribe. Up until the most recent patch the firmware could be hacked to turn the electribe into the sampler and vice versa. People were butthurt about that, and butthurt when Korg pushed out an update that may have fixed the vulnerability.

I'd like it if the electribe could sample a little and the sampler had the extra filters of the electribe, but it's not super critical.

Having both is really cool, since it gives me more overhead. Each box has up to 24 voices but filters, effects, and the more complex oscillators on the electribe eat that up. With both I can put all the beats on the sampler and all the synths on the electribe.

That said, with single cycle waveforms and re-sampling you can do a lot of crazy synth stuff on the sampler too.

Overall, pretty solid hardware with a few annoyances that bug people. But, still lots of fun. People post jams on the Facebook group for these synths almost daily.

4K ultrabong rip · # ? Nov 5, 2015 18:52

How can I tighten up my Ableton timing? I don't know how I can make my beats sound more like they were made on real drum machines.

wayfinder · # ? Nov 5, 2015 19:08

I'm not sure I understand what you mean?

Timing is completely up to you, and if you're putting your notes on the grid it'll be as tight as is possible. In fact, most people find it harder to make a sequencer sound like drums being played live.

Dotcom Jillionaire · # ? Nov 5, 2015 19:46

4K ultrabong rip posted:

How can I tighten up my Ableton timing? I don't know how I can make my beats sound more like they were made on real drum machines.

Read up on Ableton warp modes

CerealKilla420 · # ? Nov 5, 2015 19:57

Dotcom Jillionaire posted:

Read up on Ableton warp modes

Since no one has mentioned it I'd just like to say the new sampler in Ableton 9.5 is really good.

4K ultrabong rip · # ? Nov 5, 2015 20:04

wayfinder posted:

I'm not sure I understand what you mean?

Timing is completely up to you, and if you're putting your notes on the grid it'll be as tight as is possible. In fact, most people find it harder to make a sequencer sound like drums being played live.

I'll read up on warp nodes but I set my bpm to 250bpm, put in a lot of 32nd notes and record from the line out into another computer with audacity, and then zoom in and find out the jitter time. my hardware sequencers offer around 10ms better timing on average than any ableton setup i've done so far. i even turned off networking on the computer i use ableton on, not much different.

wayfinder · # ? Nov 5, 2015 20:14

Ah! Can't help you there, then

Perhaps only by suggesting to try it at a higher sample rate and see if that changes things, and also to write to disk and compare jitter times there with the ones from the line out.

krysmopompas · # ? Nov 5, 2015 23:03

wayfinder posted:

Ah! Can't help you there, then Perhaps only by suggesting to try it at a higher sample rate and see if that changes things, and also to write to disk and compare jitter times there with the ones from the line out.

We'll never know, but I think he was trying to reliably do 250bpm 32nd notes without significant jitter over midi since he was comparing it to a hardware sequencer.

In which case the answer is to go buy an Expert Sleepers usamo (or equivalent.)

AxeBreaker · # ? Nov 7, 2015 04:47

http://www.analoguehaven.com/erm/midiclockplus/

This thing claims to be much more accurate than Ableton's midi clock, but I don't know personally. Live techno act Karenn used this for a while but I think they moved up to the multiclock from the same company.
Says it does 300 BPM too, but I still wonder if a clock is worth $240.

I kinda want one but have been holding off- no need to be super tight when just noodling around.

Progressive JPEG · # ? Nov 7, 2015 07:01

The $25 midi dongle isn't exactly a good sign in terms of determining whether they're ripping people off.

Laserjet 4P · # ? Nov 7, 2015 08:51

AxeBreaker posted:

Says it does 300 BPM too, but I still wonder if a clock is worth $240.

my nigga have u tried ~~lsd~~ innerclock

W424 · W424 Oct 21, 2010

krysmopompas posted:

We'll never know, but I think he was trying to reliably do 250bpm 32nd notes without significant jitter over midi since he was comparing it to a hardware sequencer.

In which case the answer is to go buy an Expert Sleepers usamo (or equivalent.)

Is the dude doing industrial grindcore or wtf.

wayfinder · # ? Nov 7, 2015 13:37

Don't do drugs, stay in school, avoid external gear.

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Startyde · # ? Nov 7, 2015 14:52

Everything ARP Symposium at berklee today starting at 10. Alan R. Pearlman himself will be there. Seriously once-in-a-lifetime kind of a thing. There's going to be a livestream if you can't attend.