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

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Musician's Lounge > Synths and Synthesis MkII: All gear is shit, Hail Satan

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Sjoewe posted:

Did someone call for slow acid?
https://soundcloud.com/sjoewe/tr707/s-qjK1t

Did someone say 707?

https://soundcloud.com/traxus12/polysix-707

I'm just now starting to get back into making sounds after finally having my battery-damaged PolySix resurrected from the dead last week (that's a picture of the old CPU board on the Soundcloud). It takes 30 minutes to get into tune but I'm digging the hell out of it.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2014 13:36

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 16:35

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

ashgromnies posted:

Did you multitrack or is the polysix multi timbral?

It's all from one live jam but I've got a Prophet 08 doing the higher arps. The PolySix is all the beefy 80s bass, and there's some Korg ER-1 in addition to the 707.

Oh, and an Alesis Quadraverb and Boss RE-20 delay on effects.

Skeletron fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Mar 22, 2014

# ¿ Mar 22, 2014 14:20

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Your Computer posted:

Polysix AND 707? That's probably my dream team right there. I have really nice emulations, but it'd be neat to have the actual machines sitting around collecting dust while looking awesome

I've been working on this setup for the last few years. If my house ever catches fire I think the loss would be too great...I'd just become an electro-Buddhist and never touch hardware again.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2014 14:39

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Is it common for some instruments to be off the beat when you try to sync their internal sequencers/arpegiators to an external clock, yet have no lag whatsoever if I control them directly via MIDI notes? I'm having problems syncing my 707, Korg ER-1, and the internal arpegiator in my KiwiSix/PolySix with Ableton as master.

But if I bypass their sequencers and "play" them by recording MIDI clips into Ableton from my keyboard, they're totally fine. This is how I control all my rack gear anyway...but I want to control the 707, ER-1, and PolySix by actually being at the instrument itself. This sucks.

Update: Fixed the 707 and ER-1 sync issues by connecting directly from my MIDI thru-box and not daisy-chaining. Now they're pretty much right on the money.

Still working on the KiwiSix/PolySix arpegiator though. Straight from the MIDI-thru box with the shortest MIDI-cable possible and it still tends to start randomly slightly after the beat when it's sent a start message from Ableton. Sometimes it starts practically on the upbeats, sometimes it's just slightly off, and sometimes it's right on. It stays consistent once it's started, at least, whether it's in sync or slightly off. I'm feeling like the MIDI-start message is coming in late for some reason.

Skeletron fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Mar 24, 2014

# ¿ Mar 24, 2014 02:01

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Startyde posted:

Let me tell you about waldorfs
Yeah it's not uncommon. Anything time-based running from external clock will range from tight to holy loving poo poo depending on the synth. Sync'd LFOs, arps, mod sequencers, etc. On older gear that only has so many instructions per clock to deal with things it can be wacky, and off in a different way each time so you can't just compensate for it.

e- the kiwi should be plenty though... I'm curious if not-ableton as master produces the same results if the rest of the chain is unchanged.

Right. I was reading about people's problems with the old Roland boxes and came across this Innerclock device that converts an audio pulse to MIDI and DIN-Sync, which is a billion times more accurate than a DAW's MIDI clock, but the price-tag almost made my poo poo myself. I also came across this site about generating your own Tape Sync / FSK sync signal from Ableton, which seems like a poor-man's Innerclock.

Thankfully, when not daisy-chained my 707 tends to be pretty drat close to right on the beat with MIDI. I emailed Murray at KiwiTechnics and apparently he knows about the KiwiSix problem. I'll just have to wait on an update.

quote:

Hi Stephen

It would appear that the K6 is ignoring Start/Stop/Resume commands. I will add these in the next release

# ¿ Mar 24, 2014 21:52

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

HotCanadianChick posted:

I'll give you mine for the cost of shipping. No idea if it still works or not, it's been in the garage for years now.

P.S. it's a piece of poo poo, and as someone who's previously had a JX-3P, no, no it does not make roughly the same sound as one.

P.P.S. actually, there is one way my Poly-800 was useful: I took the knob off the pitch joystick on it and put it on my DW-8000 (a fantastic synth, get one of those instead) to replace the one it was missing.

poo poo, half of my setup is designed around god-awful hardware synths and sound modules that I only keep around because I bought and repaired/cleaned them up so drat it, I have to use them. I'll take it off your hands if tehschulman passes.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2014 22:00

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

I got a Korg KMS-30 in the mail today. Finally, I can have my 606 synced up with the rest of my gear.

LOVE IT!

https://soundcloud.com/traxus12/polysix-707-606

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 12:54

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

In my live jam setup I use a couple racks, an Alesis Quadraverb and Alesis MIDIVERB II. They can be heard on a lot the old 90s Warp records if you're into that sound and for like 70 bucks each you can't go wrong. For the longest time I just had a Boss RE-20 for delay, which is cool. Still use it.

It's important to think about how you route your effects through your mixer or DAW, as well. I use a Mackie 1604VLZ3 now. I have the racks going through the effects send/return and the RE-20 returning to a channel input so I can feed delay into the racks (to get reverb on the delayed sound, etc.). If I had infinite channel inputs like in a DAW, I'd route ALL my effects back into channel inputs so I could layer effect upon effect and adjust the EQ of each, but I can't spare four channels for the stereo outputs of my Alesis racks.

Oh, and I also have a Boomerang III phrase sampler (looper) going from the Control Room outs of my mixer and returning to the last two channel inputs as an alternative to looping via MIDI clips in Ableton. Takes up two whole channels to loop in stereo and be able to send the loop through effects, but I think it's worth it. When I want to record a loop, I just hit the Solo button on whatever channels I want to record, which sends it to the CR outs without changing the main mix. That way, I can loop individual instruments even while a whole bunch of other instruments are being controlled via MIDI from Ableton. Or I can layer a sound back upon itself. Eg. loop part of an arpeggio being played by a synth and then pan it around or reverse it with the Boomerang while the synth, being controlled by Ableton, continues to play the original arpeggio.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2014 21:14

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Dotcom Jillionaire posted:

Hey who here is traxus12 on Youtube?

I liked the new jam (and the new setup!):

Thanks! Yeah, it's-a-me. Hope to be jamming more often now that I've got everything rewired and synced up.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2014 21:29

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Dotcom Jillionaire posted:

Yeah it really shows off a lot more gear now that you've re-organized. I noticed the Mackie VLZ mixer. In your old setup you had the Mackie LM 3402 (which I also have). I am in touch with someone on craigslist to buy a 1642-VLZ3 and wondering what your experience has been like with it. The LM is nice and compact (and 16 stereo channels) but having some sliders and all those assignable buses seems like a good choice for live hardware mixing.

Oh yeah, I switched to a 1604-VLZ3. If I ever take a simplified version of this rig live, I'd want to have a desktop mixer with faders, which is the main reason I made the switch. It's a bit of a trade-off, but I feel it's worth it. The 1604 has more aux sends, which is wonderful for being creative with multiple hardware effects. Having a Gain knob for each channel in addition to the fader is something I didn't think about before but now I don't think I could live without it. The analog distortion you can get from overloading a channel sounds bloody great. And there's the assignable buses...just a lot more creative options than the LM3204.

The only reason I'd stick with the LM is if I couldn't live without the additional inputs, or having all my synths in stereo was really important to me. Personally, I prefer mono so I can pan elements of the mix left or right. Right now I have too many synths and not enough inputs, but for that I have a patch bay that I'm planning on installing eventually. I know that's going to take me a while to wire up so I'm putting it off for as long as possible. -_-

Just a word of advice...the crappy ribbon cables in these old Mackie desktop mixers tend to need reseating after a while. The gain knob on one of my channels was non-functional at first but I just opened it up, unplugged and plugged the ribbon cable connectors back in on the main board, and the thing works good as new.

Skeletron fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Mar 28, 2014

# ¿ Mar 28, 2014 22:24

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

renderful posted:

Our own Skeletron made Synthtopia, congrats!

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/03/30/slow-jam-with-korg-polysix-korg-er-1-roland-tr-606-tr-707/

Oh, cool! Thank you! I didn't know about this site. That's great.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2014 04:51

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

How do you have that many synths and not hear about Synthopia?

Honestly, I don't really frequent any synth places aside from this thread and things I'll run across on google when I'm researching some problem or a piece of gear. I hadn't even visited MuffWiggler until someone posted about synth forums in here a few months ago. You should throw some links in the OP.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2014 05:56

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Sizone posted:

The hell of hardware samplers: trip update. After going through 3 different cf disks (each of which offering a different error) I have yet to get the aztekmonster working with the asr-x pro. Gonna get a usb floppy drive and update the o.s. on it. On the bright side, I installed chickensystems asr-x tools onto my old, 32 bit o.s., laptop and now it actually works. So I'm at least able to edit patches on it. May be less than ideal if I can't get a compact flash drive working on it, but as what I mostly wanted it for was doing handrolled transwaves, and those will fit on a floppy, I'm now able to do the thing I bought it to be able to do.

Fixing hardware and troubleshooting audio problems is the worst thing in the world. I just want to make music! But it's such an amazing feeling when you finally hit on a solution. This probably doesn't help, but a few weeks ago I managed to get my CF Aztecmonster working with my Emulator IIIXP and a 256MB Sandisk CF card. At first it wouldn't recognize the CF card at all. I figured it was just incompatible for the longest time. By sheer luck, I tried dicking around with the jumper on the Aztecmonster and the EIII's SCSI ID settings, and BOOM! There it was! The thing just worked. I felt like I'd pulled Eurydice from the loving pits of Hades, especially since this thing had been sitting in my closet with a dead SCSI drive for almost a year.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2014 09:44

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

renderful posted:

^--This post, as well as all the talk of wedding band keyboards, reminds me of Oneohtrix Point Never's most recent record: R Plus Seven. It uses cheesy digital emulations of real instruments, computer singing and a bit of audio cut and paste to create a musical uncanny valley. The sound he pulls off is mesmerizing, and it's become one of my favorite albums.

For your consideration: http://vimeo.com/82021800

In true gearslut fashion, that album inspired me(lol) to buy the Korg M1 vst. Lots of fun to be had there. It's actually very fun to design patches for.

I couldn't stop listening to this album last month. Still Life from 2:40 is stunning. Absolutely incredible what he's done with relatively conventional sounds. It only encourages my frustrating need/want/desire to put all my lovely 90s sound modules to some kind of constructive use.

Yay, new (sorta) Aphex Twin!

# ¿ Apr 12, 2014 09:35

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

How often do you guys go back to older pieces you've abandoned and think "That was loving cool...how the gently caress did I do that?", then listen to your new stuff and it all sounds like rubbish, and you just kind of wallow around in a big pool of self loathing and existential doubt for a while? I think I need to try something different. :|

# ¿ Apr 22, 2014 09:10

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Oh my god...sequencing my Polysix from a software 303 emulator and twiddling knobs is ridiculously fun. Closest thing I've got to a 303...if only it had portamento. Still...that filter is so juicy. I've got to try this with my Prophet as well.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 05:12

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Old rear end samplers are awesome. I recently revived my E-mu EIIIXP with a CF card -> SCSI adapter after it's old SCSI drive went kaput. Works great now.

Number Two Stunna posted:

To people who use synths with daws- what kind of midi/recording setup do you guys have to be able to use them together?

My USB interface is an RME Babyface with only a single MIDI input/output. I send the MIDI output to a MIDI thru box (Korg KMT-60) which splits the signal off to all my instruments, daisy-chaining MIDI input -> MIDI thru where necessary since I have so many synths. For the longest time I just daisy-chained all my synths together without a MIDI thru box until I ran into problems with MIDI data getting corrupted towards the end of the line. 'Course if your interface has multiple MIDI outputs you don't need to worry about that.

Audio from my instruments goes to a mixer (I'm back to the trusty Mackie LM3204 after deciding I can't live without all its stereo inputs), then back to my USB interface.

# ¿ May 10, 2014 13:12

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Does running off batteries vs. a power adapter alter the sound of a TR-606?

# ¿ May 13, 2014 08:28

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

ynohtna posted:

Not that I've ever noticed (above the millions of effects and EQ I apply to mine).

But, try adjusting its tempo knob when the device is externally clocked and pay attention to the hats.

Hoooly poo poo. Hi-hat release? That's bizarre. Thanks! I had no idea. Now I'm wondering if any of my other synths and drum machines have secret cheat codes they've been hiding this whole time.

# ¿ May 13, 2014 11:30

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

VoodooXT posted:

Roland JD-990 and Access Virus buddy

Are you guys familiar with the JD-990? How do I start a patch from scratch? I've had this thing forever and only ever used the presets.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 06:28

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Well, I am officially out of ideas. Time to sell my synths and become a singer songwriter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO_OF8qtRDc

Skeletron fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jan 21, 2015

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 12:23

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Trying to finish a track for once, for a live show on Halloween. Just have a quick question for anyone familiar with a TR-707. :O

Controlling a TR-707 via MIDI from Ableton, does anyone know off the top of your head of way to MIDI-gate the 707 sounds so that each time an instrument is triggered it only plays as long as the MIDI key is held? As it is, the entire sample plays out whether the MIDI note is very short or very long. I'd like to be able to stutter the sounds, cut them off or let them ring at will.

Thanks!

/pops back out for another 6 months

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 23:49

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

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

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 04:39

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

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.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 07:05

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

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.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 18:51

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

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

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 20:02

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

What up y'all, it's been a while but I just released my first collection of bleeps and bloops on Beer on the Rug.

TRAXUS - MARTIAN AYRE
https://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/album/martian-ayre

Album art by SA's own incredible Jay Tholen. It's a mix of 80s synth and weird squidgy video game melodies. Composed using all hardware synths 'n stuff. Polysix, TX81Z, TR-707, SP-404, Mono Evolver, Prophet 08, JD-990, EIIIXP. I'd be eager to hear any comments/critiques and field any questions.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2017 23:45

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

Photex posted:

it stinks, send me all your toys.

My wife would love that but I need each and every one of them to build my enormous synth fort that I will one day construct and live inside.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 00:26

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 16:35

Skeletron: Nov 21, 2005; One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent.

So Math posted:

I like it! The open hats are maybe a little overpowering in Dataslave, but the album is really enjoyable.

Thanks dude! Yeah, those open 707 hats are super loud. Using all hardware I record and mix everything down at once so to change any details I have to go back and rerecord the entire track. By the time I decided to add that track to the album it was months after I made it so my setup was totally different, no way to edit. Tough spot but I like doing it that way.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2017 01:27

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No Music Discussion > Musician's Lounge > Synths and Synthesis MkII: All gear is shit, Hail Satan