Alkex Professor Controller for Arturia's Prophet-V

Info at the listing...

Kenton Pro-2 Dual Channel MIDI to CV Converter

Info at the link...

MOTU Volta

Things seem a bit quieter today at NAMM... not many really earth-shattering announcements, so I should mention this. This was announced late yesterday, so I neglected to wite about it, but Mark of the Unicorn introduced one of the few real innovative products we've seen out of this year's NAMM: Volta.

Simply put, Volta is a software plug-in that turns your audio interface into a voltage control interface for controlling old analog synths, modulars, some effects processors... basically anything with a CV input. If you don't know what that means, this product probably won't interest you, but if you've got a bunch of old analog synths and have priced what MIDI-to-CV converters cost, you can see what an amazing product this is, especially since you are only limited by how many outputs your audio interface has in regards to how many synths, etc. you can control at once! SWEET!

Saving Hardware Synth Patches in Your DAW

One of the things I really like about making music on a computer is that when you open your project, everything you need is instantly recalled. Effects settings, softsynth patches... it all loads up when you open up a song on your DAW. This might not seem like a big deal, but for those of us who cut our teeth in hardware based studios, it is definitely a big improvement over the old days.

That said, I still like using hardware synths, too. So when I open a project in Logic, it has all the patches for my softsynths, etc., but obviously, this is not the case for my hardware synths. If you make a lot of sounds for your hardware synths, it's not difficult to see that you might eventually overwrite patches you used in a project from years ago. So what if you suddenly need to open that project and have the original patches on your hardware synths? The solution to this problem is Sys-ex.

Sys-ex is short for 'System Exclusive' and is a part of the MIDI specification. Its purpose was to allow manufacturers to send data over MIDI that was specific to a certain model of synth (ie, data that was exclusive to that system). While this could mean a number of things, it was most commonly used to send patch or bank data from synth to synth (of the same model) or some other form of storage device. Since Sys-ex is just MIDI data, you can use it to store your hardware synth patches as part of your DAW project file. Here are some tips:

1. You need to make sure your synth is set-up to send and receive Sys-ex messages. Consult your manual about this, as every synth is a little different.

2. Generally, you record Sys-ex data just as you would any MIDI track. Set up a MIDI track on your DAW, assign it to the instrument whose patch data you wish to store, hit record and follow whatever procedure the synth in question requires to send the patch data as Sys-ex (again, consult your manual... this usually involves either a menu selection or a combination of key presses). Once the synth is done dumping the data, hit 'stop' on your DAW and you now have a back up of the synth sounds for that hardware synth that you can save as part of your project file for easy recall later. Repeat the procedure (on different MIDI tracks, obviously) for any other hardware synths used in the song.

3. To restore the patches to your hardware synth, make sure the synth is set up to receive Sys-ex data, solo the MIDI track with the patch data on it, and hit play. In a minute or two, the bank you saved will be restored on your hardware synth.

One important thing to keep in mind is that some synths (especially older ones) have a hard time keeping up with the Sys-ex stream if the tempo of your project is set too high. To be safe, I recommend temporarily lowering the tempo of your project to around 60 BPM to avoid any problems.

Not every synth will let you do this. For anything pre-MIDI, you're pretty much out of luck, and even some of the early MIDI synths don't recognize Sys-ex, but for the vast majority, this will work fine and can save you a lot of heartache if you need to restore a project years down the road...