Fairlight CMI demonstrated by Greg Sneddon

Demo of the Fairlight CMI from an Australian television show from the 80's. Posted on YouTube via psvbluemts.

Make a Progressive Bassline in Massive in Under a Minute

Via jojogocom on YouTube.

Electrix Warp Factory Vocoder on Ebay

The Electrix stuff is quite popular on the second hand market, as the company wasn't around for terribly long. Opinions on the WarpFactory vary. It seems to be one of those 'love or hate' pieces of gear.

Check out the listing...

Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds Part 5: Self-Oscillation - It's Not as Dirty as it Sounds...

In the previous chapter of this series of tutorials, I took you through the process of making a synthesizer kick drum using a sine wave and a pitch envelope. But that isn't the only way to synthesize a kick. If you've got a hardware or software synth that has filters that self-oscillate, you've got another option.

The filters people work most with these days are much more likely to be non-self-oscillating filters, but on many older synthesizers, it was possible to set a resonance level on the filter that was so high, that it would cause the filter to oscillate at an audible frequency - even if you're not feeding any actual oscillators through it. So why is not as common to see filters with that capability these days? The down side of self-oscillating filters is that sometimes the output levels can unpredictably spike to ear-splitting, potentially speaker-damaging levels. So here's your warning. It might not be a bad idea to strap a limiter across your master bus to prevent any... unpleasantness. Or at least work with your volume at a conservative level.

One software synth that features filters that will self-oscillate is GMedia's Minimonsta, an emulation of the famous Minimoog (the original of which, of course, also has filters that self-oscillate), so that is what I will be using in this example.

1. Call up a mono instance of Minimonsta. Although not a hard, fast rule, when working with really bassy sounds, it is best to keep them in mono.

2. We won't need any of the oscillators here, so go ahead and turn them off by clicking the three blue buttons on the MIXER panel that correspond to each oscillator's volume knobs. When you press a few keys now, you should hear no sound coming out.

3. Next, head on over to the filter section and turn the CUTOFF FREQ knob all the way down, closing the filter.

4. Now set the AMOUNT OF CONTOUR (also known as ENVELOPE AMOUNT on many synths) knob to about 50%. This controls how much the filter envelope modulates (ie opens and closes) the filter.

5. Now, turn the up EMPHASIS knob (simply another name for RESONANCE) slowly, and as you get into the 60% and above area, you should start to hear the filter self-oscillate.

6. What kind of sound you are hearing depends on how your FILTER ENVELOPE settings are, so let's make sure those are where they need to be. ATTACK TIME should be set to 0% (1 ms), DECAY TIME should be set to about 50% (525 ms), and your SUSTAIN LEVEL can be turned down to 0%. If you've set everything up correctly, you should be hearing a pretty nice, vaguely 909-ish kick drum.

7. The fun part comes in experimenting. Playing with the CUTOFF FREQUENCY will take you out of kick drum territory and into more chirpy, 'laser gun' territory. Playing with the AMOUNT OF COUNTOUR knob will keep the sound in the bassy end, but will increase the filter sweep, resulting in brighter, bloopier, attack portions to the sound. And messing with your DECAY TIME knob in the FILTER ENVELOPE section with let you change your sound from something light and tight, to something sustaining and boomy, like the famous 808 kick.

Make recordings of different settings, and import them into your samplers or drum sample player of choice. Try combining them with each other, or other drum sounds in your library and you've got an almost limitless supply of synthetic kick drums to keep you busy for quite some time.

Korg Delta String Synth on Ebay

1979 string synthesizer from Korg. Although it is not an especially well-known one, people who own them tend to think there's something very special about the tone. If you remember the new wave band A Flock of Seagulls, then you've probably heard a Delta without even knowing it...

Check out the listing...

Credit Where Credit Is Due

With file-sharing taking a big hit on music sales these days, it's a harsh reality that bands need to find other sources of income. I make easily half of my income based on merch sales alone.

Touring is, of course, a great part of that because you can go from city to city and sell merchandise. But what about all that time when you're not on tour? You can still make your merchandise available to your fans year round by setting up a store on your website and accepting credit cards. But how do you do that?

The solution I've been using for almost ten years now is a company called CCnow. For $9.95 a month (if you make more than $100 a month), plus a small percentage of each sale, they will generate links for having a shop complete with cart inside your own site, they'll handle all the credit card processing, they have extensive risk management to avoid fraudulent charges (in ten years, I've only had one bad charge get through, and I got the distinct impression that it wasn't a fraudulent charge, but an unscrupulous customer looking for a freebie), and excellent customer support. Your customers place orders on your site, and if the charges are accepted by the credit card company (or Paypal), the order is forwarded to your email box. After filling the order, you log in to their website indicate that it has shipped, the customer's card is charged, and every 2 weeks you get a direct deposit to your bank account for whatever you made in the previous pay period. They're adding new features all the time, too. For instance, not too long ago, they added a feature where the prices would all appear in the customer's native currency, which is great for interenational orders.

Anyway, if you're looking for a way to set-up merchandising on your website, I highly recommend this company. I don't work for them or receive any kind of compensation, I'm simply a happy customer. Give it a look!

Modified Korg DW-8000 on Ebay

The Korg DW-8000 was an 8 voice synth that had digital waveforms and analog filters. This one is outfitted with the Angel City modification which gives you 8 times the patch memory, as well as the ability to do splits and layers.

See the listing for more info...

Gary Numan Interview from 1979

Although I can't say I am the world's hugest Gary Numan fan, it was undoubtedly his track "Cars" that was the first time I ever noticed synthesizers on a song. I was just a kid when it came out, but I desperately wanted to know what was making those cool string sounds (a preset on the Polymoog, it turns out). He's always been a bit hit or miss for me, but there is no denying the greatness of tracks like "Cars", "Are 'Friends' Electric?", and "Down in the Park" and I wonder if my life would've taken a different path had I never heard them. At any rate, here's an Australian interview with Mr. Numan from 1979.

ARP Solus on Ebay

2 oscillator monosynth with PWM and ring modulation and the famous ARP sound....

Check out the listing...

"Thorns" Mod Available for Sonic Charge Synplant

An enterprising programmer named Johan Brodd let me know that he created a mod for Sonic Charge's Synplant, which I reviewed here yesterday. It apparently allows parameters to have values well outside their normal range for much wilder sounds. Here's what his documentation has to say:

"Thorns (unatended version)

This is my original version. Parameters are well outside of boundries in this mod, the sound is wild and wonderful as the seeds grown from it. There is a problem with this version. Since the parameters are outside recomended boundries there is problems saving and loading such patches.

Thorns (Magnus corrected version)

This version is more reliable with Magnus recommended adjustments. This gives a more random sound, but it has the standard pitch range as in Synplant's default configuration. Load and save works.

Thorns (Wildgrown version)

Same as above, but with wider pitch range. This is something Magnus don't recommend since the pitch should be kept in sync with the internal default values. If you don't care and want some more fun then this is your choice. Load and save works.

Credits goes out to Magnus Lindstrom for this amazing synth called Synplant."

You can download the mods yourself here.

Korg MS-20 Patch Panel Part 2

Part two of Automaticgainsay's excellent YouTube tutorial on the MS-20's somewhat cryptic patch panel. (You'll find part 1 here...). He gets into one of my favorite things about the MS-20... the crazy distortion you can make by feeding the headphone out back into the inputs.

Roland MKS-80 and MPG-80 Super Jupiter on Ebay

Rackmount version of the highly sought after Jupiter-8 with the equally sought after programmer for easy sound editing.

Check out the listing...

Review: Sonic Charge Synplant

Product: Synplant softsynth
Manufacturer: Sonic Charge
Type: Digital synth with very unique user interface
Support: http://www.soniccharge.com/support
Platforms: VST for Windows XP or later, VST & AU for OSX 10.4 or later
Price: $89 (+VAT where applicable)
Demo: 3 week demo available at http://www.soniccharge.com/download

Whether you prefer hardware or software when it comes to your synths, one thing you have to admit is that the lower overhead cost of producing software synths allows manufacturers to try out much wilder ideas than would be viable to do in hardware form. I mean, can you imagine how much Absynth would cost if it was a hardware synth?! That said, generally even the more creative approaches to synthesis usually still bear some basis in good ol’ subtractive synthesis. You program them with knobs or buttons, you send oscillators through a filter of some sort, and you shape the amplitude with an envelope. This is all well and good in that it makes the learning curve with a new instrument a bit less steep, but it also keeps your sound programming ‘in the box’ creatively speaking. Sometimes it’s nice to go into an instrument with no idea what you’re doing and just start playing around. It kind of recaptures the excitement of what it was like the first time you had a go at programming your own sounds. With Sonic Charge’s new softsynth, Synplant, they’ve created an entirely new way of interfacing with a synthesizer and they’ve managed to do it in such a way that, technically speaking at least, there’s almost no learning curve.

INSTALLATION
Installation couldn’t be easier. You simply download Synplant from Sonic Charge’s website, run the installer, and you’re good to go. If you’re just demoing Synplant, you’ll have three weeks to try it out before it “dies”. If you’ve purchased it, however, you are given a serial number that you enter along with your email address, and you’re done.

DOCUMENTATION
In addition to an excellent, easy-to-understand manual, Synplant itself contains a built-in tutorial that runs the first time you fire it up. You don’t have to go through it, but, like the manual, it can be useful to look at since this synth takes such a radically different approach.

USER INTERFACE
More than anything, it is the user interface that makes Synplant unlike anything you’ve ever worked with before. Instead of knobs and sliders marked with familiar names like ‘cutoff’ and ‘resonance’, you’re instead presented with a virtual “seed” in a black circle surrounded by a ring marked with musical keys representing keys on your keyboard. There’s just seven sliders in addition to that, but let’s stick with the whole “seed” concept for a second, because that’s what makes this such an innovative interface.

The “seed” is a randomly generated starting point for your sound. You alter the sound by dragging out “branches” that change it in one way or the other as you drag them out. You don’t have any control over what dragging the branches alters, but that’s where the musical keys come in. Each branch that you drag out alters the seed in a different way and is assigned a different key on the keyboard. This way, you have 12 options to choose from as you sculpt your sound. You can choose to leave it mapped this way (so one sound is on all the C’s, another on all the D’s, etc.) for some unusual effects, or you can choose the sound from those 12 that you like the best and “clone” it so just that one sound is mapped across the keyboard. You can either stick with this sound, or use it as a new seed to further alter. Or, if you are finding that the seed isn’t providing you with anything to your liking, you can start over from scratch by having Synplant generate a new seed to start from. There are also undo and redo buttons at the top of the interface in case you make a mistake along the way.

There are four sliders circling the seed window. The first, tuning, allows you to tune the sound. This usually isn’t necessary since Synplant will attempt to make the sound map on the keyboard in a musical way, but sometimes it’ll be out of tune, which is where this knob comes in handy. “Atonality” basically decides whether your seed will be a musically tuned sound, or more like a sound effect. “Release” acts just like the release value on a standard amplitude envelope works. Finally, there is “Effect” which controls the wet/dry mix of Synplant’s built-in “chorusing reverb”. Additionally, at the bottom, there are sliders for wheel scaling (the mod wheel can be used to grow all the branches simultaneously), velocity sensitivity, and volume.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. What good is a synth if the only way to create sounds is more or less at random? What happens if you come up with a sound that is close to what you want, but not quite there? This is where the Gene Editor comes in, which you access by clicking on the double helix button at the top of the interface.

The Gene Editor allows access to 37 different parameters that can be altered using sliders cleverly disguised as a DNA double helix. Some of the parameter names are a little esoteric, but you can turn on an interactive help function that explains what each one does when you place your mouse over it. Most of what you’ll need to tweak your sound to perfection is found here, and of course everything is fully automatable in your host program.

HOW DOES IT SOUND?
Synplant comes with 300 nicely varied presets, and registered users have access to 250 additional patches for download off the website (with a valid registration key). Sonically, Synplant has a very digital character. There are analog emulations among the presets, but you’re not going to fool anyone into thinking you’re using a Moog by a long shot. Emulations of acoustic instruments are generally not Synplant’s strong point either, although it does bells and mallets quite well, and there’s a pretty nice sounding contrabass among the presets. Overall, I’d say the general sound of Synplant is like that of an FM synth, although it is capable of a wider variety of timbres. It can do noisy sounds, but even in that state it’s not terrible aggressive. So if you’re after hard as nails sounds, this might not be for you. Overall I could see this being very useful to people making ambient, IDM, or even electro house artists looking for a little retro-digital flavor. Ultimately, you’ll have to download the demo and give it a try yourself to decide where it’s for you or not.

CONCLUSIONS
It's really hard to find fault with Synplant. I only really have two complaints. First, I encountered stuck notes in Logic quite a bit no matter what controller I was using. It seemed to happen most often when I changed patches, but it also would occasionally happen seemingly at random. Secondly, it would be nice if there was a greater variety of effects available, but even this is being nit-picky since I think most of us use external plug-ins for that purpose anyway. Synplant is one of those synths that you’re probably either going to love or hate. Some people might not appreciate the odd interface or the random nature of its sound generation, while others will find it incredibly refreshing. Make no mistake, this is not a synth to sit down with a specific sound in mind and start programming. This is one where you can spend hours wandering blindly through the virtual forest of timbres it creates until you find something that appeals to you that you might never have come up with on your own. I personally loved it and would like to see more companies take chances with radical programming interfaces like this in the future.

Here's a quick little throwaway ambient track I threw together in about ten minutes to give you an idea of the sound of Synplant. No compression, EQ, or external effects used, just 9 instances of Synplant.



Triadex Muse on Ebay

Designed at MIT in the late 60's, the Muse was the world's first digital instrument. You can read a bit more about in this interesting article, or check out a PC-only simulator of the Muse here.

Check out the listing...