Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...

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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #220 on: August 19, 2016, 03:12:19 PM »
You can hear the original sample of Aragorn here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU7Hk_D2LG4

It was sampled directly from this YouTube soundclip, and then the VariPhrase technology was used to change the melody Aragorn is singing... it's done by switching on the "Robot" mode in the VariPhrase technology, which makes the pitch static and makes it sound like a monotone robot... then I apply portamento, and a bit of vibrato, which makes it sound authentic again... and then I can actually "play him" using the keys... you just have to time the keystrokes to fit the phrases... that is; you cannot change what is being sung, neither the timing of the words, but you can change the pitch by playing the keyboard.

This opens up a lot of potential for vocal stuff, but it also works wonders on samples of acoustic instruments etc.

If you do not use Robot mode, it will playback with the original pitches, but you can change the overall key it is played in, by triggering from different keys, and it still sounds natural because it keep the formants when transposing the pitch... at least within a reasonable range.
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #221 on: August 24, 2016, 12:59:43 PM »
Ok, interesting Razmo.   Someday I'd like to get a hardware sampler and mess with this kind of stuff.
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #222 on: August 25, 2016, 02:05:46 AM »
Ok, interesting Razmo.   Someday I'd like to get a hardware sampler and mess with this kind of stuff.

If you want formant control like this, there are not many options... VP-9000, V-Synth family, and then the strange VariOS unit... it's all from Roland.
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #223 on: August 26, 2016, 06:02:50 AM »
If you want formant control like this, there are not many options... VP-9000, V-Synth family, and then the strange VariOS unit... it's all from Roland.
I had a V-Synth GT in the past, and loved it! It is surely the best piece of hardware (build quality, keys and controls) I've ever used (and I've used a lot of synths). I sold it to fund the P08 and I kind of regret I did it.

I'm returning to this forum to ask something to you... specifically about the Prophet 12. I think that it would allow me to do some stuff like drones and textures that I could with the GT (like this video I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzPwUzHT3BA ). Am i wrong??

I think I'm going to sell my Prophet 08 to open space for a Prophet 12. Maybe it wouldn't be the right move if I needed that standard analog 80's sound that I get from the P08, but I'm missing so much more that I need to create music...... I really miss complex pads and the 08 just doesn't deliver it. For techno and ambient music, do you think that this is a good move?

Since I got my Elektron Analog Four, the P08 just got a little less interesting. The overall tonality of the A4 is just better to me as an analog polysynth.

Cheers and thank you in advance.  :)
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #224 on: August 26, 2016, 12:16:28 PM »
If you want formant control like this, there are not many options... VP-9000, V-Synth family, and then the strange VariOS unit... it's all from Roland.
I had a V-Synth GT in the past, and loved it! It is surely the best piece of hardware (build quality, keys and controls) I've ever used (and I've used a lot of synths). I sold it to fund the P08 and I kind of regret I did it.

I'm returning to this forum to ask something to you... specifically about the Prophet 12. I think that it would allow me to do some stuff like drones and textures that I could with the GT (like this video I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzPwUzHT3BA ). Am i wrong??

I think I'm going to sell my Prophet 08 to open space for a Prophet 12. Maybe it wouldn't be the right move if I needed that standard analog 80's sound that I get from the P08, but I'm missing so much more that I need to create music...... I really miss complex pads and the 08 just doesn't deliver it. For techno and ambient music, do you think that this is a good move?

Since I got my Elektron Analog Four, the P08 just got a little less interesting. The overall tonality of the A4 is just better to me as an analog polysynth.

Cheers and thank you in advance.  :)

I've had both the V-Synth XT and the GT... I miss them as well, but as I only want rackmount gear, I'm looking for an XT at the moment. Actually I'm trying to swap my P08 module version directly for a V-Synth XT... but still have not succeeded.

Regarding the P12 as an 80's machine sound, and ability to do drones, then yes... absolutely. It's the best DSI synth for Ambient music in my opinion, and it has the same Curtis filters as the P08, only the oscillators are digital.. but hybrid synths was also prevalent in the 80's so surely it can sound 80's like.

Actualy it's because of the P12's ability to do Ambient sounds that I'm keeping it... I've rid myself of all other DSI synths exept the P08 whcih is for sale at the moment as well. The P12 will easily do anything the P08 does... of course the P08 has it's own sound... a bit more analog, but in terms of complexity, the P12 should be able to do about the same... the only real thing missing on P12 in contrast to the P08 is the sequencers... a shame really, as it would be a god sent for moving textures in Ambient styles... you can use the built in Arp instead though, but it's not quite the same.

On the other hand, the P12 is way more complex... it also has build in digital delays that can be tailored to a specific preset... only thing I'd have liked was a real reverb FX in it as well... but you can do this with an external reverb box.

SO the short answer from me is yes... It'll do what you want from it... it has both the typical subtractive synthesis, it has wavetable synthesis and also FM synthesis, so it's well covered for doing Ambient sounds.

Also, the fact that it has two layers is important, as many Ambient sounds benefit from layering two sounds... and the 12 voices gives it a head over the P08, since in that case it will be a 6 voice polysynth... 4 voices can get a little too stressed especially for pad sounds.

I'd say, that if you want to do Ambient, you should find synths that has unique synthesis techniques, so that you can cover all Ambient territory... Virtual analog, Virtual Accoustic, Frequency Modulation, Sampling, Wavetable etc... P12 is unique with it's semi modular modulation matrix in audio rates, plus all the different synthesis techniques it can do. If it had sample oscillators as well, it would have been perfect...
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #225 on: August 26, 2016, 12:21:48 PM »
Oh... and then there is this irritating panning thing with the P08... the P12 can at least let you set the panning of a single voice as you want it to... with the P08 the pan destination only set the Pan Spread... the P12 can set the panning directly of each voice, which I prefer. With ambient sounds, it's important for me to have total control over the stereo perspective this way... the P12 just seem more programable compared to the P08 where you have to "cut some corners" once in a while... with P12 the things you want to do, just simply seems to "be there".
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #226 on: August 26, 2016, 01:43:24 PM »
[...] the P12 just seem more programable compared to the P08 where you have to "cut some corners" once in a while... with P12 the things you want to do, just simply seems to "be there".
You pretty much nailed and answered everything I wanted to know. I'm selling a bunch of stuff to make room for a specific setup, and I think that the P12 might be a good replacement as my "master keyboard" (meaning, my poly with decent keys and controls).

Just knowing that I can create some complex sounds like the ones in the video I've shared, is good enough to me. I kind of miss the complexity of digital synthesizers, but need the warmth of a VCF/VCA. The P12 does it all.....

Just so you know, I've been reading this topic from time to time. Interesting stuff here!

Cheers and thanks a lot!
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #227 on: September 12, 2016, 04:03:46 PM »
Got my V-Synth XT home a couple of days ago, and I'm sold.... again... this synth is such a unique machine :)

I tried to create some more manipulation of vocal recordings, and ended up with this short test-clip:

http://razmo.ziphoid.com/V-Synth_Test.mp3

The pad sound is Blofeld, the bassline is P12... the voice is, of course V-Synth.

The original voice was taken from a youtube video of a woman singing something I do not understand... the video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yGzyOwyUoI
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #228 on: September 12, 2016, 05:45:03 PM »
That is neat. So, what's the process there? It's not sampled, right? Some sort of wavetable manipulation?
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #229 on: September 12, 2016, 06:15:24 PM »
That is neat. So, what's the process there? It's not sampled, right? Some sort of wavetable manipulation?

Yes, is is sampled... The v-synth then encodes the sample... It is a kind of wavetable you could say... It stores information about every single cycle in the waveform somehow, and will then play them back a number of times according to the playback speed... It can then change the pitch independently of time... On top of this it allow for processing the cycles with formant info as well... This makes these three aspects of the sample independently controllable.... It is a very powerful control to have since it elliminates the use for multisamples and let you do some nice modulation tricks. :)

But you could compare it to wavetables, because of the single cycle control... Though the cycles vary depending on the pitches in the sample...

Noise elements is of course not cyclable... But you cannot hear it when playing at the original speed... But when you slow the speed to right before you freeze the sound, you can clearly hear the cyclings... It will let you freeze too, and even play backwards.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2016, 06:20:19 PM by Razmo »
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #230 on: September 13, 2016, 01:00:22 AM »
Very cool example! Liked it a lot. And thanks for the explanation.

Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #231 on: September 14, 2016, 09:42:10 AM »
Definitely cool. I'm into the bass patch too -- it's always cool to hear the P12 showing that it can handle great bass sounds.

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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #232 on: September 27, 2016, 10:55:03 AM »
Nothing much, but it seems that Win10 is getting pretty picky with old drivers... so my E-MU 1616m will not run anymore... so I've been forced into buying myself a new soundcard. The choice fell on an RME HDSPe AIO...

other than that, I've ordered a paper-strip playing music box from China :)
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #233 on: October 02, 2016, 05:02:12 PM »
I have been messing with my Roland INTEGRA-7 today, and I'm rather impressed with the SuperNatural sounds, especialy the acoustic ones... made a short riff of the theme from Lord of the Rings... it's rather different I have to add, but kind of funny a well.

http://razmo.ziphoid.com/LOTR.mp3
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #234 on: October 14, 2016, 09:38:00 AM »
Just ordered a KORG Wavedrum Global Edition and a pair of Sennheiser HD-650. Hope to get some cool human feel percussion goin' on with this :) ... examples will come once I get it.
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #235 on: October 14, 2016, 01:09:00 PM »
Be very interested in what you think of the wavedrum.

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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #236 on: November 20, 2016, 12:27:33 PM »
Be very interested in what you think of the wavedrum.

Sorry for the delay on this, but I wanted to be sure the Wavedrum was something for me before starting to rave about it :)

There are pro's and con's actually, but the pro's heavilly outweight the cons.

The cons boils down to the fact that you cannot connect it to MIDI on a computer, and thus make editors for it... on top of this it has the most convoluted menu system when you want to program it.... I would REALLY have liked for this to be MIDI controllable, and send out MIDI CC data for the four sensors it has... would have been cool to use with other devices.

The reason is quite obvious though... it's made with three "microphones" that record the sound of your strikings, plus a pressure sensitive plate right beneath the center of the drumpad... the audio data is used in the DSP, so MIDI would be way too slow... but nonetheless, the slower rate would be usefull I think, for other gear.

Also... the device actually have a micro SD card inside, with all the extra samples and loops... would have been nice if it was further developed with an outboard slot for this, so you could use your own samples with it.

Another funny thing is, that it's actually capable of feedback because it records sound... you can easily make it "sing" by just clapping your hands.... and then of course, you get "confused" when you play it sometimes, because you can hear your hits on the pad, in addition to the sounds the Wavedrum makes... wotks best with headphones at high volume levels since this will drown out the noise, and also stop eventual feedback.... the feedback is a minor thing though... hardly an issue.

But the pros... the most obvious being that it is EXTREMELY dynamic to use... so much it rivals real percussion sounds many times... it senses differently depending on where you hit it, and sound different depending on both the sticks you use, and how you play it with your hands... use your palms, your fingers, your nails... everything sounds authentically different and VERY lifelike, which was EXACTLY what I wanted.

Can it do anything a sampler or physical modelling thing would not? ... yes... certainly... everything (or a LARGE part of it) is due to the way it's played and the way in which this is made part of the algorithms... You don't need to make a hell of arrangement corrections like on a sampler, to make it sound authentically... you just play the darn thing, and record it, and it sounds REALLY good and lifelike... so if you know how to play percussion tight, then this thing is a god sent for stuff like ambient, orchestral and experimental stuff.

The sounds in it are pretty good, and there are so many, you can almost find something you need... It is a keeper here, even though it has no MIDI because it will let me do percussion with a human feel extremely fast and intuitive... it lets me perform, rather than program a sampler for realism... me like!

The device has four sensors... one on each side of the rim, one right beneath the interface, and then this pressure plate in the middle... the rims have small bumps to make guiro like sounds too...

Hope that was info enough :)

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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #237 on: November 23, 2016, 09:35:11 PM »
Thanks for all the info!

It's a bit of a shame that the sensor info is not sent over midi or received, that would be pretty useful.

Also a shame about the user samples.

Even though it's still on my list of things I "need".




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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #238 on: November 24, 2016, 02:41:03 AM »
Also a shame about the user samples.

The micro SD slot is inside the case? Or is the card just soldered to the board somehow? This seems like a potential hack waiting for someone to do it. It would fit Korg's circuit-bending-friendly reputation.
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Re: Razmo's Gear Rant Thread...
« Reply #239 on: November 24, 2016, 02:53:04 AM »
Also a shame about the user samples.

The micro SD slot is inside the case? Or is the card just soldered to the board somehow? This seems like a potential hack waiting for someone to do it. It would fit Korg's circuit-bending-friendly reputation.

It has already been hacked actually... there is a page on the net about this (http://elephly.net/posts/2013-08-11-hacking-the-wavedrum.html)... The SD card is INSIDE the unit yes, beneath a piece of tape covering an SD card socket... you can take it out, and read it on a computer, as it's FAT32 format.

Those who hacked it wanted to make an editor for it... but still it's pretty unusable, since it would need you to keep opening the machine, having you to also re-callibrate the pad all the time.

I bet they used the SD card for convenience when they were messing with the on board samples and loops. The Wavedrum has about 140 percussion loops that it can play along with your drumming... just would have been nice to be able to change those samples... though if you do, all the presets in "ROM" would sound weird if you replaced any of them... still, even the "ROM" presets are stored on the card... everything is... so it could probably be fixed with the proper hack.

The only way to do a good hack would be to prepare the whole device with new samples, and then write them to the SD card, once and for all... treating it as a "sampler" would be very VERY inconvenient.
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