-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

Oh, wow, just as I posted this I saw a classified ad selling a SH-2000 (with the Moog filter copy) for only 300 €. Now I'm torn.

It's official: My newest synth is neither a modern modulation masterpiece nor a cult classic of polyphonic beauty, but a monophonic preset home organ with presets such as "Popcorn", "Frogman" and "Funny Cat", essentially the Juno of the 70's. Can't be that bad for 290 €, right?

For all the DIY synth fans out there: Check out this Arp 2600 clone kit - shipping is unfortunately on hold right now though.

Say whatever about Mr. Blake, he makes his P08 sound good

for real, he knows that thing inside and out.

shipping is unfortunately on hold right now though.

sample & hold?

:J

In other unrelated news, I'm selling my SH-2000 right now. Yep. After living with it for a few weeks I realized I actually hate it. Too much camp, not enough usefulness. Too performance-oriented (that's why I compared it to the Juno earlier) and not enough tweakability. Too much synthesized tuba. Not even the Moog filter copy could save it, although I liked the "Electric Bass" preset. This relationship is over. I think I'll just buy a Novation UltraNova.

a local electro band here makes heavy use of that sh2k preset on their records. it is a nice sound.

Yes, it's a blissful bass. I'm even using it for the bassline of a song I'm currently working on. My "making tracks with synths" philosophy: Even if your newest synth acquisition turns out to be a dud, you should still try to use it for a part in your composition. Don't waste important oscillators.

Don't THROW AWAY*

I've had an SH-2000 for years and really like it for some stuff - I make heavy use of bass, cello, basically most in that row, presets but use some others - and I always use pedals - it's great with delay, octave, chorus (not nec at the same time). That's for loud weird rock band stuff though, maybe not what you're into making.

I definitely wouldn't mind one of those but I'm in no position to be throwing away any more money on music gear right now :/

Yeah, the Roland SH-2000's presets have this classic 70's sound ("French Horn" with slow chorus through a tube amp sounds magical), which isn't a bad thing, just not my cup of tea. Some of the other presets remind me of 70's children's TV shows! Nice but not my cup of tea either. If you're in Europe and interested in buying one, let me know.

Okay.. Actually, I just fell in love with the SH-2000. I was fucking around with the settings until I found out that when you tweak the "Tuba" preset enough, you can get a truly PHAT (yeah, I know) bass sound. Even better than the "Electric Bass" preset. Not selling anymore.

For all the Kraftwerk fans out there: People are saying that Kraftwerk or Kling Klang Studios are selling their gear on Ebay right now. I don't know whether that's true or not since the Ebay seller says they're closing the studio - and I haven't heard about Kling Klang closing their doors. Would suck, though. But still, lots of interesting (East German and Soviet) stuff on there.

Just clicked through the auctions and almost all of them have a pic of the Elektro Müller sign - so yeah, it's Kraftwerk-affiliated.

buying an RS-202 for cheap tomorrow.

Sweet, some nice string action! Nobody can deny a fine string machine.

Speaking of new purchases, I kept my Synth Dream alive and actually bought an analog polysynth - an Ensoniq ESQ-1. Okay, not completely analog, it has digital oscillators and an analog filter. So it's more like a hybrid, just like the Juno-106. But I prefer the Ensoniq's sound and it also has more modulation options. So yeah, ESQ-1.

That was the first keyboard I ever had! Bought with my own money in high school. I thought it sounded crappy at the time, compared to fancier synths, but it was all I could afford, and it had a sweet (for the time) little sequencer too.

(BTW not saying it actually SOUNDS crappy, just that I was lusting after Fairlights and Emulator 3s and shit back in high school!)

bought an alpha juno 1 last week - it's like the 'one lady owner' of polysynths, the woman i bought it from has had it since she was six! but mostly playing with microbrute this week. waiting for the programmer to turn up before I go deep into the JU1.

crucially it still has the 'what the?' patch in the user memory, aka the base for the hoover of 'dominator', 'charly', 'mentasm' fame. I basically plan on a full bank of hoover variations.

no sequencer or arp, but I gotta learn to play better/properly anyways.

Can I just say

I love the Juno 1, light and durable and sounds kind of hilariously good. Love the weird six-stage envelope. Not hard to program once you get used to it. I don't recommend a PG-300 (the programmer) unless you really, really need to have your fingers on the frequency knob at all times. Try the software editor first until you figure out what does what, then learn how to use the wheel

schwantz, I can understand that if you want a good workstation, the Ensoniq ESQ-1 could be a bit of a disappointment. It's a kind of clumsy attempt to be a budget workstation (right when workstations became a thing), but to me it's also a synth that is unique, gritty yet beautiful at the same time.

As for the Alpha Juno interface... man, the DX7 truly brought in the dark age of synthesizer interfaces. And actually paying money so you can program the synth more easily is a bit scummy. At least it sounds cool. And it's funny how the DX7 gets famous for its "clean" piano sound while the AJ hoovers around in a Gabber nightclub.

Forgot to mention: I sold my SH-2000.

crucially it still has the 'what the?' patch in the user memory, aka the base for the hoover of 'dominator', 'charly', 'mentasm' fame. I basically plan on a full bank of hoover variations.

First thing I checked when I got mine two months ago for $85 from a pawn shop. Thinking about getting a BCR2000 for it as I can't get the Alpha Juno Control app to work. Maybe I can try to sysex something from my 106 if possible.

BTW, this guy did a dead-on hoover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FYfRSTvspk
The parameters are listed in the video's description.

goon tie, my eyesight is not great to be honest so the less I am peering at the screen the better!

plus you must admit this video is quite seductive: http://youtu.be/Oll0NYC1PpY

I remember the look on the Craigslist guy's face when I handed over $300 for a PG-300, at the time I thought it was "a bittersweet parting with a beloved object".

Six months later I'm in the carpool parking lot, selling the PG-300 to a new Craigslist sucker, $300, and I know the bittersweetness was a chump recognizing a chump

It is awkward and large and somewhat unreliable and requires its own wall wart AC and a MIDI hookup. Fantasies of playing live evaporate in minutes. Even when I still had it lying around I had switched to using one of the virtual PG-300s that are available for download, where you can edit the patch names with your computer keyboard instead of dialling the new names in character-by-character. If you want dials and knobs you can program an Akai MPK or equivalent to act as a controller in less than an hour.

Bumping this thread because I just ordered a Volca Keys + Volca Beats.

Question -- I have a USB MIDI controller that I want to use to control the Volca keys and I want to sync both of them with each other and with my laptop (running Reaper) and to output audio through my interface. I was thinking I could plug the keyboard into my computer via USB, then run a MIDI cable out from my audio interface to one of the Volcas, then from the sync out of the first Volca to the sync in of the 2nd, and from the audio out of (one or both?) Volcas into my interface. Would that work?

I guess your USB MIDI controller doesn't have a MIDI out in addition to the USB output?

No, it's an Akai LPK25, it just has mini-USB out. I might get something nicer in a bit, but what can I do for the time being? Is there no way to make Reaper send a clock sync and also the MIDI messages from my controller out of my audio interface's MIDI out to the Volca?

See, 'cause I was going to suggest going from your controller's MIDI-out into your Volca's MIDI-thru and thereby simplifying things for you a bit. At this point I can't help myself from mentioning the Rube Goldbergian aspect of your proposed set-up. I'm thinking there's got to be a better way than what you described, but my MIDI knowledge/experience is hardly expert-level. Good luck is all I offer at this point.

I was thinking about going USB-to-MIDI from the Akai to the synth but the Akai is powered via USB so that wouldn't work, and also I'm not sure how I'd sync the devices to the computer in that case.

I think your original set-up might work. But don't you have an old keyboard that has MIDI out or something? It might simplify things a bit.

Hm, yeah I actually do, it's just kind of big and unwieldy for my workspace.

But let's say I do go straight MIDI out from one keyboard or another, I'm still wondering how I'd sync everything to my computer's clock, like if I've got other things playing on the computer. Or is that not possible?

And since the Volca keys is polyphonic, would it be possible to have some notes being triggered by the computer, and also trigger notes on top of that with a keyboard? Maybe with some kind of MIDI box?

So a simple keyboard is unwieldy but lots of cables going from/to your computer & interface aren't? Just get a Korg microKONTROL or something.

You can use MIDI quantization in your music editing program to sync MIDI messages to the computer clock.

A instrument that has MIDI-in capabilties should be able to recieve MIDI messages from two sources (computer and the Volca Keys keyboard)

The cables can be managed but the keyboard I have is too large for my space and I wouldn't want to take it to shows. The Korg micoKontrol looks like it only has USB like my Akai, so I don't see what it would offer me.

I guess I'll have to do some experimenting when these things show up.

Woops, didn't know the Kontrol doesn't have MIDI out! I'm sure there has to be a similarily small-ish MIDI controller.

I run a Arturia Keyboard to my laptop via USB, then midi out from my interface to Korg Monotribe, then sync out from monotribe ( which converts midi clock from Ableton) into Volca Beats, then Volca Beats sync out into my modular.

and audio from all three into my interface ( with modular using a stereo in).

not sure its tight enough for a professional recording but it works.

however, I've just bought a iconectivity mio for £25 so I could run two midi connections and control both Korgs

it'll allow me to run sequences to them both via Ableton.

Volca thoughts so far:

Still getting the hang of using these things and figuring out a good workflow with them, but I'm having lots of fun with them already.

So this was discussed upthread, although I managed to miss it, so to reiterate, audio output from the Volcas should use an 1/8" stereo to dual 1/4" mono cable. But there's no actual stereo going on, so leaving one of the 1/4" leads unplugged doesn't seem to matter unless you hate dangling cables.

Controlling the Keys with my MIDI controller is easy enough: keyboard -> computer via USB, audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 in my case) -> Volca via MIDI. Then I make one track in Reaper with my MIDI controller as input and the Scarlett as a MIDI output, and another track with the Volca's audio out as the input.

But sending clock sync from my computer to the Keys, as opposed to just notes, seems to be of limited use, unless I'm missing something. If I send clock with "step trigger" off, the Keys will trigger my notes at the right time but the notes will only sustain for a 16th note value, even though my MIDI notes are sustaining and sustain is turned up etc. If I turn "step trigger" on, they will re-trigger on each 16th note for the whole time they should be sustaining.

The Keys is mostly working like a charm though. Not sure if I'll have much use for the built-in delay, but I've gotten some neat sounds already by sending it through my Corona Chorus pedal.

I'm having some trouble getting the beats to sync with my DAW properly though. It seems to basically work, I'll hit play in Reaper and the Beats will play, but it won't be on the right beat and it'll be slightly late like there's some latency. I might be missing something. I also wasn't able to get it to respond to my MIDI controller. I found the MIDI spec on Korg's site so maybe later I'll be able to make sense of that. This snare mod for the Beats seems intriguing too.

anybody seen this yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCyiDaM3boc

thinking of going this sat in la

i'm kinda interested but i have been 100% cured of all modular desires which dulls the interest a little. looks well made by all accounts

I really enjoyed it and it made me wanna get a system 700!!

nobody needs to justify wanting a system 700

just looming there looking all knobby

old sound on sound review says doepfer used to sell eurorack s700 clone package - sounded spendy, but

"I Dream of Wires" -- Documentary on the Modular Synth

i find it very comforting to have zero interest in modular synths.

that lack of interest will save you money, that is for sure

in related news, was in Austin last weekend and visited Switched-On, and the vintage keyboards they had available to play in the showroom there pretty much blew my mind. Prophet T-8, two Putneys, a Fairlight Mark I, all kinds of generic but absolutely beautiful 70's piano/clav workhorses (Roedelius-land), and a hefty Makenoise / Euro rack. It was very educational. And the guys have a service where they let you track in there using anything in the showroom for $25 an hour, which is remarkable.

http://www.switchedonaustin.com/shop

My monotron has died. Just stopped working. I have another but I can't get the output to work - is it worth taking the working one apart to see if there's a loose connection or something? Bearing in mind I haven't soldered since I was at school.

poor monotron :(. i'm pretty sure the sound of mine has changed, maybe it too is on its way out...