-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

on stage i use an SP404-SX running into a Korg Kaoss Quad into a mixer, and live drums. i basically have full tracks or edits thereof assigned to the pads, along with one-shot samples that i can add over the top. no syncing, i just use the tap tempo for quantized effects.

i love not having a laptop on stage b/c i feel like everybody in the world runs Ableton or Traktor, and also i do not own a laptop. it's also super simple and reliable.

on the other hand, it would be really nice to have the freedom to vary track lengths & structure on the fly, and to have more flexibility with effects (i wish the Kaoss Pad Quad had a triplet division!). it just never seems worth it to invest in a computer + soundcard + controller, especially since i'm a little burnt out on playing shows right now.

So I ended up buying the Matrix 6 a couple of weeks ago after finding the manual and realizing the right output wasn't broken, it just only sends a signal when stereo is enabled in the master edit and you're in split mode.

BUT, I got it home and realized the aftertouch doesn't work (unless I plug my Arturia controller into it, in which case it responds to aftertouch just fine). It also has some very occasional crackling on the output (but not in any specific voice), so I got some Deoxit and I was planning to open it up and have a look.

Does anyone have any ideas what I might be looking for with the aftertouch? I looked through the manual and the service manual but didn't see much that seemed useful.

assisted esoj in build of MS-20 kit on the weekend, what a wacky beast. there's some hilarious patches both in the supplied guide and on the internets - weird fake duophonic stuff, buchla-esque sample+hold craziness... electric bass w/ upwards string bend thru the momentary button was probably funniest.

we misinterpreted the dang instructions slightly (they really could be a little clearer in this regard) and had to do open it up again last night but now it is all sorted. i love it though, probably the most immediately fun synth i've played since my poor broken prophet 5

the automatic octave bass sequence thing is hell of fun

must admit I'm scoping out minis on ebay. might get one with the tote bag!

have you sung into the ESP yet, that looks pretty hilaire on the videos

no i will try

So I opened up the Matrix 6 and found that the aftertouch strip was sitting upside down and in the wrong place, shoved under the lip of the case, so it wasn't being contacted by the keybed at all. I seated it properly and closed up the synth, but then aftertouch only worked for the lower half of the keyboard. Then I resoldered the joint halfway down the aftertouch strip and now it works for the whole keyboard.

Incidentally, I also stumbled on a trick to use a few MIDI controller knobs/sliders to control the Matrix in realtime. I think I've read murmurings about this before but not really the full story. Basically you can tell the Matrix what CC number to assign to pedal 1 and 2 and lever 2 and 3, and assign it the same CC as your controller sends, and then program a patch where those things are modulating whatever you want. Here I set up these sliders to control the filter cutoff, amp envelope attack and release, and resonance.

spent last night riffing on human league 'last man on earth' on the MS-20 mini with the mood lighting on, ooooooh yeah. thunderstorm patch added atmosphere on that one.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kilpatrickaudio/phenol-patchable-analog-synthesizer

nice 'my first buchla' vibe around this.

got a microbrute. so far my method of finding my way around it has been twisting knobs while playing the 'i feel love' sequence into eternity.

as good a method as any other

was basically my method

while playing the 'i feel love' sequence into eternity.

...from here to eternity?

I got a Bass Station II btw, love that guy

any tips on how i can control the filter cutoff on my Volca Keys using midi? i'm sending the notes in with midi, but i want to have a pulsing cutoff and doing it manually is too touchy. pretty sure this is possible but i have no idea how. is it just a matter of finding the right parameter and drawing in the automation on my midi out channel in the DAW?

I don't own a Volca keys but out of curiosity about the synth I did a search for "volca keys MIDI implementation" and it returned this doc

http://media.aadl.org/files/catalog_guides/1444140_chart.pdf

CC 44 should do it

thanks!!

fgti is correct; however, sorry if you've tried this and there's some reason it won't work, but that seems like something you'd use the LFO for. Set speed with the LFO -> RATE knob and the intensity with the LFO -> CUTOFF INT knob. If the Volca Keys is receiving a MIDI clock signal the LFO rate should sync to a multiple of the tempo.

Also check out this neat $8 app which opens up the Volcas for more DAW control: http://www.fabriziopoce.com/volcacontrol.html

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2015/01/odyssey-back-korgs-arp-remake-revealed/

this past NAMM was freaking bonkers. So many awesome toys.

Meanwhile I finally started to understand by TX-802 the other night. That's a monster of a digital synth.

i've bearly turned mine on, i'm kind of scared of it

barely*

I ended up buying Midi Quest Pro just to make it easier. Kinda dumb since the software cost me more than 100$ more than the synth did! But I figured it'd help me make it easier to use and can be useful for other synths as well in the long run.

I was really confused at first...I had taken the output of just one or two of the voices and was playing and was like why does this sound shitty and only playing every 3rd or 4th note I hit? I thought it was broken. Then I realized what I was doing wrong and listened to the output of I and II panned left and right and it just opened up into this massive sounding FM beast.

Awesome, Dan.

Gonna look into MidiQuest as well.

i've been meaning to get midi quest for the longest time, considering how many rack synths i have it's kinda stupid i don't have it already. i think part of it was that it was notorious for being unreliable before the latest version

oh i have no confidence that Midi Quest will work smoothly. It's not the most osx looking thing and the UX is eh but it's the only thing left. I once owned MOTU Unisyn back in system 9 days.

one think you may be interested in capitaine, is the more expensive pro version has two features the other doesnt. Works as a plug-in, which can be need, I guess automating sysex stuff w/ ease, but in reference to something I think you used to talk about, it has the ability to take any of it's library of synths and export TouchOSC templates. I think that's cool?

New synth day:

https://igcdn-photos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t51.2885-15/10838580_656329977829971_628990351_n.jpg

slick

mucked around on various things that were new to me at 'synth sunday' event, here's my HOT TAKES

- korg odyssey: played with one of the whiteface ones for five minutes (big line for this). oscillators sound good. the three filters all sound noticeably different; the moogalike one that got them in trouble noticeably loses the bottom end when you turn the resonance up, the other two are better I reckon. ring mod when playing duophonically sounds amazing. sliders had a lil bit of play from side to side, felt good when actually sliding tho. the PPC mod buttons are very lol, what were they thinking here first time around - not pleasant to use. keyboard is fine, not minikeys no matter what the forum dorks (who are all concert-grade pianists I'm sure) say.

- korg kronos: I sat in front of this for a bit, scrolled through the menus and backed away in fear. some musical director type bro demoed it a bit later, the piano sounded pretty dead-on.

- volca keys: this was quite entertaining for the size, especially poly ring mode. cruuuuunchy digi-delay.

- DSI prophet 12: was in a dark corner of the room, couldn't see enough to get a dece sound out of it! (had similar problem with other volcas and and an elektron analog 4.) no prophet 6 in attendance sadly.

- DSI mopho x4: didn't really grab me after a quick tweak.

- minibrute SE: luuuuuurve my microbrute so thought I'd get along quite well with this, but it wasn't doing it for me - couldn't put a finger on why, maybe I'm too used to the extra restrictions. does look pretty sweet tho with the silver case and wood ends.

- moog voyager: sassy electric blue backlight model. people seem to hate on these a bit as overpriced/hyped/whatever but I was feelin' it, having all the mod bus options on the front panel really opens you up to thinking about what you can do with it. most solid build quality of anything I tried. had to take a phone call right at the moment that I was getting on top of it, would've loved another five minutes. (well, hours)

- moog theremini: fun. obviously it quantises a bit, so not as forbidding as the old-school wood case one I played with in sydney years ago. looks like a spaceship.

- buchla music easel: OK I didn't actually get a go on this, it did look pretty bangin' tho.

Who took the reigns at Roland? After 20+ years of making shitty ROMpler versions of their classic analogs, they debuted a new analog synth at NAMM. Two months later, at MusikMesse, they've gone full Eurorack. Must've gotten tired of Korg eating their lunch.

Reins, I meant reins.

kakehashi (the founder) retired in 2013, and there was a management buyout last year.

I guess it always takes time to get things done in a bigger company, too - roland is nearly 3,000 employees, korg is closer to 300.

can I just

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nMmzO_Rpbg

just think, if we all chipped in our life savings...

unrelated: synthex reissue crowdfunding campaign - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/elka-synthex-synthesisers-by-generalmusic

I made a MIDI-enabled Juno-106 emulation that runs in the web browser: 106.js

Chrome/Desktop only for now.

That's awesome, St3ve! I'd like to try it over MIDI, but need a new interface.

If it was accurate, the Chorus would make a clicking noise and one or more of the voice chips would be crackling.

seriously though, fun stuff.

wow!

The chorus on my 106 is loud af, sounds like the ocean when it's engaged.

Thanks for checking it out! I'll add "failing voice chips" to the list of future features. ;)

I want to take a break from working on it because I've been super immersed in this thing for a few weeks, but I also kind of want to dive back in and implement MIDI learn -- WebMIDI is quite young still, and I haven't come across any other websynths that do that yet.

broken roland chorus is a known issue. Both my 106 and Alpha Juno have the problem, it's pretty much unusable at this point, especially on the Alpha Juno.

The crackling voice chip is a whole other epidemic with an interesting history, with years of people swapping out chips then putting in cloned chips before the discovery that the crackling was because the roland plastic coating was melting and causing it to short and the realization that you didn't need to replace the chip, just remove it, melt off the rubber insulation with acetone, and put the chip back in and it's 100% good.

never knew about the chorus problem before... mine works ok (though with a lot of hiss).
had the chip fix a couple years ago.

here's a juno question: in unison mode, does everybody experience sort of a weird in-and-out of sync effect with the oscillators? kind of a rapidly changing timbre, note to note?

On my 106, yes. It's nearly unusable except for with percussive sounds. On my Alpha Juno 1 it's fine.

It might be a calibration issue. I need to get the 106 serviced anyway.

There's no oscillator spread in the Juno's unison mode, so it doesn't sound very good. There are some aftermarket mods that address this, like this one for 6/60 which has been going around today and looks really neat: http://tubbutec.de/juno-66/

oh that polysex mod looks nice... I'd love the detuning function!

I updated my synth so you can share patches. For example: Smooth Pad

But apparently I can't format a link. Once more:

Smooth Pad