-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

Actually, I should look more seriously into crossgrading to Cubase and selling Ableton.

I've never heard anyone say this but I'm for it

I still use Cubase because it's what I learned on, and it's very fast for me, but it's my secret shame since literally everyone uses Ableton (and the ones that don't use Logic or FL Studio).

I know I'm missing out on easy warping, some crazy effects routing probably, and Max for Live. And that 'Ableton' quality that everything has today (I think of it as a little thin but with a lot of clarity and strong transients), which is a trade-off obviously. But at least I finish tracks, and I get '90s drum & bass pitch-shifting & time-stretching effects for free. :)

I'd like to think that the limitations are good for creativity, but maybe I'm just holding myself back, who knows.

I know a couple people who still use Digital Performer. Just wanted to confess to that. I was using it till I switched to Ableton.

It feels good to know that getting tracks done in Ableton is a common problem. I wish I had better work habits to overcome this.

And that 'Ableton' quality that everything has today (I think of it as a little thin but with a lot of clarity and strong transients)

i've been pondering the x-constructed club sound, like that high-gloss jeff koons balloon dog feel--do you think they are related?

lol @ balloon dog production

But yeah, I really do. A lot of the 'hard drum' tracks in particular sound extremely Ableton to me, maybe has something to do with Drum Buss and some of the stock plugins/samples? I do think that everything being made with similar tools helps them sit together in a dj mix, but also gives it a generic veneer (which has really lost its luster for me, at least in terms of the more maximal/blown-out end of things).

That sounds right to me - everything in Ableton seems too loud because of the way default faders/presets/drum racks are set up. Step one in loading a drum rack is lowering every sample 5-6db.

Bitwig (at least with the demo) has some annoyances recording but a secondhand license can be had very cheap and it's even easier to use for crazy effects chains and stuff (without the scripting power of Max but I'm no coder). No setting up racks, just drop a flanger in the tank of the reverb or w/e.

I've def been curious about Bitwig as a 'best of both worlds' sort of deal, same for Studio One, but haven't had time to mess around with a brand new DAW yet.

In Cubase it's easy to build up an effects chain and re-order the plugins (same as any DAW I'd imagine), not so easy to assign an LFO to anything, say. Although I should probably experiment more with side-chaining effects besides a compressor.

bitwig looks great but i love max for live and the midi effects. i was working on bringing some of my pre-ableton max/msp patches into ableton but i had an unfortunate hard drive meltdown.

interested in what it is about Live that encourages not finishing things? Live user here and I finish things- they are just rubbish! (ha, maybe that means they aren't finished...)

It's very easy to make lots of cool loops in session view and never turn them into an actual track.

I thought I’d be doing my session view work and then recording a performance of shopping and starting them into arrangement, but more often I use the clips as like a pasteboard and just drag them into arrangement view to start structuring a track. Dual monitor is very helpful for this.

With dual monitors you're able to see both at the same time? I'll have to look into this. I have an older version of Live so it might not do this.

Yea and tab swaps them. While shift tab swaps the bottoms so you see the midi info on Jen side and devices in the other. I’m a multiple monitor baby, can’t do anything with one.

Same set up as Dan. I make a bunch of clips in session view then jam them down into the bones of a track in arrangement. then add drops/whatever, melodic elements in arrange.

I can completely see getting stuck making the clips and just jamming, never pressing record- maybe the ominous presence of the arrange view in the second monitor encourage actually making something?

set up a 2nd monitor for imminent telecommuting reasons but am excited to put these ideas into practice

octatrack is wonderful so far, far more approachable and intuitive than its reputation suggests

Social distancing means I've finally started to learn my way around VCV Rack. Please enjoy some noises:

https://soundcloud.com/found-river/dr000446

Cherry Audio made their virtual rack thing free:
https://cherryaudio.com/free

Moog made their Minimoog iPad app free and Korg's Kaossilator app for iOS and Android

The Moog one sounds fantastic, was easily worth the $15-20 it normally costs

Thanks for the heads-up on that Cherry Audio, I'm excited to try something VCV Rack-esque that looks like it fully functions as a VST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY-5mqkpsUg

50-oscillator ambient drone synth from Russia now available to pre-order.

That sounds cool! I dig the touchpad design. the tiny knobs look like they could be a pain but it's neat that they fit all those controls on such a relatively small box.

LOL @ 2 ppl playing it at once

Finally got a Korg NTS-1. This little guy rules. It has an "open" setting in the envelope generator which means drones for days

Speaking of which, hey drone demons, any fun tricks for creating drones out of audio apart from Paulstretch or infinite reverb? I don't generally venture into these waters but I have a use case.

check the gleetchlab x program i linked in the VST thread, i've been droning by layering tiny samples (bordering on "granular" i guess), looping them, and running them through some of the software's portfolio of wild effects and processors. it's a compiled max/msp patch so there are interface quirks but it is fun as hell.

https://www.giorgiosancristoforo.net/softwares/

idk what the demo limitations are cause i bought it after about 5 minutes of playing with it

i know you are not an ableton guy but you could achieve drony results in a similar manner with the granulator ii m4l device modulated with a ton of lfo devices to give the drone a little movement

Thanks! I've got some vsts I can use for LFOs, and maybe I'll try Hysteresis for some granular fx. Maybe just adding a bunch of different layers with different pitches and effects to add movement.

I don't really know where to put this but I love the droney/ambient clips this guy is posting to twitter/youtube from his homemade softsynth:
https://twitter.com/jeonghopark
youtube

It takes visual input for both synth waveform and score data, kind of like Daphne Oram's "Oramics" system, except you no longer need to rig up an overhead projector with thousands of pounds worth of homewired electronics into something the size of your entire living room, you can have it on your laptop.

...I mean, I haven't got any particularly good noises out of it yet myself, but I have faith in ilx:
github for source and Mac/Win installers

https://www.ebay.com/itm/233572384063

dang

this is off topic but being sold by the same dude, the item description is WELL WORTH YOUR TIME https://www.ebay.com/itm/Pyradyne-Owned-by-DR-FRED-BELL-DevaStar-Orb-Patrick-Flanagan-Marcel-Vogel/233557492440

i think it was Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith who was doing a (late junction?) session for the bbc and put polysynthi down as a required for the session because they had one and she'd never seen one.

oh, it's there in the pictures
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0422qwl/p0422qr9

that is very cool, i wonder if there's a way to hear that session. kas and greg fox is an interesting combo

the same google search turned up a mixcloud link but i couldn't load it (but then my 3g connection has been poor all week)

https://www.mixcloud.com/latejunctionsessions/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-and-greg-fox-in-session/ (might be dead)

(i thought the late junction sessions were always available because they are paid for by the bbc. the above does look like an official account, perhaps they do it via mixcloud and not sounds)

(nope, standard 30 days, and that expired on Sun, 21 August 2016 (at 12:48:00 GMT))

alas. i appreciate your efforts. coming up empty on slsk too.

the polysynthi came up on my saved ebay search for "synton fenix," the first time anything has ever triggered that one ha ha.

Yum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWIbje5tu4

i am a satisfied owner of the wavestate as of a couple weeks ago. wave sequencing made me feel stupid for a while but i'm slowly coming to grips with it. being able to hold down one key to play an entire song lightens the relative load on my digitakt and other synths

the polysynthi came up on my saved ebay search for "synton fenix," the first time anything has ever triggered that one ha ha.

adam you should sign up here!!!!!

http://xenomorph.technology

The new Logic update seems great, I never used it because I couldn't even read EXS24 or half the older pre-Retina instruments but I'm downloading it again tomorrow.

that fenix clone is amazing. someone is selling a real one on the Horribly Named Synth Site for 10k and has a lot of nonsense in the listing about only selling to synthesists "known to him," what a dork.

is logic good? i've never used it. i am just about done with ableton after it crashed three times in a row yesterday trying to load the arturia cs-80 so i could play happy birthday to my father in law with a vangelis patch. i have the 8-track version of bitwig and it seems pretty nice.

(i also use renoise but it's a different "workflow" as they say for sure)

I would use Logic if I was on mac.

I say this every single time, but after I finish this current album I'm working on, I'm going to give Bitwig and Studio One a real shot to see if I click with them and get off Cubase.

The Arturia plugins are crazy buggy resource hogs. Other than those (which I still use since they sound great), Live has been solid for me. Not sure if AU/AAX/VST/VST3 makes a difference.

Love the game of Russian roulette that happens when I accidentally load the wrong plugin. "Is this one of the ones that instantly crashes my DAW?"

have a look at bitwig, Jordan - has good VST sandboxing thing, only the plug-in crashes rather than the DAW too.

I've been avoiding my chaotic studio space and mucking about at home with a small army of volcæ - kick, modular and drum have been joined by bass, FM and sample via a 'producer pack' bundle (+ mixer and a case) I got a good deal on. surprised by the bass being my fave of the new ones! FM has some good sounds and some lame, the controls they've surfaced on it are good, wouldn't really want to do a patch from scratch though. sample is very greedy on the old MIDI channels and I've not used it a heap.

to get around the classic "it's just one bar loops!" volca criticism I've got them all under the control of a pyramid, which is a bit like if you made the MIDI sequencing parts of Ableton into their own hardware instrument. I've enjoyed putting some time into it properly, a great way to stay off the computer.

Cool! I keep thinking of doing something like that, but then Ableton is so flexible and powerful. Once I have a space to do it, I may try something like that with my Circuit (albeit with way less tracks).

Thanks haitch, I'm just wrapping up an album project so now is the time to try something new.

There's one track on the record that is primarily Volca FM & Keys and I'm really happy with the sound. Still love the FM although I keep coming back to like two patches ('Plucky' and one of the bass patches), lol. Keys I usually have to combine with a digital synth to add some attack and sheen, but the blend is soooo much better than either could do on their own.

I still don't do any real hardware workflows, just program midi with purposefully lame/neutral softsynth sounds and then do a couple 'live' takes sending it out and twisting knobs.

i impulsively bought an electribe sampler from a sketchy guy on craigslist (his price was $100+ cheaper than on reverb, he showed me a photo of his storage space filled with boxed music gear, and tried to sell me a moog out of his car when he dropped it off). i don't know what i'm doing yet but it seems pretty intuitive. i don't really know what i want to make with it yet either. i don't have a spare SD card so i can't save my samples/patterns yet, but that's probably a good thing at this point. i spent my lunch break today sampling orchestral strings and then pitching them up and down and layering them to sound gross and seasick. pretty fun.

I finally have a place at to play in my house! Here’s a little jam with my Circuit controlling some external synths:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=dX8W7jADLwE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX8W7jADLwE