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Post by gorsynth on Jul 15, 2018 8:42:44 GMT -5
4) Toy keyboards (portasounds etc) You wanted thin and grainy, right? Run them through cheap guitar pedals (reverb, delay, distortion) and no-one would guess you found it in a bin. Some are actually "proper" synthesisers, but with all the controls removed and typically no filter. 5) String synths & Organs String synths (or "stringers") could find some uses in DS, I think. Trouble is the 70s/*0s originals have been creeping up in price, e.g. Solina, Krumar, Roland etc. Limited sound palette but do have a "vibe" as they are analogue but restricted in the range of sounds. A modern, cheap & great-sounding take on this sound would be the Waldorf Streichfett. Organs can go dirt cheap, can be massive, break down a lot and I would love to collect them if I had a car, time, and space. Making DS on one of those massive old two-tier organs would just be amazing 6) Analogue In terms of value for money and usefulness, not great for DS. However in the cheap & good & MIDI category I would put; a) Arturia MicroBrute; cheap now second hand as they have just released new versions. Great starter synths -- suprisingly versatile, great MIDI & CV connectivity, patchable, cheap, robust. Do some YouTube searching to see how to get the best out of them. Like most modern analogues they are clean-sounding/low noise, but a general tip is to run them through cheap effects to dirty them up. Will take about effects later. b) The Korg MS 20 Mini. Again cheap (have seen for < 250 second-hand) but a complete synth. Very dirty, very characteristic sound with the two filters. Great learner synth but the Korg way of naming things back in the day was a bit weird. Pretty much everyone with a synth collection has an MS 20 because they are awesome. Can process external audio to dirty-up your digital synths, or DAW stems. c) Volca Keys. Metallic-sounding but a cheap poly analogue synth with a built-in dirty delay. Some Berlin-school folks like it. d) Korg Monologue. Don't have one, but everyone raves about it. I don't know anything about virtual analogue synths, and they tend to be more modern, so haven't talked about em.
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Post by gorsynth on Jul 15, 2018 8:43:31 GMT -5
General tips
- MIDI controller keyboards. Very cheap second hand. What you want depends heavily on how heavily you rely on DAW automation & soft synths. I don't, so I don't have one. A lot of the synths listed above make great controller keyboards -- ppl love the feel of the DX-7 for example. You might just save yourself money & space buying a 2nd hand synth with a nice keybed & a good enough MIDI implementation.
- When buying any old gear check to see if software editors are available! One open format for editors is CTRLR, CTRLR "panels" (editors) are all free I think? Failing that you are probably looking at MidiQuest for the older hardware, which is not free! It really is pot luck though, do some web searching. The famous analogy with trying to program 80s/90s synths via the device itself is "like trying to paint your hallway through the letterbox" so editors help if you want to tweak the preset sounds.
- Effects make all the difference. You probably want to run digital synths through some crusty pedals or cheap delays like the Korg Monotron. Also note 80s/90s digital effects units are cheap as hell (50 - 100) and add instant grit and exactly that vibe from the era. Some also great for guitar as well, e.g. MidiVerb II. Quadraverbs etc. Zoom 1201 even cheaper but some ppl like em.
- Want some saturation, a little compression and/or distortion to glue things together and warm things up? Record your DAW mix to cassette, then play that back into your DAW.
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Post by stormcrow on Jul 15, 2018 15:13:36 GMT -5
Great knowledge here! Are you a DS musician, producer or whatever?
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Post by gorsynth on Jul 15, 2018 15:25:23 GMT -5
Great knowledge here! Are you a DS musician, producer or whatever? Thanks, hope ppl find it useful. I've been playing around trying to make music on and off over the years, but not any DS. Reading about DS on here has got me more interested in medieval forms of music though, and I like my 90s gear so I hope to have a go at some DS soon, when I have the time & energy
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jul 17, 2018 23:29:56 GMT -5
Welcome, awesome write-up. Sounds like you really know your stuff. I think getting our hands dirty with real synthesis is how the genre should be evolving, so this info is really important imo. - When buying any old gear check to see if software editors are available! One open format for editors is CTRLR, CTRLR "panels" (editors) are all free I think? Failing that you are probably looking at MidiQuest for the older hardware, which is not free! It really is pot luck though, do some web searching. The famous analogy with trying to program 80s/90s synths via the device itself is "like trying to paint your hallway through the letterbox" so editors help if you want to tweak the preset sounds. Somebody made a CTRLR panel for the JD990 a while back but didn't keep it up to date and I cannot for the life of me get it to communicate with my machine. I guess there's a tablet editor for it, but I really want to sculpt it with my midi controller. I even bought an official Roland midi-to-usb cable hoping it would somehow translate that mysterious "sysex" data, which it didn't (though was a very good investment for other reasons, it's worth paying extra). That said, programming it with what's on the box, I'm shocked by how efficient and intuitive it is. I think it's an amazing tool, though it's my first rackmount synth so I can't exactly speak from experience. Edit: Nevermind, I just did a google search and saw there's a different CTRLR panel for the JD990 from a year ago, somehow I missed that. I need to give that try.
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Post by stormcrow on Aug 4, 2018 10:59:37 GMT -5
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Post by BΓ₯vingr on Aug 13, 2018 8:00:42 GMT -5
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Post by Pilgrim's Shadow on Aug 14, 2018 8:52:31 GMT -5
Anyone has experience with Lord of the Springs Synth?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2018 1:21:47 GMT -5
I have the Roland JV-35, Mortiis was what inspired me to pick up a Synthesizer and I could not find the 30, so I went up 5 lol. Does anyone have any recommendations that would compliment the JV-35?
Anyone played with one of these? I am seriously considering picking one up in the future.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2018 17:44:11 GMT -5
I know its not a synthesizer but I just picked up the Yamaha PSR-E463 and I am super excited to use it.
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Post by skirmisher on Oct 29, 2019 3:47:44 GMT -5
Has anyone here experimented with modular synths at all? Seems like a great way to never get any actual work done, haha. I have a modular setup. I don't use it as much with DS related stuff but sometimes it works nicely in that context. It's a great way to learn how synthesizers and synthesis in general works since you have to patch everything yourself. My setup is built pretty conveniently though as I basically have two full synth setups in one rack and then I can patch around mixing and matching their modules if I want to. I don't have anything too crazy, really. I'm willing to admit though that you start procrastinating very quickly and sometimes it feels it's not about playing or creating but dicking around. It's not a coincidence there are some enthusiasts who don't actually create music or don't even have an interest for it. BUT when you get to know it and understand how your stuff works it can be a powerful tool. Most of the time you can just patch anything you want and get creating but the fun aspect about modulars is that when you start patching you tend to end up with something you didn't expect and the behavior/sound/both of your patch inspires you to create something you wouldn't have found otherwise. I do recommend modular but you really need to be ready to study it since if you're not, you won't get anything out of it. Anyone has experience with Lord of the Springs Synth? Wait, this is free? I'm definitely going to give it a shot later this week. Sounds beautiful.
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Post by skirmisher on Nov 2, 2019 5:43:31 GMT -5
Ok I checked lord of the springs out and I recommend trying it for sure. It's very likely I'm going to use this later on in my music. You can get anything from ambient wash to 16bit style lofi piano tones etc. but the bit crusher is my favorite part, it sounds very nice heavily distorted. It's quite simple and easy to use too.
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Post by hru on Nov 10, 2019 13:00:26 GMT -5
evolution evs-1
nightmarish use / dreamlike lofi sound
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Post by skirmisher on Jan 15, 2020 3:24:31 GMT -5
I see Andrew posted this one on the frist page but here's the thing. I managed to get my hands on a fairly priced Yamaha TG33. It's the enhanced keyboardless desktop version of the SY22 Vector synth. What this means is that it can play four sounds at the same time of which two can be FM patches and two are lo-fi PCM samples. You can adjust the parameters of each sound individually and then blend them seamlessly with a 360 degree joystick with sounds in up, right, down and left. Or just use two, you can do that too. Or just one. Man this thing sounds great and is so much fun to play with. It's a major pain in the ass to program this but that's how it was back in the day. It's still better than rack stuff and I think there are some PC editors available for this, I have to look into that. I'm going to be maximizing the stuff I can get out of this box and patch my own presets, I already have a few good ones. After I'm done, I might do a DS/Ambient project only using this synth. We'll see. I recorded some of it on my debut album and it worked out pretty good. If you can get your hands on one of these Vector machines, grab it! They are great.
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Post by skirmisher on Feb 28, 2020 10:35:47 GMT -5
So I decided to dive head first into the rack world. I will most likely end up with a few bits of hardware studio stuff like EQ's and Compressors but right now I'm playing with a Yamaha TG500 rack rompler I just got. I've been looking into this early 90's gem and they seem to be a little hard to come across. It came out in 1992 so two years after the D50 and two years before JV1080 which, in my opinion, puts it in the perfect place as far as sounds go and damn it sounds amazing. Probably using this one for the next stuff I'll write.
Here's a demo:
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