moogbadger's forum posts 17

https://www.synthanatomy.com/2020/01/korg-arp-2600-mini-photos-from-guitar-center-show-a-smaller-version-leak.html

Real or a Photoshop job?

I believe it's a Yamaha YC-30 combo organ, but I might be wrong? It had a ribbon slider for that whooping sound, I think...

Oh it's ok, I haven't been sat here sulking iike a moody teenager (the girlfriend came to visit, which is why I've been quiet, as she takes over my entire life when she's here!).

Actually, it's quite interesting to see what people make of academic electronic music in general? I studied all this stuff about six years ago when I did my Masters in music at Huddersfield University, and I must admit that academics seem to go wild for pieces where not very much happens (the ultimate being John Cage's 4:33, where literally nothing happens, of course). I thought Eliane's stuff was the best of a bad bunch, if you know what I mean? This has been my experience of academia in general - that academics seem to be impressed by stuff that anyone (else) who's really into gear or synths would immediately think - 'but that's just one note, held down on a whatever, for six minutes!'. It's like the academics are actually behind what's going on in the real world, when surely it should be the other way around? I found parts of my lectures really, really frustrating. For example, we did a whole term on 'noise', and somehow they failed to mention stuff like Sunn ((0)). It's like they've got a blind spot when it comes to anything that doesn't fall into their little hermetic world.

I can't think of many people who've used the ARP 2500 in a strictly pop music context, though? They're so large and rare that I think a lot of them got installed in universities or academies, and so have never had their full potental explored in terms of making actual tunes or pieces of music where there's chord sequences or something more accessible. I did know about Close Encounters...that was one of my first exposures to synths, along with Jarre, the Human League, Dr Who and so on...

In avant-garde/academic circles, there's a composer called Eliane Radigue - she's an old lady now - who's used the ARP 2500 for most of her composing life. Her music is based on Tibetan Buddhism, so it's very meditative, but if you track down her albums on YouTube, it's instructive to hear what she's done with this huge old piece of lab equipment. It's electronic, but somehow quite organic as well...

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

Hiya Jim, No, neither do I! Mind you, a) I'm still not sure how the Odyssey 'really' works (as in, I'm sure there's tonalities I've yet to discover, so maybe I should work all those out first before declaring that it's redundant) and b) Korg have made a point of calling this the 'full-sized' 2600, so maybe they're planning a smaller or a desktop version of it for the future? Sort of like what they did with the MS20, but the other way around?

Look at as many possible applications for your production skills as possible; don't focus exclusively on pop music production (unless you've got total dedication and determination to succeed. There's an awful lot of luck involved there! You can be really, really good and still get 'nowhere' if you're not doing something which captures the zeitgeist, or isn't in the right place at the right time. Very often, artists achieve success through creating a 'buzz', a lot of which is out of your hands)...I'd look at doing audio for games, VR, and even installations or theatre/films...It might not be as glamourous, but it's all valuable experience.

https://www.modemachines.com/programmer-1

It would be worth saving up an extra 100 dollars and getting a Korg Minilogue.

Another angle is the whole 'chiptune' thing, if you want to add some really retro flavour to tracks! I'm no expert on this by any means, but there's no need to go and buy an old Commodore 64 to get those classic SID / NES videogame sounds (although you can if you want!). There are plenty of VSTs out there which do the job, some of them very cheap or free.

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/9-of-the-best-chiptune-vst-plug-ins-554428

I use Plogue's Chipsounds, but that's quite pricey.

This isn't : https://www.audiothing.net/instruments/minibit/

Another way to get that sound would be just to restrict yourself to the simplest waveforms on any synth (pulse, square, sawtooth), use the bitcrusher in Logic to reduce the sample rate and bit depth, and deploy a very old trick to make 'chords'; the programmers of game tunes in the 80s used to get round limited polyphony by playing flurries of notes (e.g. C, E, G, C) really fast, (1/64 grid resolution or more in the sequencer). At this speed the ear is (almost) 'tricked' into thinking it's hearing chords rather than an arpeggio...

Jim is quite right; Logic is probably the way to go for your DAW if you want to make 'songs' with a conventional verse/chorus/middle-8/ad-lib to fade sort of structure; it's very easy to move blocks and chunks around to create song arrangements in Logic. You CAN do that in Ableton Live too, of course, but in my view Ableton's real strength is creating little loops and repeating motifs, MPC style, in the session view section, which you can jam around with endlessly in real-time (throwing in wacky effects treatments, timestretching, pitchshiting, stuttering and so on) to combine phrases and loops in ways you might not have considered if you were just writing a song. I see it as more of a DJ tool, still, and its workflow lends itself brilliantly to live, flowing elecrronic music. Plenty of people combine them to get the best of both worlds, using Ableton to jam around with to create surprises, which they then import into Logic to arrange into a more coherent structure. You can build complete songs in Ableton, but IMHO, the automation and editing tools are a bit small and fiddly and cramped, whereas in Logic it's crystal clear.

For 80s synthpop, Logic also comes bundled with some simple synths which, although now very old in VST terms, are actually really still quite useful for this genre. The ES-E ensemble and ES-P polyphonc synths will get you in the Juno ballpark, the ESM is a passable stab at a 303-like synth, the ES1 simulates a typical analogue monosynth, the EFM-1 is a very basic FM synth, and the ES-2 gives you wavetables and modulation complexity if you're feeling a bit braver. Gear snobs might scoff at these ageing stock synths, but it's possible to get some very respectable results with them, even in 2017!

I started out with a Casio CZ1000. That was a baptism of fire! Can't think of a less intuitive synth for a callow 17 year-old newbie...! I had no idea what anything meant, I just used to change everything at random and hope for the best. In fact I still don't fully understand what phase distortion synthesis is...the thing is, they were polyphonic and cheap at the time. They still are cheap if you can find one...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_distortion_synthesis

If you're in love with 80s sounds and have a Mac you can't go wrong with:

Native Instruments FM8 (FM Synthesis powerstation)

If you have Native Instruments Kontakt, you might want to get some Fairlight or Emulator sounds. These are good: http://www.hollowsun.com/HS2/products/vintage_samplers/index.htm

Recently I've discovered this too, LoopLord's Modalities ROMPLER:

https://www.gearnews.com/modalities-plug-nails-synths-sounds-depeche-mode-cheap/

Which claims to (and does) give you a cheat's way to some high-quality Depeche Mode type sounds. It's not very editable though, it's just a simple collection of convincing preset sounds.

As stated by others, the Korg Volca FM is a great little DX7 in a box with editing features the original could only have dreamed of.

For drums, you can't go wrong with samples of any of the early Linn drum machines (Prince, Human League), the Roland TR-808/909/606, or the Oberheim DMX (think New Order, 'Blue Monday'). Samples of these are freely available on the internet.

Hope this helps a bit.

Philadelphia is an awfully long way away from Leeds, England UK...

Yes, Leeds, UK...hence the goth! It was everywhere when I was growing up here. You couldn't move for dry ice, spiders, crimped hair and black lipstick in the late 80s. And flangers of course. Always flangers. Those were the days.

Ah, I wondered why everyone raved about the Dynacomp; not 'just another compressor', then...

Yes, I try to get a nice even clean tone from the amp before I slap the FX on. It does seem to help.

Find my sound? I need to learn how to play the f**ing thing first! I still miss the fingering for Bb and F sometimes after 25 years of trying to play...I got distracted by synths...jumping between hollowbodies, Jazzmasters, telecasters, acoustics and basses means I've never really mastered any of them too!

I've thought about the MXR distortions actually, because I've read that Terry Bickers of House of Love used to use one on those LSD-soaked early Creation releases, and I've always liked his overdriven guitar sound (although I suspect a lot of the magic came from an MXR Dynacomp as well to add crispness). Anyway, thanks!

I'm on a bit of a limited budget, and I tend to mix digital modelling pedals with analogue ones. I'm amazed at digital for what they can do now with tape echo emulations and reverbs. I've never heard a convincing digital distortion pedal though (apart from that deliberate bitcrushing effect, of course; maybe they exist, but I've yet to hear one!), which is why I'm on the lookout for a versatile solid-state one.

Crikey, this thread is on fire!

Would this be a bad time to ask anyone what the EQD Cloven Hoof fuzz is like? I'm asking because my only distortion pedals are the EHX Little Big Muff and the EHX Double Muff (I actually prefer the Double Muff, because it seems to make everything a bit less fizzy; with the LBM I sometimes struggle to get 'definition' out of it, and it seems to turn everthing I play into the 'same' sort of featureless angry buzz). I like the demos I've heard of the EQD CH, but it does seem a bit expensive for a fuzz pedal.

Part of the problem is that I'm not a very good distortion/riffy guitar player; I'm more into ethereal tones with loads of reverb and delay and modulation. I suppose what I'm looking for is a nice pedal that I can put before these effects which gives me a bit of dirt, but doesn't overpower the overall texture. With the EHX stuff going into reverb with long tails, everything I play just comes out sounding like early Jesus and Mary Chain, which is fun...but a bit more subtlety would be nice too.

I'm looking for an overdrive pedal...aren't I? Can anyone recommend one? Would a humble BOSS OD-3 do the job? Think early 90s bands like Curve, Slowdive, MBV...

I know Kevin Shields of MBV has literally hundreds of different distortion pedals today. Does anyone know what he was using around the time of 'Isn't Anything' or 'Loveless'?

All I know is that the Little Big Muff is the same pedal as the Big Muff, same sound. Just a smaller pedal. I can't speak for the others you mention.