all things SYNTH & KEYBOARD thread

jibberish · November 30, 2013, 05:19:42 PM

just as a starter...lookee what those scamps at arturia just cooked up for 3 bills street price:

the micro brute. same nasty oscillator and filter plus some kind of step sequencer now. I haven't looked at any demos yet, just saw it cruising black Friday deals online.

RAGER · November 30, 2013, 05:27:46 PM

Been hearing about them for bit. I'm on the Arturia forums. I love my MiniBrute. I'm considering a Novation Bass Station II. I'm also eyeballing a Korg MS2000 with keys. I didn't jump on that rack mount one soon enough and it went away.

Also Elektron Analog Keys. Drool. Maybe spring time.

Beta Cloud · December 03, 2013, 05:16:54 AM

got a minibrute, love it and wouldn't leave it ever. keeper. wish it had a sequencer like the micro. rumors of firmware updates promise such. remains to be seen. using software seq's in the interim.
demo'd a korg ms2000 at guit center and hated the construction. seemed to be a flubby toy. awkward lil keys/just me.
my main keeper is my moog sub phatty.
a demo i did when i first got it, (the audio is actually my macbook output picking up my headphones, but it totally RAWKS!).
fantastic synth. simply fantastic.

Beta Cloud · December 03, 2013, 05:28:12 AM

this time, a MINIBRUTE vid. again, headphone audio... ON THE RUN-

Beta Cloud · December 03, 2013, 05:33:14 AM

and finally, an early MINIBRUTE demo i did when i first got it.. same audio schtuff.

RAGER · December 03, 2013, 10:40:59 AM

Yeah I remember you put those up a while back. Good stuff.

I was at my buddy's shop yesterday and he had a supernova rack. Seems interesting. I can't stop.

Beta Cloud · December 03, 2013, 09:06:34 PM

Quote from: RAGER on December 03, 2013, 10:40:59 AM
Yeah I remember you put those up a while back. Good stuff.

I was at my buddy's shop yesterday and he had a supernova rack. Seems interesting. I can't stop.

thanks and sorry if i'm spreading a bit thin there bruh.

Beta Cloud · December 03, 2013, 09:08:30 PM

so anyone out there using an analog sequencer?
would love a doepfer dark time.

RAGER · December 03, 2013, 10:25:24 PM

Not me just yet but it's only a matter of time before I start delving into the modular world. I'm just getting started.

mortlock · December 04, 2013, 12:37:00 AM

I like the spread of tv trays..

I sold my mini b. I didn't like it. I like my concertmate better as far as keyboard based synths go. this is the shit I have the most fun with..

RAGER · December 04, 2013, 12:44:16 PM

Do you have an MG-1?

mortlock · December 05, 2013, 02:06:05 AM

yeah, its a little beat up but it still kicks ass. moogmutilatedpowerelectronics

RAGER · December 05, 2013, 10:32:38 AM

That's badass. Id love to have one.

So I went to check out that Novation Supernova at my buddy's shop and the reason it's so cheap is that it doesn't work. lights come on but no sound. So he said he'd sell it to me as is for $100. it was marked at $200. Fully functioning these are usually around the $800 mark and some synth nerds prefer these over the Virus Ti. That's a whoa! to me. From some of my research the culprit might be a 30 pin DAC chip. So I think I'm gonna go for it. If I can fix it myself, awesome. If I have to pay somebody a couple hundo, I'm still happy. Prolly pick it up after work today.

jibberish · December 05, 2013, 05:18:48 PM

bond it to a Winnebago frame, that should fix 'er right up.

RAGER · December 06, 2013, 12:54:24 PM

Here she be.

Beta Cloud · December 07, 2013, 12:26:51 AM

man, i hope the fix works out for you... what a steal if it does!

jibberish · December 07, 2013, 09:29:34 AM

ya no shit.

you could open it up and look it over for physical issues like a cold solder joint , broken wire/component lead, lifted trace, fuse/fuseable link that is shot. make sure the wall wart is full voltage. look the pcb's over for off colored areas and also puffy looking caps,

you can also look over the main brains of the thing and see if it is in a zif socket of some sort. those are user replaceable.

call the company and ask for tech tips. "my baby went quiet, help me please" how could they refuse? haha
seriously, they would know if there is a common issue like yours and the fix is well known.

RAGER · December 07, 2013, 12:40:47 PM

It's probably just because I don't know what I'm doing and when I figure it out I'll find what's wrong with it but I haven't yet. Using my Micron as a master keyboard midi-wise, I'm able to go through programs and manipulate LFO's, oscillators, and effects. I only spent about 45 minutes with it last night. I'm off tomorrow so I'll be able to spend some quality time with it. Could be that when it warms up it does wonky shit. Will report but for the sounds I'm getting out of now it's worth the hundo.

Gotta play my guitar again one of these days. heh.

RAGER · December 07, 2013, 06:35:09 PM

There are no less than 4 Korg MS2000's on the local CL. Fucking hell.

eyeprod · December 10, 2013, 08:55:11 PM

It's cool to see that this thread has gotten more interesting. I've been way into my electronic toys lately as well. Finally getting back in the zone, where I understand the synthesis part of it well enough to actually dial things in the way I really want to. You know, it's easy and basically satisfying to just do some filter sweeps and play with the LFO etc, but I like to get a little more out of it. It's fun to delve into. I get inspiration from things that I listen to, and for me it's funny how I end up dwelling in the 80's. So much cool electronic shit going on back then and it was raw because it was new at the time.

So all I have is my minibrute, a casio type keyboard (I really only use it for the drum machine) and my guitar pedal board. I've got a little mixer that I use to plug in any or all of the instruments that I want to be able to route through the minibrutes' audio in. I've got my bass, casio, and even a drum mic (snare or kick) going in, and they can all trigger the synth. The minibrute is a great little unit. Granted, it has it's limitations and it can feel a bit like a toy compared to some other synths, but the same can easily be said for most "student level" synths, AKA the cheaper ones. I've owned a lot of cool analog synths over the years and most were in that same category. The only ones I wish I still had was the Prodigy, the Liberation and maybe the Juno 60. The Lib was actually kind of a lame synth imo, but you can strap it on, so it was cool. The MB has a lot of neat features and so I find it to be a keeper. I'm excited to get one of those microBrutes. The demos sound amazing.

So anyway, I've been using that casio drum machine for kicks. Practicing along with it, jamming electronic shit like Chrome and whatnot. Sometimes it sounds surprisingly good going through the minibrute filter, but I think it would be better to get a dedicated drum unit of some sort. Something smaller and better sounding. I'm leaning towards something older and simpler. I just ordered one of those new Ibanez analog delay pedals for my synth board. Theres a mini novation synth that looks and sounds dope. I need to pick up a polyphonic synth of some sort and that one is on my radar for sure. I forget the name of it at the moment.

So what are you guys doing with your synth rigs?

RAGER · December 11, 2013, 01:44:15 PM

Hey Robert, good to hear from ya! Can you post a pic of your settings on the minibrute when you have instruments into it? I tried briefly to run my bass through it but it didn't seem like the line level was enough to trigger anything. You using a pedal before it?

This is usually my view late nights on my days off.

jibberish · December 11, 2013, 03:19:00 PM

ya eyeprod. my nephew is going to cover that Egypt stinks that I made up on your rhythm..haha. yeah.

I am kind of jonesing for an audio input and vocorder on the next synth I get too.

I am also working on something simple and lightweight to add to a MIDI keyboard so that I can set it on the ground and play it like a foot organ pedalboard. if I keep the extensions light, the springs in the keys can lift it.
I also am thinking about going active for my multiple/latchable sustain pedal system. then I can use mom. contact switches and latches and SS relays, but I have to power it. but then I could have LED's showing the status of each pedal (off or sustaining or latched on)

why am I doing these 2 things? I cant play more than 2 synths at a time = unacceptable. I want to be able to play 4 at once. there is no reason to tie up a foot or hand on a pad that takes 45sec to unfold. I could hit a key one time with the sustain latched and forget about it until it is time to kill the note by unlatching or globally resetting the sustains.
timing pads is too much work unless every one will have the same duration through the entire song. glwt.

secondly, if I can play a couple synths by foot, I can play a guitar along with that. or ultimately a chapman stick, now that they are making uber precise aluminum bodies for WAAAAAY cheaper ($1700 for the 10 string aluminum body)

picture an original Yamaha DX-7, a big 76key casio (my $20 garage sale score for a MIDI controller), and that korg x-10. then an alesis drum machine, boss gm synth module and a Kawaii KR-4 rack module and whatever pedals I want to borrow from my son besides my HM-2. I would also like to get my old 8track HD recorder fired up just to use the mixer and effects. I have to find the camera and put something in the virgin photobucket account that I have actually started

eyeprod · December 11, 2013, 07:30:38 PM

nice Jib. I have a friend who has taken a microkorg brain and attached it to an old organ pedal keyboard. I guess it's all done with CV, so supposedly it was pretty easy to switch out. I need to get a pic of that, along with some of his other cool homemade stuff. He does a one man show. Sounds right along the lines of what you have in mind.

Hey Rager, nice to hear from you too. I don't have any pics, but you do need to boost a guitar signal before it will properly trigger the mb when the gate is set to Audio. Optionally, you can set the gate to hold and you should be able to hear the bass going through the filter, but the envelope won't affect the filter unfortunately. You'll still want to boost it to a certain degree. I've used distortion pedals, some work on their own and with others I ran a clean boost after it and before the mb. Now that I'm using the mixer, I crank the preamp and adjust the main as necessary. It works a lot better. I can even play the bass clean into the mixer and use the mb for distortion. It does this very well. That thing is like an ultra-super-filter-mod-distortion box. It would also make one hell of a wah if you hook up an expression pedal. Anyway, sometimes the envelope is kinda weird on a string instrument, esp if you have it set to Fast. Like when the instrument is still ringing out but the envelope time ends and it briefly cuts out then restarts. I haven't found a way to get rid of that, but just set it to Slow if you want long ringing notes and it's not an issue.

To get multiple things going without using midi... well there's a few ways to do that. The audio in on a synth is really a great tool. With my casio running into the mb, it can potentially be three things going at once: drum machine, mb, and cheesy casio keys. The mb has a 3 way gate switch on the back which determines what is triggering the oscillator. KBD is when you want to just play the keys, you will only hear the audio in when you're playing a note. Hold will make the osc drone endlessly and audio in is wide open. Audio is when you want the audio in to trigger the osc and also go through the filter envelope.

So if I want a snare hit to trigger the synth, I run the snare mic into my mixer, boost the signal, set the gate on the mb to Audio, make sure the audio in is up on the minibrutes mixer section, also turn up whatever oscillator waveforms or noise that I want to use, and that's it. Now when I hit the snare I will hear the snare hit (from audio in) and also the synth sound I dialed in. They will both be going through the filter and envelopes. You can mix as desired of course, even turn the audio in down and only hear the synth. You can use this setup for any audio in source.

To jam along with a drum machine and a simple drone, Set the mb gate switch to hold, plug in drum machine, mix audio and oscillator as desired, pick a note to drone on, then pick up a guitar or bass, plug it into a different amp and away you go. It's not even that hard to play the keys and guitar at the same time, or mix on the fly with the mb. If you had a loop pedal, you've got a decent little one man show.

jibberish · December 12, 2013, 02:01:10 AM

awesome. idk if this will help, but an ADSR envelope has the sustain. from the very beginning arp odyssey days, I almost always jacked up the sustain so my notes would hold their state for a long time vs filtering out after so long every time. you can actually set up the sustain/decay to drop the level to where it unmasks a lower volume LFO effect like a filter or w/e. like how a singer maybe hits the note strong, then drops(decays) into a slightly mellower vibrato for the long sustain. sharp attack, fairly fast, but smooth decay into the lower level sustain with the LFO effect, then 0 release when singer stops

turn off the decay too if you want so whatever state it is in when the attack finishes it will stay up there.
nasty synth lead stuff is full on 0 attack, 0 decay, full sustain, generally zero release too..like an organ: instant on, constant full volume, instant off.

crap like a guitar sounding dynamic is where the envelope really helps..banjo, harpsichord, pizzicatto strings..all those short duration sort of "plucked" sounding things use the decay and the sustain turned down since the note is meant to die shortly after the pluck.
after sustain times out to silence, the release is cancelled out since there is nothing left to release.
a bit of release makes a reverb-ish effect at the end, PROVIDED there is something left to release from heh.

it seems that I could get things to sort of confuse the machine setting sustains to zero and releases to infinity somewhere along the way. that is obviously an unnecessary and useless setting and I cant remember which machine.

also a repeating effect is usually a LFO influence vs the envelope. the envelope is reset on a keypress, so it should NOT "re-ADSR" itself during the same keypress.
all kinds of shit is assignable to LFO's. also any feedback loop could sound like re-envelope by repeating something.

however, if each audio input that exceeds the gate level resets the adsr, you are feeling the disadvantage of a single oscillator setup vs a polyphonic which sucks up a bunch of notes before the first played get replaced by the most recently played. I have to play with one to see what the envelopes feel like.

I need to play with meeeelleeeons of them

I REALLY want the audio input shit now. thanks a ton haha

eyeprod · December 12, 2013, 07:41:02 PM

yeah, once you try one you'll see. It's just a symptom of this particular synth. The minibrutes ADSR envelopes have the switch for slow or fast and it's bizarre. That switch affects each slider in the envelope and both fast and slow have their limitations. It's kind of a pain in the ass. If I max out the ATTACK on fast setting but still want a little slower attack, I am forced to switch it to slow and start all over in trying to achieve the actual desired attack. And it's not like slow starts off where fast ended, if you get what I"m saying...They should have just combined the two like most synths I've known. Notice that this feature is not on the new microbrute. It has fast only.

Thanks for the tips btw