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Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2839
Posted: February 03 2015 at 07:04
Hi Gerinski, that was a good buy !!!! We're getting a new house in a bit, so !!! the 18x11 garage gets converted (eventually) into a proper studio. With, incidentally, inbuilt psychedelic light show. ;-) I'm going to get some second / third / thirty third hand synths, and that looks like one worth investigating !!!
Cstack, I have to say that holding keys down with paperweights is a musical first for me. ;-) There y'go, spirit of experimentation, well done, mate. ;-)
Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2839
Posted: February 03 2015 at 07:06
This is what my crappy DIY skills will be attempting to emulate, but with more auralex (live end / dead end) and a freaky light show hanging off a lighting bar.
Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2839
Posted: February 03 2015 at 07:13
As a PS, I don't know if you gentlemens have seen this, but Livid Instruments produce a "brain" which can be wired up with pots and sliders to make custom MIDI controllers. The only thing a physical modular synth confers is the ease of twiddling everything at once.
Behold........ just add pots. They do some pre-built MIDI controllers already, but it's possible to build custom kits using this, some solder, swearing and withering looks from your Missus.
Joined: May 23 2013
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 2839
Posted: February 03 2015 at 07:49
PS Talking of the EMS Synthi A - which Tom was earlier....
- I saw a few originals in music shops in Manchester in the late 70's. Peter Zinovieff was the quintessential electronic genius, and they're certainly interesting to use, but the patchboard is nightmarish. Such was 70's technology. ;-)
Zinovieff has a tie in with Delia Derbyshire of "Dr Who Theme / drank herself to death" fame. Of course, the original theme was done without synths. I actually did a version of it on the first Brotherhood album - not available any more - a seven minute jam on the original Dr Who theme, called "Variations on a theme". I'll slap it on the next album, it's worth a listen if you dig that kind of groovy thang, man. ;-)
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5154
Posted: February 03 2015 at 11:02
Davesax1965 wrote:
Hi Gerinski, that was a good buy !!!! We're getting a new house in a bit, so !!! the 18x11 garage gets converted (eventually) into a proper studio. With, incidentally, inbuilt psychedelic light show. ;-) I'm going to get some second / third / thirty third hand synths, and that looks like one worth investigating !!!
I hope I will be pleased with it . They are not easy to find in keyboard model, at least here in Europe, it took me quite a while to find it and I had to travel to northern Netherland to collect it (not that far for US standards I know!). You can much more easily find the rack version (there are 2, Vintage Keys and Vintage Keys Pro) but then you need a separate keyboard controller and I didn't want that (I believe that the sounds are not exactly the same in the keyboard and rack versions).
Incidentally the seller was the keyboardist / singer of the now discontinued Dutch Symphonic Prog band Salmon who are listed in PA. He was a very nice guy and gave me a copy of their 2 CDs which I plan to review some day.
The negative sides: E-Mu was purchased by Creative and Creative discontinued all the line of physical instruments (they concentrate on virtual instruments only, I believe) so support and spare parts may be hard to get. As it comes from factory it ONLY includes vintage keyboards and synths sounds (including Yamaha CP70 as piano and Moog Taurus as bass), so you do not have traditional instruments such as guitars, bells, whistles, winds, brass etc except for the few Mellotron patches for flute, strings, brass etc. Originally there was a line-up of additional SIMM cards with different sets of sounds, 'GM and other traditional instruments', 'orchestral', 'techno', 'hip-hop' etc but these are discontinued and difficult to find nowadays. There are one or two guys who still 'burn' them on blank SIMM cards but they ask high prices, I bought the one with traditional instruments (it includes also the GM bank) in order to complement the factory presets, but I had to pay a significant price for it, I haven't received it yet, it should be a matter of days.
Good luck with your studio! I don't have the space even for a simple 'playing' room .
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5154
Posted: February 03 2015 at 11:10
Davesax1965 wrote:
As a PS, I don't know if you gentlemens have seen this, but Livid Instruments produce a "brain" which can be wired up with pots and sliders to make custom MIDI controllers. The only thing a physical modular synth confers is the ease of twiddling everything at once.
Behold........ just add pots. They do some pre-built MIDI controllers already, but it's possible to build custom kits using this, some solder, swearing and withering looks from your Missus.
Yeah, or you have also physical keyboards specifically designed to work as controllers on MIDI instruments, but still you have to constantly program which slider or pot controls what etc, that's what I didn't want and why I chose for the Vintage Keys keyboard model. Of course sometimes you still have to assign controllers to functions but I reckon it's pretty easy as it is an integrated instrument.
Joined: February 05 2015
Location: Ontario
Status: Offline
Points: 193
Posted: February 05 2015 at 21:37
There is now a virtual VCS3 with keyboard you can have for $15. Apparently they did a remarkable job on this - a primo, primo app.
A 30 minute youtube has the guy admitting he doesnt really know what he is doing - but who did? (Besides Vorhaus, that is) . The thing was a marvel of complete randomness.
That Moog Modular software has me salivating. Any app of that developed yet?
Speaking of Synthi - has there been a topic heading here yet about lesser-known (besides Who,Hawkwind,Floyd) bands using it back in the day?
Joined: May 19 2013
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Status: Offline
Points: 554
Posted: February 19 2015 at 23:53
Meltdowner wrote:
What do you guys think of the most recent analog synths, like Korg, Novation, Arturia, etc?
I really like the Novation Bass Station II, the Doepfer Dark Energy II, the Waldorf Pulse 2, the Studio Electronics Boomstars, the MFB Dominion X SED, the Tom Oberheim SEM (patch panel version), the Vermona Perfourmer Mark II and the Vermona Retroverb Lancet (an analog multimode filter with a real built in spring reverb, a flexible LFO, envelope and overdrive).
The new Mellotron 4000D mini is great too.
The modular synth scene is also awesome at the moment, so many great modules from many different companies.
Joined: April 03 2015
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 8
Posted: April 03 2015 at 20:29
I'm using RedTron vst with a MIDI Keyboard, mellotrons have a beautiful sound. It's a shame their sustain is crap (it also sounds pretty bad during note transitions but people usually don't notice it when it's part of the mix among other instruments).
Joined: April 02 2015
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 41
Posted: April 04 2015 at 07:38
There is an interview of Stubbs with Vorhaus. (I would post the link here but for the fact that, for some reason, I'm not allowed to cut and paste.)
Talks about the "importance of forward motion"; the "cumbersome devices of yor".
Also we learn that Derbyshire,Hodgeson & Zinovieff played at the Roundhouse!
And who would of thought that Vorhaus' (doomed to be dated) second lp, a concerto for VCS3s - with the tropical swordfish on the cover - immediately sold so well (jump-boarding off the sucess of WhiteNoise).
Joined: September 03 2005
Location: Olympus Mons
Status: Offline
Points: 15916
Posted: April 04 2015 at 07:57
Y'know, those note-to-note transitions are part of the charm........ I notice, especially with the flute sounds, some notes are louder than others in the final mix. This is what an M400 is all about. Samples sound great, no probs there, but the actual machine has those limitations which are so endearing to many of us..
Joined: September 03 2005
Location: Olympus Mons
Status: Offline
Points: 15916
Posted: April 04 2015 at 09:56
Poly-synths opened a *lot* of doors, yet took a while to warm to. At least the Polymoog was purportedly offering multi mini-moog sounds - when Wakeman utilised 2 or more mini-moogs, it sounded fantastic, yet when he got his hands on a Polymoog, it sounded somewhat cheesy. What's the go there ??
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5154
Posted: April 05 2015 at 08:20
Tom Ozric wrote:
Poly-synths opened a *lot* of doors, yet took a while to warm to. At least the Polymoog was purportedly offering multi mini-moog sounds - when Wakeman utilised 2 or more mini-moogs, it sounded fantastic, yet when he got his hands on a Polymoog, it sounded somewhat cheesy. What's the go there ??
Here's a quite long but interesting article about the Polymoog and why it wasn't the dream polysynth everybody had been hoping for. A lot of features on paper, but in the end its sounds were rather thin and they suffered of reliability problems. There's also a small comment by Keith Emerson about it.
Joined: June 25 2013
Location: Portugal
Status: Offline
Points: 10232
Posted: April 05 2015 at 10:46
^^ Thanks for sharing Gerard
King Only wrote:
I really like the Novation Bass Station II, the
Doepfer Dark Energy II, the Waldorf Pulse 2, the Studio Electronics
Boomstars, the MFB Dominion X SED, the Tom Oberheim SEM (patch panel
version), the Vermona Perfourmer Mark II and the Vermona Retroverb
Lancet (an analog multimode filter with a real built in spring reverb, a
flexible LFO, envelope and overdrive).
The new Mellotron 4000D mini is great too.
The modular synth scene is also awesome at the moment, so many great modules from many different companies.
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The Mellotron and Moog Modular
Topic Options
- I saw a few originals in music shops in Manchester in the late 70's. Peter Zinovieff was the quintessential electronic genius, and they're certainly interesting to use, but the patchboard is nightmarish. Such was 70's technology. ;-)
Davesax1965 wrote:
. They are not easy to find in keyboard model, at least here in Europe, it took me quite a while to find it and I had to travel to northern Netherland to collect it (not that far for US standards I know!). You can much more easily find the rack version (there are 2, Vintage Keys and Vintage Keys Pro) but then you need a separate keyboard controller and I didn't want that (I believe that the sounds are not exactly the same in the keyboard and rack versions).
.
