-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

what are your favorite synths for bass sounds? that's the #1 thing I'm lacking right now. I've got an Oberheim Matrix 6 (I finally got it fixed!) which makes some really lovely & mellow sounds, and I also recently bought an MS-20 Mini but haven't done anything too ambitious with it yet.

the Matrix isn't very good for heavy tweaking on the fly though

read that as heavy twerking on the fly

uhm, I think your MS-20 mini should be able to produce some great bass sounds, although I personally don't like the KORG Sound, it's just too.. "crispy" and "defined" for my taste.

The MS-20 is a fabulous bass synth, probably the best currently-available combo going, in that regard? I always forget about it! So great.

yay for fixed matrix!

my fave bass machines are juno 60 & pro one

i'm in a snit with vintage machines at the moment though since my really fucking expensive prophet 5 hasn't worked at all since i got midi installed

Vintage synths can be so uncompromising, that's why I like them

Well, until they stop working of course.

ha. it wouldn't hurt so much if it didn't sound so incredible when it's working

Speaking of vintage synths, I just realized how much 70's and 80's library music has this sci-fi synth soundscape thing going on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di_HMqlO28E

So many broken synthesizers. ;_;

Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Synths

Actually I'm wondering: Has anyone here played a Synclavier?

no, but if i did i would make it say jammin on the one

I am fascinated/curious about what makes people say this or that synth is good for particular applications, or how to to understand the different character of different synths besides the dry technical details about oscillators and such. e.g. electricsound says he likes the Juno 60 for bass sounds but for whatever reason I associate Juno 60s more with string pads and like mini Moogs or Korg SH101s with bass sounds? Maybe those are just more obvious cliches?

Yeah, it's interesting since I always thought synths to be sonic all-rounders, even with their various configurations and designs. But maybe some people like the sonic capabilites of, let's say, an ARP Odyssey more than the capabilites of a Minimoog in terms of bass/lead/pad?/... sounds.

personally when i say the 60 is good for bass it is because it has nice snappy envelopes and very tight but not wooly low end. it can do string pads well too though, it it a p amazing machine tbh. i appreciate it even more now after five years than i did in my initial rushes of excitement when i first got it

also i have never played a minimoog or sh101

i need to step up my pad game

One day I'll type out my synth adventures but not today. I own a lot of synths. Maybe I will type it. Here we go.

Juno-106 - great entry level synth. Start here and end here if you plan to own house or children. Only issue is that the oscillators like to burn out, and replacing them involves ordering chips and soldering.

Juno-Alpha - teeny tiny, the B is velocity sensitive, super light, super durable, mine got the shit kicked out of it and it still works. There is a cool fifth- and sixth-stage on the envelopes, it's like an ADADSR, so you can make stuttery sounds. It is a pain to program. I bought a PG-300 (the programmer) from a guy who was looking at me like I was a sucker and then I sold it to somebody and understood what a sucker looks like. This takes a little effort to program properly but it's easier than a DX-7. It's good if you're somebody who needs to travel light.

Juno-60 - I think it's this one that has the miracle arpeggiator. Any time I want to do something arpeggiated I borrow one of these guys. I have never owned one but I use them a tonne. It receives clock in so you can send it pulses from Logic using beat mapper to live drum takes and have the arpeggiation stay in time. It also has CV-out so you can double it up with an ARP or a Minimoog. The "ensemble" function is famous and it sounds good, I never felt comfortable using it because any time I turn it on it's like "oh, that sound". This is a great synth and I'd own one except that I own a Jupiter 8.

Jupiter-8 - a weird synth. It's hella expensive, I bought it with a film score budget for a sci-fi movie. It is heavy (a two-person lift, really) and runs hot. The envelopes are too mushy to be really useful for percussion but they are good for bass and pads. I was working on a film where the director hated synthesizers, and he came by the house and kept asking for any noodles to be removed, he just wanted lame-ass indie piano/ukelele plunky-plunks. The Jupiter was the one exception, he loved the Jupiter. It does sound otherworldly, like The Best Synth Ever! But its arpeggiator sucks, it can't be controlled without MIDIfying it (and the kits are poorly reviewed so I haven't done it), it's not particularly routable, and it's too heavy and expensive to really be useful in any home studio. Mine is out on semi-permanent loan to a friend's studio until I get my own space for it, which will probably never happen. I don't know what to do with it, it's kind of like having a convertible in the garage.

Nords - they sound bad. There is something in that frequency spectrum that drives me crazy. Their pianos and organs sound "realistic" without sounding good, and they never sound good in a band. Nord synths are slightly better but still bad-sounding. All that said, I travel with and play a Nord Wave because it's light, it samples, the FM synths sound good, it's got built-in delay and reverb. You have to wrestle hard with these synths to make them sound good but the lightness, durability and usability makes it work it.

Nord Modular - especially these ones. Capable of sounding unbearably good. This is a DSP-run synth where you built a virtual modular on your PC and upload it into the hardware. Like, you drag and drop your modules on to an environment and connect them with patch cords. Super steep learning curve and, like other Nords, sounds terrible 99% of the time, but it worth it for that 1%. I am a thief, not a programmer, I download other people's architectures and tweak them. I have a Memorymoog clone on mine that is so precise in its emulation that it's uncanny. My Nord Modular is my DX-7 and my drum machine, what a great synth. Any time I need to do a shitty film score real quick I turn it on and the score is done.

ARP 2600 - my favourite synth ever, and the only one I use on recordings that I want to be proud of. It never sounds bad. The envelopes are enormously flexible, the CV modulation is amazing, you can build anything and get absolutely lost in creating self-generating patches. Sometimes if I have a houseguest I make a seagull + seashore patch and put it in their room. The spring is noisy but is fun to route sound through it and then back into other things. I am sending mine in to a synth spa in Savannah to get the ring modulator repaired and the connections tricked out. There is no HPF so you have to figure that out if you want to make hi-hats. There is no MIDI, but I use a lightpipe-to-CV converter; the added control of the Silent Way plug-ins is miraculous. I wish I was at home playing with this synth right now. Todd Terje says that the Cwejman S1 is just as good, better in other ways, and less expensive and that he's been using that these days instead of his ARP.

Mutable Instruments - I have a Shruthi and an Ambika. They are both totally awesome but I haven't found a use for either of them just yet.

I have a modular, too. I've lost a week of my life into creating beautiful, useless music with it, but haven't cracked it yet, made it feel like an instrument. I'll type about it another time.

the 106 is weird, i can't stand the results i get from playing one, but other people seem to be able to coax really nice things out of it

Sometimes if I have a houseguest I make a seagull + seashore patch and put it in their room

aw.

This is all really interesting. I'm drowning in free VST plugins and should really pare down, but I've also made my microscopic first step into hardware 'synth' world by ordering one of these http://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards-and-Pianos/Korg-Monotron-Delay-Analogue-Ribbon-Synthesizer/HTN. I was thinking about getting a Microbrute too but money got tight and now I must wait. The Microbrute seems to be in a class of its own for that price range (next step up being the MS-20 Mini, I suppose?), is that right?

don't discount the volca keys (which imo sounds better than the arturia anaolgues)

lol. anaolg sysnthiziers

The Microbrute's real appeal, afaic, is that it's the most cost-efficient way of getting MIDI-to-CV conversion, it's as useful as a controller/interpreter as it is as it's own sound source. Definitely a fun mono synth on its own, reminds me more of an SH-101 than an MS-20. It really can't be overstated how great the MS-20 Mini is.

God, reading this thread makes me realise, despite having played synths for way over a decade, I am a shitty shitty synth person. No tech ability at all, I just press stuff and twiddle knobs and eventually something sounds good.

front not can i, i am a chronic preset-relier

that doesn't make one a shitty synth person!

goon tie, that's an impressive list. All I own is a Microbrute (awesome), a Novation K-Station (awesome, it also has VCO drift and filter drive settings which every VA should have) and a MicroKorg (Baby's First Synth, which I'm also selling right now). Oh, also the AN1x that should arrive soon. Not as cool as all the vintage stuff, but it gets the job done.
I especially agree with you on the Nords - the Nord Leads sound too commercial and "nice" to me and most people seem to use it solely as a keyboard with 70s Moog lead/organ presets. I'll never buy a Nord Lead.

There's nothing wrong with ribbon synthesizers, they look cute and sound awesome. And while you're at it you might as well get a Stylophone, too.

Twisting knobs and pressing stuff = Playfulness, and that doesn't make you a shitty synth person at all

Yeah I must admit I'm a bit sheepish about the synth collecting habit, as it's the result of workaholism + no car + no house + no kids + no joy in taking vacations. My real gear-embarrassment is the number of CP-70s (Yamaha electro-acoustic pianos, i.e. Joe Jackson "Steppin' Out") that I've bought in strange places for peanuts. I love CP-70s so much. (I hate digital pianos so much; I actually bought one specifically for aero to use while we were touring together because I couldn't stand to hear him play a digital piano every night it was making me crazy.)

I've used a bunch of DSI stuff too. I started off by hating the Prophet 8 because the knobs were drifty and the sound was very un-Prophetlike. I've semi-come around on them since I used a modified one where the knobs didn't drift? Or a later issue? And also stopped comparing them to Prophet 5s. But still unsure about how I feel. I know a couple people who've recently given up on their Mophos and unloaded them.

I've never used a Novation anything!

I always quite liked the Nord Lead, but agree with fgti about the piano sound.

MicroKorg (Baby's First Synth, which I'm also selling right now)

No need to be so dismissive - I'm using one of these now (my analogues are fucked and 'my' MS2000 stayed with the old band, oh yeah, and my AN1X is fucked too, oh god why am I so terrible?) and it's actually pretty great. Yeah, ideally you want more, but I'd consider having at least one of this range to be essential. I am a massive Korg stan, though.

Yeah, it sounds dismissive, but the MicroKorg was literally the first synth I owned and learned synthesis on. After I bought more synths I took it out again, played my patches - and remembered why I hungered for more synths, because something about that KORG Sound doesn't please me at all. Thank you for everything, MicroKorg, but bye bye.

It's kinda weird that people make Dave Smith look like he lost his grip on building synthesizers and it's also kinda sad that almost every polysynth he makes has to face the comparison to the legendary Prophet 5. I think he's still able to design great synths nowadays.

BTW emil.y how was the AN1x like?

I think it's a great synth, though it was vastly underused for most of my ownership as it didn't go with my band's sound, and I was under-confident and under-equipped for doing solo stuff... which is possibly why it broke when I started using it a fair amount ten years later. I mostly made horrible grotesque noises on it (I love horrible grotesque noises) but it seemed good for sequenced electro things too.

"Horrible grotesque noises" sounds good! "Electro things" sounds good as well. Can't wait!

my ARP 2600 VST plugin just made my laptop overheat and crash. Feels like I got some of the genuine vintage analogue synth experience there.

Did it go out of tune?

always wanted to try an an1x. i've played lots of romplers & fm synths but never done much in the way of VA

i have a fair amount of time for the DSI synths but i found the 'pro one' reference on the mopho circuit board laughable - it's a cool synth on its own but sounds nothing like an SCI synth no matter how hard i tried..

Which 2600 VST were you using? I used the TimewARP, very useful to learn, not at all like the real thing, not even a little, but still good for familiarizing yourself with "this does that"

I already downloaded the AN1x editing software from the Yamaha webpage. And from the looks of it the synth seems to have impressive features, eg. it has four automation tracks where you can record/draw automation lines and assign them to ~30 settings. I'm getting hyped!!!

Were you using the Arturia Arp VST?

it's a free knockoff one with the very subtle name 'Arppe2600va'. I have very little sense of how to use it (tbh I have very little sense of how synths work in general beyond ADSR) but it seems fun.

first thing i got to grips with after adsr was lfo modulation, v useful

I suggest getting an oscillator VST plugin so you can see how various synth settings affect the waveform. Helped me a bit

^^^

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=4

That's exactly the VST plugin I use, can't recommend it highly enough

The other Smartelectronix plugins are awesome, too

ooh that's useful, thanks.

I multi-tracked my Microbrute to play chords on one of my songs and it sounded good, really really good... It's a shame that the price gap between monolog and polylog synthesizers is still so huge nowadays. If Arturia released a four-voiced affordable Polybrute they would cause another revolution in the synth market... Alas...

I'm still hyped about the AN1x though!

i've been meaning to try the same thing with the microbrute.

on the same note, i finally got the routing set up so that i can send midi out to my Volca Keys and record it back in as audio, and it's that thick analog poly saw sound that i've been trying to get for years.

unfortunately i couldn't get it to record as stereo, i think it might be the 1/8" to 1/4" cable that i'm using? i don't know why most of these little analog synths make you use the 1/8" headphone jack as an out...it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to have a 1/4" line out but what do i know. so after a lot of fucking around where i could only get it to return as the left or right half of a stereo channel, i set up the send/return as mono and that sounds fine (i usually end up copying the audio to a stereo channel to add stereo effects, this feels like i'm doing something dumb but it works for me).

Most line out jacks are mono anyway, most synths use two line outs for stereo recording and I don't think you can coax a convincing stereo sound out of a simple mono synth without effects like chorus/panning/delay...

If C&P'ing synth recordings feels like doing something dumb you can always double-track a synth line, ie. record it twice on two mono channels, pan them left/right and add effects so it doesn't sound so samey.

have an ms-20 mini on the way for our 9 year old's birthday (shared present with my birth/fathers day). Same son has a cheap laptop, so I grabbed dexed and pedalboard/mido to work on some scripted midi/generative/transcription projects I'm hoping will be fun. FM synthesis is indeed crazy, but dexed has some decent patches built in. I'm hoping use python to set those eno patches upthread bc mouse+gui ain't the way. We will probably need a midi keyboard in case somebody wants to play chords.

this seems like it will be awesome

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

Love the Fred's Lab Tooro lofi wavetable synth but it's a bit of a chore to program, the screen on this looks like it will be a big help

SG, I like the idea of "scripted midi/generative/transcription" stuff, but haven't been able to brew up anything really satisfying... what's your workflow like?

I've only spent a handful of hours on the scripting so far. It's a fun learning and (within family) teaching tool. I'm using pedalboard, an open source spotify project, to get multiple VST instrument objects with different patches from Dexed.vst3. There's probably better python DAW stuff for this. I wrote some defs for generating 88 piano key scales from an input song key and chords from a root note. I wrote a def with numpy.random that takes a starting index to the array of notes in a scale and a number of requested notes. It builds 8-note phrases, randomly walking away from the start, and then resets to the start note for each phrase. I put the randomness in 'EchoEcho 3' over a progression in 'Chroma 5 Y'. It sounds like preset windchimes, which I'm guessing is a common landing zone for fast versions of this sort of thing. here's example output.

you get arrays out of passing midi to the vst objects, so you can mix, fade, and sum tracks by multiplying with envelope functions and then adding the arrays together before saving or playing.

for transcription, I'm hoping there are python models that can take a recorded clip and spit out reasonable midi that I can display on the dexed gui to quickly give the kids melodies from songs they know to play. a shazam music teacher, which is simpler if the student only has a monophonic synthesizer and wants to play a melody from stardew valley or the lead from calvin harris' "bounce".

are there other awesome and free vst instruments that, like dexed, don't require making an account or jumping through other hoops? it was so refreshing to just grab it from GitHub.

U-he's Zebralette 3 is in public beta (and will be free when actually released) - spectral, additive, wavetable, kind of a steep learning curve

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=607153

TAL Noisemaker is a good basic subtractive synth, sort of like a Roland Juno

https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker

thanks, these are great examples of what I'm looking for. grabbed both installers to hopefully check out this weekend.

Full bucket music has TONS, primarily virtual Korgs, including a lot of the weird ones:

https://www.fullbucket.de/music/vst.html

oh wow. that is a great resource - thanks!

attracted to the PS-3300 simulator and as luck would have it -- the real thing's on sale!

the introductions in the manuals of these FBM synths are themselves wonderful

Korg announced a reissue of the 3300 or 3100 for only a cool $12k IIRC

pedalboard doesn't seem to wrap the FB-3300 plugin properly. looking around, it seems python VST loader instrument compatibility may be an issue

is anyone else checking out the Digitakt II? I've had my eye on the Syntakt for a while because I'm more drawn to synths vs samples, but this new Digitakt is a massive upgrade. I assume there will eventually be a Syntakt II, but that probably won't be for a few years.

Thanks for the rundown SG, that seems well over my head, but also sounds like you could get some very cool results that way... (or at least have fun messing around with it...)

I'm definitely not selling my Digitakt I at the reduced prices they're going for now (though mine is old enough I'm pretty sure I bought it for $550 during a sale) but if I'm ever not broke I wouldn't be mad at getting the II for 16 channels of samples and the option of stereo samples (though I don't really miss stereo, I like subtle panning better most of the time) and the other improvements seem nice. The new filter modes with single cycle waveforms should make it even more useful than the I for a lot of synthesis tasks.

For another good free synth, forgot the DSP56300 project - Virus A/B/C and now Ti, Waldorf MicroQ emulations
https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/

You have to get firmware (widely available for the pre-TI Viruses but I had to go to a shady warez site for the Ti firmware, Waldorf has the MicroQ firmware on their site) but no account creation/etc. required

I really miss my Machine Drum, original one with the sample loading. I can't remember what I paid for it 10-12 years ago but remember it was like an impulse buy price. Staggering what they're going for now! I wouldn't want to pay that much for something that old (well not old, but aging) that might be tough to repair.

i have the SPS-1 without the sample loading. Got it the week they announced they were cancelling it and they cut the prices in half. It was like 600$ new. They blew them out. Then the prices started rising.