-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

I predict a glut of Synplant ambient albums to come

Got an ad for this thing and normally I'm annoyed by the tiny digital machines that could just as well be a plugin but this seems pretty cool actually

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPq1Chm9Tg

I finally got to spend several hours today with the Mother 32 and had a blast.

I did the 3 week trial for Synplant 2 and had a lot of fun with it. I tried feeding it sounds from one of my tracks and then seeing how I could reshape them. I really like how intuitive it is when you are trying craft a sound, a lot can be done by manipulating the little strands and then you can tweak it even more in the synth settings. The synth is pretty basic and the envelope in particular could be improved, but it can generally get you where you want to go.

One common problem I have with synths is that I might land on a cool sound, but then lose it as I'm playing around with it and find that I can't get back to something I like. Synplant worked very well for getting me back on track when this happened.

My biggest positive surprise was CPU load. I never once had a problem with this and had about 12 different instances of Synplant 2 running simultaneously in one song file. By contrast, even a single instance of Pigments can completely crash Ableton for me.

I ended up getting a track together with core sounds almost entirely from Synplant 2. Let me know what you think. It's a private link, so you need to be logged into Soundcloud to access.

https://on.soundcloud.com/KtCpS

A guy in my town makes these naturey synth tshirt designs if anyone is into that kind of thing
www.teepublic.com/user/timbient

Having played around with Synplant now I can definitely hear the plants in that track Moodles, ie the kinds of sounds it seems to come up with (it's cool though!).

Although I know it's going to be fun with automation and sound design when I get to that, so far I've been using it to re-synthesize acoustic drum samples. It's pretty incredible with one-shots, good for giving something a little more bite, and I got some especially cool results with cymbals. But I was a bit disappointed when I fed it a longer phrase. It was a snare pattern with some different tones and dynamics, and it spit back a pretty stiff version that tried to emulate the ghost notes with a delay. Still very excited about the possibilites though, one of those things that I'll have to try with every part just to see if something cool happens.

Agreed about cymbals, I tend to gravitate toward weird synthetic or hard metallic hats, so this works great for me. Also got a lot of mileage out of throwing automation on the bass track. Longer loops are definitely not going to be as effective, for sure.

this (free) emulation of the Kawai K1 is fun

https://www.nilsschneider.de/wp/nils-k1v/

Looks fun, thanks for the link

finally traded in my Korg Opsix and some other guitars and gear for a nice Stratocaster. Ended up getting the same in trade as I paid initially so harm done but I gotta be honest I ended up hating that fucking thing.

Ha, I sold mine too. I realized that the Volca FM is all I need for those sounds, and for whatever I reason I got better results out of it and had more fun.

So this sounds potentially amazing, like Synplant except for synth patches:
https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2023/12/05/micromusic-vital

It's free and works with Vital, which is also free. You can drop in an audio sample and it will do its best to create synth patches that replicate the sound. Sounds ripe for abuse.

not sure how that is different from Synplant

Similar I guess, but in Vital you'll get more standard synth controls over the resulting patch.

I guess I'm more compelled to start with non-synth-sounding patches with Synplant. And with this, while I definitely want to try random audio clips, it sounds like it's geared more toward stuff that starts out sounding like a synth patch?

I realized that the Volca FM is all I need for those sounds

I might check one of those out, so cheap used it's like buying a soft synth

The Opsix reminded me of a wacky boutique guitar pedal called the Infinity Discombobulator that is designed to demo well at a guitar store cuz it makes all these "wow" sounds then you try to make actual music with it and you can't find anything that works

I know it's only 4op and not 6, but for FM/digital synthesis on the cheap, do not forget the Reface DX. It sounds great and is fun to use.

fun to use

ultimately this is what did the opsix in for me...just always found it somewhat irritating to interact with.

Stylophone Theremin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eupwp-EPMmo

Yall crazy. The Opsix rules. I get wild ass tones out of it everytime I go in for programming. The firmware update added some nice features like more sequencer program controls. I will never sell it.

They really nailed it with the Reface DX. Super fun and immediate, small and cute. That whole series is awesome. I sold mine when the Waldorf Quantum got 6-op FM. Not like FM plugs are anything new, buttttt...the Opsix plugin is only $99.

Has anyone tried the Opal synth plug-in from Fors FM? Seems to be a max-for-live device that does Elektron style sequencing. Would love to know if it's any good.

I bought it and never used it and forgot I had it until now. Thanks. Sorry I'm not more helpful.

Give it a try and report back!

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.