Synth Treehouse // Weekly Discussion - July 14, 2023
Synth Treehouse // Weekly Discussion - July 14, 2023
Hi there! What's been on your mind? What have you done this week? Any fun plans next week?
I’ve started working on an OST for a new game. I’ve got a motif down and will be working on the song structure this weekend. Pretty excited.
Super cool, what kind of game is it?
It’s a 3D puzzle platformer set in a utopian dream world. Which is musically very interesting because every world has an entirely different vibe.
This week I've been focused on mixing my next EP. Will probably spend next week doing the same 😁
umm, well i got another no-input mixer module (a DE-5 Shakti) for my small feedback rack, and will probably spend some time feeling that out and making horrible noises after it's built. aside from that, i'll be combing BOMs and putting together a tayda/mouser cart for all the cheap st-modular PCBs we snagged in the modularaddict sale last week :3:3:3
That sounds like a lot of fun 🤩
I need to work as much as possible this week in order to have enough money to pay rent, fix my car, pay for pet insurance and try to save money to be able to buy a house so I don't have to give most of my money to a stranger every month.
If I have a moment to make some music, I will. Probably sketching on the MPC live in the hope that I'll have more time to finish a track in the future.
To hope 🥂
been working on a project with a guy i met on discord. it’s going really well. finished 3 tracks (more or less), have vocals down on 5 more, and we’ve got 3 tracks still in heavy development. i have a development thread for the album in Dom McLennon’s official discord server “THE BLOCK” with instrumentals, art, and just about everything we have for this album so far in it. if you want to collaborate on this project come find me.
I want to love Nina (the synth with motorized knobs.) On paper, it's amazing - a 12 voice analog polysynth, plus a wavetable oscillator and digital effects when I want them. The motorized knobs really are a game-changer for modulation and multiple timbres.
But every SINGLE time I sit down to actually spend time with this synth, something goes wrong and I spend my time writing up a bug report instead of making music. The worst part is I don't even know if I'll like the synth when all the bugs are fixed. Even when I make simple, basic analog sounds I don't really care for the tone. FM using the digital oscillator as a mod source seems broken, but I'm not sure if it's a bug or just the best they can do with the hardware design they shipped. I know the hardware signal path is why they're stuck with effects being applied to the final mix instead of per-timbre.
They've done some brilliant things with this synth and I want it to succeed, but at the same time I feel like buying one was probably a mistake. Now I'm just hoping they follow through on the promise of open-sourcing it so I can try tinkering with it myself and see what improvements I can make.
I feel like they should have started with something smaller - maybe a single oscillator monosynth - with the motorized knobs. Instead, they went for broke and produced a pricey, glitch-filled monster. The knobs seem like its only saving grace, too. I haven't heard any particularly inspiring sounds out of it yet.
I think it would've made more sense to start with something all-digital. Instead they decided to invent their own analog oscillator design on top of everything else novel they were trying to do. Maybe it does have something unique and special to offer, but I haven't found it yet.
Ah that’s so sad. I really like the idea of it a lot. It’s so mesmerising
I'm fully moved in to the new place and for the first in 10years have my drum kit set up. I'm extremely rusty but im practicing every day and doing a lesson plan of my own design every other day. Also dug out the sm57, and my line6 toneport. Now that I have a room for a studio I want to get in there as regular as possible and get to that rapid resumable state of creativity. Unpacking and work have kept my pace low but I am getting there. Picked up Ovox from waves to have something to play with on the daw and to stick-and-carrot myself through my current front-burner jingle. Be well!
Spend checking on a few synth and modular things this week but decided that I already can mimick 99,8% of these sounds with existing gear.
Then I wondered myself why people even do music these days, form an overall motivational point of view.
why people even do music these days
For me, I guess it's about self expression. I can't convey the deepest parts of who I am in words alone - I need music for that. I want to be seen and appreciated for what makes me unique, and not just be another arbitrary person surviving in society. I may never have much of an audience, but it's better to feel understood by a few people than none at all.
Interesting, I don´t really think people will understand what Iḿ trying to say in my music. Or lets put it that way, I couldnt even express it. All I do is start somewhere and have fun along the way. Its not me, its a self establishing organism that is shaped through my perception. Its an adventure but without any target really.
The other thing is just writing a song that works as x or y.
Because it’s fun? 🤷♂️ to me it’s both a moment to say fuck it to the world and isolate myself to recharge as well as a way to help people by making music for their projects to elevate them.
Interesting sound design trick for ethereal chord pads with a wavetable synth: modulate wave scan speed with key/pitch tracking such that higher pitch means faster scan speed. Makes it such that each note’s timbre is always in a slightly different spot/rate than the other notes in the chord. Got the idea from a video on old school 90’s IDM techniques, where they would load one shot, single note samples from a monosynth into a sampler and then use looping/ping-ponging of the sample to play chords. Because it was the days before readily available time stretching each note would run through the sample at a different speed, and I figured pitch modulating wave scan speed would do something similar.
I do something like this with the Hydrasynth. The 2.0 firmware lets you set modulation values per voice. I thought it was a bit gimmicky at first, but if you set it up to use different wavetables or scan rates per voice, you get some really interesting results.
I sketched up a couple solid starts at tracks last week so this week I want to focus on fleshing them out some more and try to have at least one that I can call a full song.