Seasonal and Almost On-Topic!

It is the time of year when some people celebrate by sending other people greetings or gifts, when some people contemplate what they bought in the annual 'Black Friday' ever-expanding sales, when some people suddenly play a very specific genre of music (on-topic!), when some people anticipate the end of one year and the beginning of another year (with various emotions), and when some people do none of these things. 2020 seems to have been a year of extremes, of change, of polarisation and increased uncertainty. I hope the coming year is different!

Apparently, putting people in lockdown has resulted in huge sales of musical instruments... To kind of reflect this, I have added a seasonal design to the Tee-shirts in my online store: Synthesizerwriter's Store. If you wanted a 'Christmas Tree'-themed tee-shirt with a modular synthesizer bias, then you might be in luck! And if you wanted something that says 'Synthesis' in other ways then there are alternative designs and items - there are even cushions! 

Genre-specific music...

Here's an example of some seasonal genre-specific music, less most of the repeats and lacking a huge production budget...

A link to the music...

One of the main instruments that I used is a Kontakt virtual instrument that has the dubious honour of being a submission to Pianobook.co.uk that has been 'lost in the system' - it IS there, but the only way to find it on the site is if you know the URL! (or you do a search...)

https://www.pianobook.co.uk/library/29-bagpipes-synthesizerwriter/

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Customised Synthstrom Audible Deluge

One of my background tasks for the past few months has been researching mid-to-high-end 'grooveboxes'. Whilst the marketplace has lots of low cost (sub $500~) examples of 'single portable boxes that can create music using MIDI and samples' (aka grooveboxes, although there are much more sophisticated and complex definitions), from Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operators, OP-1/Z, the Roland MC-101, Novation's (hard to beat) Circuit, Korg's Electribe 2, Elektron's Digitone/Digitakt and Model:Cycles, Polyend's Tracker, the 1010 Music Blackbox, plus many more, the next level up is significantly more sparsely populated and much more diverse in approaches. Doubling the budget ($500-$1000 and more) can get you a much more capable device, but I wanted to know which one was best suited to my way of thinking? 

(The title of this post kind of gives away the end result, of course!)

Many years ago, I remember being greeted with a certain amount of disbelief when I expressed my opinion that the major deciding factor in choosing a DAW should be the workflow and its alignment with your own internal mental model of how to make music. It seemed that brand-name, who else used it, resolution, number of tracks, latency, bundled plug-ins and many other factors were far more important to many people. My opinion hasn't changed, although I have found that I have increasingly moved to the 'boutique' end of the market: small, independent manufacturers who tend to be musicians and technologists. As an example, my most sophisticated pedal is a Poly:Digit, which isn't exactly mainstream...

The other vitally important word in that brief definition is 'single'. When I go away from a DAW with access to external hardware synths and effects, into the 'live performance' scenario, then I'm looking for ideally one box, and probably three boxes maximum. I've played the game of having lots of equipment to set up and tear down, and like most people who have done that more than a few times, I have decided that:

Simplicity Means Less To Go Wrong! 

But back to those 'next level up' grooveboxes. So what are the main contenders? I whittled the list down to these:

- Elektron Octatrack (mk1 or mk2 (mk2 is a makeover that is probably more like a 1+))

- Roland MC-707

- ModDuo X

- Synthstrom Audible Deluge

- Akai Force

- plus a few others that were fighting for attention (MPCs!), and I even considered a few no-longer-current devices - even though trying to find second hand gear can be stressful... 

As always, your favourite is probably missing from this shortlist. Note that I deliberately rejected these whole categories:

- hardware 'sequencer-only' devices (no Squarp Pyramid or Polyend Seq or Social Entropy Engine...) 

- hardware controllers that require a DAW or computer (NI Maschine, Ableton Push...)

- modular 'sequencers plus a few modules'. (Creeping module purchases means your rig is never quite finished...)

My opinions

After months of careful research, here's my personal opinions:

- Elektron Octatrack. 

The Octatrack has been bubbling under on my GAS list for a long time. And that's probably the main issue - it has been around for so long that it may be about to be replaced, and I hate buying something which is immediately replaced by something much better for less money! 

Pros. Flexible sample playback, a song-mode sequencer (the Digitone and Digitakt lose points because of their lack of song support), and some neat processing. The eight channle scan also be used as a mixer, which is interesting. Looping support is also good. The Mark II's slider control is definitely a good reason to go for this in preference to the Mark I.

Cons. Seems to be difficult to learn. This might be the classic 'I will say it is hard to use because that makes me look good!' situation, but the YouTube video's of people using Octatracks seem to reinforce the amount of learning that is required. Is complexity what I want in a live environment? Probably not. Also, most people seem to use other gear with an Octatrack, so that's a concern. Finally, there's the nagging doubt that there's probably a Mark III in the pipeline, or maybe even a total revision.

- Roland MC-707

My first album was recorded using a TB-303, a TR-606 a Sequential Pro-One and a Casio CT-1000, and I've currently got a heavily modded TR-505, so I'm no stranger to Roland gear. The MC-707 is kind of what I reckon an Elektron Octatrack 3 might be like, although with a different workflow...

Pros. Ableton Live-style grid is a plus. Lots of immediately editable sounds without any need for a computer (probably the top feature request for the Novation Circuit 2). 

Cons. No song-mode is a major disadvantage. At the sub-$500 price-point then this is acceptable, but I've spent too long with old school drum machines to want me to be constantly controlling what is happening. No way to send MIDI CCs might also be a problem if I was going to use it with anything else... No 'Scale' mode for the buttons is weird when most of the sub-$500 group have this! Having to effectively sacrifice a track to sequence external MIDI is strange, but again, for a single box then this is not as important as it might be if I was using this as the centre-piece of a studio. 

- ModDuo X

I've been trying to buy one of these for over a year now, and it seems to be permanently out of stock, with pre-orders all being consumed in a few seconds of the site accepting them. So I've more or less given up on this one. I talked to Mod at one of the Ableton Loop events, and they seemed very confident, maybe not in a good way. Given their apparent supply chain problems, maybe my gut feeling was correct... 

- Synthstrom Audible Deluge

Definitely a 'boutique' device, this goes against the grain in all the right ways. No display - well, not a display in the conventional sense, although if you scaled up a Novation Circuit, it could well look a lot like this. An interesting design, with unusual/novel controls that make a lot of sense. 

Pros. Small, light, song-mode (plus arranger functions), Subtractive and FM synths, sample replay, and looping. Comprehensive features and a very good firmware update policy (frequent!). Seems to think the same way that I do!

Cons. Using the display as the main control means that you can spend a lot of time jumping in and out of song mode. As with the Octatrack, there seem to be a lot of shortcuts that require muscle-memory to learn. 

- Akai Force

I immediately thought of a 'DAW in a box' when I first saw this, and this is too much like a Push and Ableton Live. I would struggle to say that I was 'DAWless' if I used one of these.

The result?

I went for a Synthstrom Audible Deluge (a 'Deluge' from this point onwards). It offered the features I wanted, the size and weight and convenience, and a pretty good 'single box' solution. When it arrived, the adapter envelope had a note on it:

So I took the 'Martin :)' and turned it into a label for the top panel:

So if you ever see a 'Martin :)' where you were expecting a Deluge, then that will be me!

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I will report on my progress with the Deluge as I get familiar with it... So far, I'm definitely enjoying it!

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Generating audio soundscapes...

A few weeks back, I revisited my old Reaktor workspace and started reworking some of the ideas in there for M4L. Here's the second output from that project...

Saw4Generator_Dark is a sound generator with preset memories. It does not respond to MIDI inputs - it just sits there and makes noises continually...

The basic idea is very simple. There are two sections: a sound generator that produces the raw sounds; and a mix processor that controls how those sounds are formed into a stereo sound stage. Both sections have manual controls that can be tweaked, as well as LFOs that allow some changes to be made cyclically over time (although this version does not allow the sound generator modulation settings to be controlled by LFOs, which is something for a future version)

The sound generator section starts with a sawtooth wave oscillator with and and LFO to modulate the pitch and the output is frequency modulated by another similar oscillator, which is modulated by another similar oscillator, and another one on top of that... The result is a simple FM vertical arrangement that is often referred to as a 'stack'. There are a lot of controls!

The mix processor is a flexible output stage with even more controls! The output allows mixing of four deliberately-harmonically-diverse outputs: the final oscillator itself ('Saw'), the ring modulated output of the third and final oscillators ('Ring'), the output of the third oscillator 'sample & hold' processed by the final oscillator ('S&H'), and the output of the second oscillator 'sample & hold' processed by the final oscillator ('H&S'). In other words there are four separate outputs, each with its own unique harmonic content. The output stage has LFO modulation of the mixing, plus LFO panning as well.

There's a lot of power here to control the sound, and a lot of LFOs providing the bulk of that automation. As always with LFOs (and often with VCOs, and especially with digital versions of these building blocks...), the 'never the same twice' rule applies - so don't set all the LFOs to the same rate or the same modulation, instead go for values that won't 'collide' too frequently: ratios that are prime numbers are good. Here's why:

If you think about two LFO were one is twice the speed (rate) of the other, then they will 'collide' or repeat (have the same values at the same time) every cycle of the slowest LFO. In the diagram I've simplified the LFO to show only two output states (0 and 1):

01010101010101  (rate = 1)
00110011001100  (rate = 1/2)
^   ^   ^   ^   (the pattern repeats quickly) 

But if the rates (or the ratios between them) are prime numbers, then the collisions take much longer to happen:

00011100011100011100011100011100011  (rate = 1/3)
00000111110000011111000001111100000  (rate = 1/5)
^                             ^      
(the pattern repeats more slowly)

So by setting values like these:
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
You will get lots of places where the LFOs are in sync, and digital systems are pretty precise with timing for LFOs, and so you tend to get short repetitive patterns, which normally isn't what you want when you are controlling a complex sound generator...

Better values for getting long times between repeats would be more like:
0.03
0.05
0.07
0.11
Which takes quite a long time to repeat, and sounds a lot more complex when you hear the controlled output.

Getting Started

A good way to start with Saw4GeneratorDark is to turn all the controls to the leftmost minimum position, and then to select the Saw button, adjust the volume to your preference, and choose the pitch you want in Oscillator 4 (there's just a Pitch control there, so it is easy to find! You will also find the 'preset' store buttons here. 'Shift & Click' to store, Just Click to recall. Saving this 'All leftmost' preset is a good place to start again when you get lost).

Using just one oscillator is a good way to learn the output options: LFO modulation of volume, plus LFO panning. Once you have gt your head around the controls (some ping-pong echo is very often applied to the output of this type of generator...) then there is the LFO modulation of the pitch of the oscillator to try out. Saving a simple sound like this is often a good starting point for further exploration.

When you are comfortable with all of that then you can try moving to the left and try exploring the pitch and modulation controls for Oscillator 3, then the LFO pitch modulation for that oscillator, and so on to the leftmost Oscillator. Because Oscillator 1 is at the top of a stack of FM then it can cause big changes to the oscillators underneath it, so be cautious at first with the pitch and modulation controls. If everything gets too much, then just go back to the 'all leftmost' and start again from Oscillator 3.

Further processing

The screenshot above shows one possible chain of audio processing that you can add after Saw4GeneratorDark. A 'Saturator' is used in the 'wave shaper' mode, followed by an 'Auto Filter' set so that a resonant filter peak scans across the frequency spectrum, then a limiter to avoid problems with a peaky filter on the resulting rich audio material, and then the ubiquitous 'Ping-Pong Delay'.

The thinking behind this type of audio processing chain is straightforward: generate a harmonically-rich sound source, and then dynamically filter it down into a simpler sound. The Saw4GeneratorDark output already has a lot of harmonic content, and so the Saturator doesn't need very much drive in order to get a lot of frequencies, but it can be useful for a little bit of thickening or 'colouring' of the output. The low-pass peaky filter lets some low frequencies through, and so tends to give a stronger sound, but try using a peaky band-pass (or high-pass) and see the difference that it makes to the sound landscape that is produced. You can replace the simple Limiter with a Multiband Compressor if you want more control over the output frequencies, but you might think that there are already enough controls! The final Ping Pong Delay just pushes things together, and could be replaced (or augmented) with some Reverb.

This is just one possible chain of post-generator processing. There are many more possibilities to play with, and when combined with Saw4GeneratorDark, you can create a wide variety of unusual soundscapes. There's a lot to explore in Saw4Generator, and a lot of sounds waiting to be created. Recording the output and processing it further is thoroughly encouraged!

(As always, this is a work in progress, so it may not be perfect, and early versions tend not to have very much help on controls included in the M4L. Please feel free to report bugs via the comments, and I will try to fix them when I can find time.)

Sine3Generator

I've just published a new sound generator on the MaxForLive.com web-site. Here's the usual extended user guide...

Sine3Generator is a sound generator - and yes, I've done them before, and this is another one. Currently in a 'light' version with purple trim, I will update it to a 'dark' version over the next few weeks, and I may be unable to resist making a few tweaks too. 

This sound generator does not respond to MIDI inputs - it just sits there and makes noises continually...

What seems like a long time ago now, I wrote a series of 15 generators in 'Reaktor', and this represents a revisiting and updating of those ideas in M4L. There is lots of history to this type of stand-alone 'sound generator'. Modular synthesisers lend themselves quite well to this type of FM chaining, particularly if there are only a few VCOs... Back in the 1970s I built cascaded relaxation oscillators using injunction transistors, and discovered that frequency ability and tuning were very important, which is very apparent in some synthesisers of the time - the vernier dials on the EMS VCS3 are a good example, and the VCS3's matrix interconnection panel lends itself very well to complex chains of devices... 

More recently, Noisedrone .1 and Noisedrone2 have used Max For Live (M4L) to make sounds using cascaded chains of oscillators, and these have been popular downloads on the MaxForLive.com web-site. Another popular generator is my Noise Generator 0.4... So with 15 designs languishing on my hard drive, it seemed like a good time to blow the dust off them and try publishing them again.

The basic idea is very simple. A sine wave oscillator with LFOs that can modulate the pitch and the output is frequency modulated by another similar oscillator, which is modulated by another similar oscillator. It's a simple FM generator with a lot of controls, and a flexible output stage. The output allows mixing of three harmonically-diverse outputs: the third modulated oscillator itself ('Sine'), the ring modulated output of the third and second oscillators ('Ring') and the output of the second oscillator 'sample & hold' processed by the third oscillator, with LFO modulation of the mixing, plus LFO panning as well. 

A good way to start is to turn all the controls to the leftmost minimum position (and save this as a preset of course!), and then to select the Sine button, adjust the volume to your preference, and choose the pitch you want in Oscillator 3 (there's just a Pitch control there, so it is easy to find!). This is a good place to learn the output options: LFO modulation of volume, plus LFO panning. A lot of my M4L has similar approaches to things, so if you've seen one of my 'Pan' sections, then you will recognise the same controls across many of my devices. One variant here is that my 'usual' LFO has the ability to free-run or to sync with the Live timing, but for Sine3Generator, then you only get free running LFOs. 

Once you have the basic Oscillator 3 under your control (some ping-pong echo is very often applied to the output of this type of generator...) then there is the LFO modulation of the pitch of the oscillator to try out. 'Under control' is an interesting phrase. When I worked in a music shop we used to do listening exercises: someone would play a chord and the rest of us would say what it was, or someone would make a sound on a synth and everyone would have to recreate it from scratch. Rick Wakeman was famous for being able to set up a sound on a MiniMoog just by adjusting the knobs, and then playing it without the incremental audition/edit cycle that you often see, and of which I'm often a big user, particularly for FM synthesis. Which neatly brings me back onto the topic...

When you are comfortable with all of the controls for Oscillator 3, then you can try moving to the left and try exploring the pitch and modulation controls for Oscillator 2, then the LFO pitch modulation for that oscillator, and so on. (There's a bit of a theme here too - my devices often start in the middle and move outwards, but just to keep your awake, some of them start on the left and move to the right. Which format I use usually depends on the workflow...)

Because Oscillator 1 is at the top of a stack of FM then it can cause big changes to the oscillators underneath it, so be cautious at first with the pitch and modulation controls. If everything gets too much, then just go back to the 'all leftmost' preset that you saved and start again from Oscillator 3.

There's a lot to explore in Sine3Generator, and a lot of sounds waiting to be created. Recording the output and processing it further is thoroughly encouraged! Audacity is my editor of choice here, although mine is very customised...

(As always, my M4L stuff is a 'work in progress', so it may not be perfect (in fact, it probably won't be, because perfection is a rare thing indeed!), and early versions tend not to have very much help on controls included in the M4L. I know that this is a good thing to have, but I'm short on time an speed gets you fun things quickly, and none of my stuff is supposed to be professional, with timely support and detailed help inside. But please feel free to report bugs via the comments on MaxForLive.com, and I will try to fix them when I can find time. )


There is now also a 'dark' version...
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The DAW as synthesizer...

The fourth part of my 'playing with samples and loops' series has now been published in ModeAudio's online magazine. As always, I'm fascinated by the way that finding alternative ways to look at things is a two way process - a new loop triggers an idea, or a 'what happens if I do this?' turns into an interesting variation that opens up different possibilities. But this time, I managed to put into words something that I've been trying to express for some time - the way that modern DAWs, sequencers, host software, audio workstations, or whatever else you call them, are more than just digital tape recorders.

The blurring of the distinction between sound generation as in synthesis, and performance capture as in a recording, has been ongoing for a long time. A modern DAW now allows me to change the pitch of a synthesizer by modifying the MIDI data at its input, or by processing the audio output of the synthesizer through a frequency shifter - or both. And any of these can be captured, edited and replayed, or even added live. Effectively, the synthesis engine is the whole of the sound production chain, from sound generation, through performance capture, to live playback and interaction.

In one example in the ModeAudio article, I take a guitar-based audio loop, separate out the individual notes and stack them together, into a big, gorgeous-sounding bass synth sound. Actually, there's quite a bit more fine detail involved to do this, and this is where it gets interesting. I'd argue that the facilities that a modern DAW like Ableton Live give you to work with sound are a lot like a modular synthesizer, but with a few freedoms that modulars don't have, plus faster trying out of ideas (sometimes). The downside is that it can be just as difficult to figure out exactly what someone has done when they've stacked samples, edited them, added effects, velocity switching, and more, as it can be to work out what is happening in a modular synthesizer patch.

In the spirit of making ideas and tips more widely available (4 parts so far for ModeAudio!), then here's another one that arises from this. Why don't software modular synthesizers provide an alternative 'straightened-out' view of a patch? Instead of showing all those patch-cords linking modules, why not shorten the patch-cords, remove the detail and just show the linkages, and move the modules into a sensible order, so that you can see the generation and then the flow of the audio through the processors, and the way that the controlling modules (LFOs and Envelopes, etc.) are influencing things.

Kind of like the way that the London Underground map doesn't actually show where the lines go, but abstracts the lines so that you can understand how to get to Mornington Crescent without worrying about where it is, or how the lines bend and twist on the way. This doesn't just apply to a modular synth - it could be a complex Rack in Ableton Live as well. This type of 'abstracted view' could make it lots easier to comprehend how a sound is produced and controlled, and I'd say that that's a new feature that we should all be clamouring for! 

Why not ask your current DAW manufacturer if they are planning to do this type of view in their next release? You can always tell them I sent you!

When is a guitar not a guitar?

One answer could be: 'When it's a sample of a guitar!' Samples, or their 'here's one I prepared earlier' cousins: loops, can be rich sources of inspiration, new sounds, and more. Previously, I talked to the nice people at ModeAudio about mis-using a percussion pack. but since then, they offered me a chance to look at another of their packs.

The ModeAudio 'Float' pack contains 'Chillwave' guitar samples and loops, and so it isn't what you might immediately associate with a synthesist like me, but exploring something 'out of your comfort zone' is often very good at nudging you into making new discoveries.

As you might expect these days, this is an idea that is also available in a formalised form on the 'Interweb': http://www.oblicard.com/ (Olique Strategies: originally a set of cards by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, but now available via browsers and mobile apps too.)

In my case, taking some guitar loops and playing with them yielded some very interesting results - and in many of the cases, I worked with the samples as if they were raw material for synthesis, not specifically as 'guitar' loops. As a result, I didn't do much in the way of realistic guitar sounds, but instead I found a lot of very unusual and interesting sounds. One synth bass sound, made by reverse engineering a loop and then stacking the individual notes, is a sound that I'd pay good money for - just that one sound! 

I'm increasingly aware of the lowering of the barriers between synthesis and production in modern DAWs (sequencers, host applications, whatever your favourite term is!), and my whole experience with 'Float' reinforced this view. Back in the days of analogue tape, people experimented a lot (using tiled bathrooms or big suspended metal sheets as ways of creating reverb spaces is just one example), and whilst the technology may have changed, the scope for going 'outside the box' seems to be undiminished, and if anything, better than ever. 

You can see the first part of my 'guitar sample-based synthesis in ModeAudio's magazine.

'Slango' SoundCloud track shared!

I think SoundCloud is a great concept. Unfortunately my experience with it as a service has been mixed. I've had upload problems in the past, and I can't get the share to work with Blogger at all (works fine with Facebook, btw), which is why this post is done manually. But I persist because SoundCloud ought to be the perfect solution, and I'm hoping that given time...

Slango1 by martinruss

So here's the track that I wanted to share. It's another rambling piece of electronica, this time inspired by the 1970s. So it's deliberately at a fixed 120 bpm, in a predictable 4/4, in the key of C, with a hackneyed chord sequence, minimalistic arpeggios, no development, etc. I used the ever-wonderful Ableton Live for the sequencing, and the essential Audacity (with Lame) for the final conversion to MP3.

I've also captured this track driving one of my recent visualizers too, and you can see it on my YouTube channel...

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Oh, and as you will see immediately below this, I'm gradually becoming a fan of Oliver Chesler's 'Wire To The Ear' blog, which has a rare resonance with the way that my mind works. Thoroughly recommended!

From synthesizerwriter

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SS&S III Glossary

The glossary from the first and second editions of my book, Sound Synthesis and Sampling, is now available online - at least partially. I am still adding entries, and expect to be finished soon. Then there are some graphics to be finalized. Until then, I thought that you might like to get an advance view before anyone else.

The SS&S III Glossary is at: http://sites.google.com/site/sssglossary/

The other side...

There are two types of blog: words and pictures.

I already have a 'words' blog ( blog.martinruss.com ), and I realized that I needed one which had more pictures, more media, more music, and more synthesis in it.

So here it is! Welcome to the Other side.