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Going full steam ahead with making the second installment of my Phi Mu Labs – the FM-based timbres library for Korg wavestate. Cherry-picking or dialling up the timbres are fun, adapting them for the synth – much less so. Basically I render 14-16 .WAV files – two per octave (C and G notes). Some timbres are one-shot, some need to be looped. For the loop-making I use Loop Auditioneer, a free and opensource thing that allows to automate part of…
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Finally looked a bit more dilligently into a bunch of SBI files on my hard drive, and discovered a ‘golden lode’ – a number of timbres from Dune II: Building a Dynasty (aka Battle for Arrakis), the ‘mother of all real-time strategy games’. SBI stands for Sound Blaster Instruments: those are tiny files of instructions for early SoundBlaster and AdLib soundcards based on Yamaha’s ancient FM synthesizer chips. Those synthesizers are very simplistic, basically just two operators, although they are…
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Will improvise some dark ambient with my #blacksidedsun project later tonight. If I get lucky, I’ll be able to record some stuff too. Not sure yet, though.
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Here goes the first demo for two dual packs of patches for Yamaha DX7/TX7 and all of their ilk provided those are 6-operator+ synths, hardware or software. I’ll make them available later this year, separately and with Korg wavestate version of these timbres.
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…Dialed up yet another double bank for DEXED. Also should be loadable to any hardware or software FM synth capable of reading Yamaha DX7-compatible SYSEX. Surely, the demo will follow soon. Probably these sounds will be offered separately from Phi Mu Labs 2 pack for Korg wavestate. Although I’m still thinking what’s the best source of action here. All the sounds had been made up from scratch, not editing the third-party ones, although I used the latter for reference occasionally.…
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I’ve owned Yamaha DX7 for many years. Got it second-hand in a working, but cosmetically drastic condition. For a time being it was one of the keyboards I used religiously both on stage and in studio, considering it much more of an ‘honest’ synthesizer than any ROMplers I owned aside from that. However, since discovering DEXED, I’ve gradually switched to it almost entirely: free, close to the original (at times better to my taste even), and doesn’t weight 14+ kg.…
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A demo to LUMINOPHORE pack had been uploaded on Youtube. And I’ve started working on a new pack – this time for DEXED. It will be, most likely, compatible with Native Instruments FM8, Arturia DX7V, Plogue Chipsynth OPS7, SynprezFM, and every DX7-compatible 6-operator hardware synth that can read DX7 SYSEX files.
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Finished my first pack for Surge XT synth, and must I say I’m incredibly impressed with this synth’s capabilities. Tried to employ them at depth. Earlier today I’ve cooked up a 16-minutes long ambient demo featuring some of the sounds. No other synths, no external effects except for a featureless limiter on the master bus (for safety purposes only). My current keyboard lacks aftertouch of any kind, but instead I have a foot controller. For some patches I’ve enabled Channel…
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Increasingly surprised how any software synths worked at all like 10-15 years ago. For one, I’ve got an old Core i7 with 2.81 GHz cores, and Surge XT hits the roof with RT CPU values unless the patch is optimized heavily. On the other hand, it’s a reason to actually optimize things there. I have 64 patches now, and the only things left to do is to add MIDI modulation controls (I didn’t figure how to do that initially), and…
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Will go live with my black-sided sun project. A semi-improvised program: a laptop, keyboards, maybe some recital. Hopefully will make some distraction from the darker thoughts and moods. Hopefully.
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I didn’t list it among my works for two reasons: first, I forgot, second, it stays incomplete, like quite a few of other my projects. I hope to finish it one day, but it will require a Herculean effort. Missa is dedicated to memory of both my godfather and father. They both have departed in 2017, within the same month… I ended up composing the orchestral part in 2018. It was, probably, the first of my works that did not…
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Yet I’m trying to shed the thought I’m doing it all wrong and the effort is rather pointless – there are so many premade patches for Surge XT already, who would even take a look at the newer bunch. To hell with that, anyway. While making these patches I’ve actually learnt a thing or two, and reproduced some sounds I was looking for. Worth the effort.
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Will play keyboards with a quickie band, performing some bluesy-rocky stuff. Not much of a deal. In fact, expats musicians are largely playing for their kin, locals ignore such events for a few reasons. Shame, really. Also, shame that it’s mostly about playing covers, not some original music – people largely want to hear what they have heard before these days. Occasionally have some darker thoughts on this. Like, you know, the sense of any meaningful future is lost in…
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This is roughly 1/5 of what I plan to do. Custom wavetables, etc. Mostly ambient stuff that, hopefully, will work in other people’s mixes too. Surge XT is great. I thing I was spooked off it with a somewhat difficult interface. Now, however, I feel it’s very intuitive and cozy. And sounds is preeeeetty. :-)
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Waldorf rocks hard this year. First they’ve recreated their classic Microwave synth in software as a plugin for macOS and Windows. Now, they’ve taken it to iPad. Interestingly, in the past they’ve done quite the opposite: first they’ve launched a fascinating Nave on iPad, then ported it as a plugin. Regardless, their plugins and tablet synths are top-class, always. Costly too.
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Korg have released a new synth called ‘Multi/Poly‘, and it appears to be a way different thing than the name suggests: it’s not a new version of their venerable Mono/Poly (which had been reimagined in software more than once, and eventually had been cloned-n-reintroduced by Behringer). MusicRadar states that it doesn’t feel nor sound like a Mono/Poly, but it’s a capable instrument on its own. From the look of it, multi/poly seems to be a yet another sibling to Raspberry…
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Having tons of fun with this software. In short, it’s a wavetable-maker with some very neat functionality. I haven’t been much into wavetables before, but it’s really going to change. The software is free, and is made to look vintage on purpose: after all it’s been inspired by PPG Waveterm hardware computer from early 1980s, used for wavetables creation specifically for PPG Wave 2.2 synths. Although Audioterm by Matthias Gurk can only output a bouquet of up to 33 single-cycle…
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I have finally made a more decent site for my efforts than I used to have prior to war. It features links to, like, 90% of my recorded and published (this or that way) works, including music for my own projects and the commissioned ones. Right now I’m non-involved and open for cooperation. I’m most interested in work in the film or video games. The latter sphere is particularly desirable, since I am an avid gamer myself, a gaming blogger…
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