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Tusker

MPN Advisory Board
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  • Birthday 02/18/1963

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  1. QFT. More of an expression controller than a pitch controller for me also. Only thing better than a Touche? Two Touches! But I see already knew that .... 😉
  2. My current weapon of choice. It's not for everyone but I like it.
  3. I guess I would ask if the distortion is happening at the output stage of the instrument or the input stage of the PA.
  4. I've been using this Logidy UMI3 for about ten years. I use it for articulation switching, patch changes and CCs. It does note-ons, CCs, and program changes. Not sure about sysex strings. You might want to check that. I plug a Roland EV-5 into it for expression. What would I change? The middle switch can be tricky if you have big feet. There could be newer products out there. I've looked at something with more features like the Behringer FCB 1010, but that takes a bit of space and this one has refused to break.
  5. You can hear the kinship with Joe Zawinul. 👍
  6. Hey Jim, Thanks for your post and for clarifying some of your complaints about In-The-Box synths. Your complaints are valid and without meaning to pander, I share many of your feelings. Let's take the GX80 for example. I am looking at it right now and even on my favorite 27 inch monitor, I agree it's not inviting me to patch. The Ribbon actually works on my 5 inch trackpad and I am grateful for that. But I'd suggest that the GX80 is not representative of ITB synths. It's an epic miniaturization of possibly the largest hardware polysynth ever made: a 500lb monster. Mark Barton made it sound great. That’s not to say that all other ITB synths look great. However many do. The best interfaces are generally not the emulations, in my experience. Pigments is very informative. Massive X is clean and inviting. The new Zebralette 3 beta is very intuitive. But let’s be real. Interface problems aren’t just limited to virtual synths are they? Take the JX8P, a glorious pad and brass analog synth which I loved to gig and hated to program. I am generally not finding that ITB is stuck in the 1980s. On the contrary, with the better developers, it's getting better at exponential rates. It helps to have controllers (knobby or otherwise) to suck out the musical expression. I use a Touché, trackpads and sometimes a breath controller. It’s an exciting time to be making music.
  7. Speaking of pedals, why do I feel a need to post a picture of Joe Zawinul's feet? .. and Vangelis' feet? 😄
  8. No offence taken. None intended bro. 👍 👍 Mark's a terrifically helpful guy and he's been posting here. When we did a team review of his GX80, he was kind enough to dive into the weeds with us. So I thought it would help if he was introduced a bit. 🙂
  9. Love this!! 💪 What do you control with it?
  10. Yes for sure, one Zebrallete 3 oscillator is a whole universe. You don't have to mess with the other stuff if you don't want to. It's like a Moog. No velocity. No aftertouch. Just great sound. I totally get it's not for everyone. 👍
  11. Let's not. His name is Mark Barton. 🙂 "Mark Barton is a brilliant audio engineer, with a list of accomplishments a mile long. In the 1970s, Mark designed the Pollard Industries Syndrum, which defined the sound of electronic drums for the disco generation. He's also done groundbreaking work in speech synthesis, including writing the MacInTalk text-to-speech system for the first Apple Macintosh computer, and designed the innovative Zeroscillator hardware synthesizer module for Cyndustries. For the past five years, Mark has been bringing his talents to Cherry Audio with modules and bundles for Voltage Modular under the MRB Labs and Cherry Audio/MRB brands, and has contributed to the wildly popular instruments Miniverse, Novachord + Solovox, GX-80, Lowdown, Eight Voice, Rackmode Signal Processors, and, most recently, Synthesizer Expander Module and Pro Soloist."
  12. That's a fantastically ergonomic idea. I've sometimes found it hard to reach a hardware knob or slider once you have a few hardware synths around you. Interface re-usability would solve that problem. In some DAW controllers the hardware sliders and knobs remap to different channel strips as your area of focus changes from one channel strip to another. Something like that would be cool for parameters like ADSRs, which might appear 2-3- times on an interface. Maybe MIDI 2.0 (or CLAP) would allow soft synths to communicate these parameters to the controller hardware?
  13. There are so many different use cases and preferences. I admit at the outset, digital tools can't solve every problem. Do you think a Fader Fox PC12 would address most of the need for knobs? And could one of the controllers from Soundforce address the need for a more precisely emulated interface? I admit I personally don't see a need for either. Just wondering, since these products seem to meet the needs of some folks who like their soft synths with knobs.
  14. Indeed. It's a very human problem. How can we know what we haven't experienced? The past speaks loudly and the future is unknown. The most intuitive interface I have ever seen is for a recently released beta version of a free synth. For me it's better than knobs, because you can actually see sound and shape it. On an analog synth (and I love analog synths!) I have to imagine things like: - a pulse wave adding even harmonics as you change the pulse width - a triangle wave sounding like a low passed saw wave - A saw wave and a square wave (down an octave) together sounding like a saw wave But these all require imagination. Or blind chance. But in a freely drawable wavetable synth on a big screen, you can see sound and shape it. The free synth is Zebrallete 3. Draw a sound. Hear it. This changes sound design. And who knows what will come after that? Part of our discussion is the struggle between the future and the past.
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