CyberGene

Here’s my attempt at Jump on my Hydrasynth. I haven’t tried too hard and haven’t compared it to the original recording though, just tried to make a sound that is as buzzy and powerful as possible. P.S. listening to the original record I think they stacked two recordings left and right to make that wide sound. I also think it was EQ-ed to sound brighter. And of course there’s reverb and probably chorus. I used reverb and chorus on mine but obviously way too lightly. jump4.wav

I’m surprised the Hydrasynth sounds so bad 😳 All others are more or less good. When I have time I’ll try if I can recreate that Jump patch on mine although I’ve never been interested in that cliched patch 😀

Not sure how many of you know Warren Bernhardt (the other guy in the video who is a host/interviewer?) but, unless it has been practiced in advance, he shows an amazing ability to replay the chords on a Rhodes piano almost immediately he hears what the piano plays. What a perfect pitch! I discovered him not less than 20 years ago since I used to listen to Steps Ahead and he was a member briefly. I then discovered his own records. AFAIK he was a close friend with Bill Evans and his playing is to a certain degree influenced by Bill’s. A local Bulgarian jazz radio host said he was actually a physicist but I can’t find it that is really true. But it’s worth checking him out if you haven’t heard him. P.S. Well, I feel stupid. I just opened the Wikipedia article about him and yes, he studied Chemistry and Physics but also: Bernhardt toured as the musical director with Steely Dan in the United States from 1993 to 1994,[3] and can be heard on Steely Dan's Alive in America album. That probably explains his ability to “replay” the chords. Nevertheless, a great pianist 👍🏻

My best guess knowing Yamaha is not to offer the entire Christmas wish catalog of the forum 😀 It will be only one new feature and I bet a few beers on AN-X which will be a VA engine. And nothing else. But even that’s more than enough and depending on how good it sounds would be enough for me to consider it.

I’m a fan of dreamy, dark and soft pads that can modulate into a wobbly FM when pushed. Lyle Mays was great with those. I’ve already posted this one in the Hydra thread but why not show off here too 🕺 I started it as a simple PWM pad with no particular idea in my head. But then I added some modulations here and there and it started shining. It’s one of only a few patches I created that I’m proud of (how modest…)

I’m wondering if Yamaha asked Matt Johnson to create some AN-X patches. He said some of the FM-X patches were made by him, so apparently they work together and he’s one of the most famous Montage ambassadors. His signature vintage analog sounds that he creates on the Minimoog, Prophet-6, OB-6, Take-5, etc are exactly the type of vintage analog sound I’m after and if he gave some feedback to Yamaha to make the AN-X capable of that type of sound would be more than awesome! Can’t wait to see 🙂

I sold my MODX at half the price, a few months ago. Lucky me, I guess... 🧐 I'm pretty certain we will see the AN-X added to both Montage and MODX+ very soon. I wouldn't hold my breath for a YC (clonewheel engine) though. Sometimes I'm a bit sorry that I sold the MODX6 since it had fantastic sounds and features. But the usability was poor in my opinion, I couldn't get used to the weird concepts, like (speaking off memory, so might be wrong) when I am in "part common" screen or some other common screen, having parameters scattered around totally different screens, or being duplicated on others and remembering which shortcut would open which edit screen. After all I just gave up and used it for the presets... I also missed having good variety of analog sounds, so I guess this complaint will be addressed with the AN-X introduction. I've been recently fascinated with Hammond organ emulations, so if they introduce a YC-engine too, they will seal the deal for me for a MODX6+ 😀

@Tusker these are all golden advices, much appreciated 👍🏻

I don’t think a MODX+ (if that’s a real thing) would be better than Montage. Most probably the + would bring better CPU, so that both Montage and MODX+ receive the same updates with new engines, e.g. AN-X and YC. If that’s the case indeed, I’d seriously consider purchasing a MODX6 again (this time the + version).

Must be Gauss, because 1 + 6 = 2 + 5 “Another story has it that in primary school after the young Gauss misbehaved, his teacher, J.G. Büttner, gave him a task: add a list of integers in arithmetic progression; as the story is most often told, these were the numbers from 1 to 100. The young Gauss reputedly produced the correct answer within seconds, to the astonishment of his teacher and his assistant Martin Bartels. Gauss's presumed method was to realize that pairwise addition of terms from opposite ends of the list yielded identical intermediate sums: 1 + 100 = 101, 2 + 99 = 101, 3 + 98 = 101, and so on, for a total sum of 50 × 101 = 5050.”

I know it’s a thread for fun but that joke is so close to the actual reality of mathemat-ization, oversimplification and mass explain-ization of jazz in recent times, it’s the real reason why I stopped listening to jazz. Jazz used to be a great art of intuitive improvisation of selected few masters. But then it became a learned skill of the masses, the equivalent of solving high school math equations. Practice them well enough and you just apply learned patterns. It’s assumed music but is actually the craft of learning and internalizing how to apply modes, scales, licks and whatnot over stock chord progressions with stock voicings. No wonder the audience size is shrinking. End of rant 😀

^ Thanks, that's very enlightening for me, I just realized how complex a Hammond organ is indeed. Well, coincidentally I just purchased the VB3m for my iPad since it's so dirt cheap and it's apparent it sounds much more complex and advanced than whatever sampling is used in my CP88. There are some random noises and clicks and whatever that are kinda alive (for lack of understanding what I'm actually hearing...). And I connected it with a single USB cable to the CP88 for MIDI and audio between the two, so it's almost trivial to use it for Hammond duties and so I can consider this discussion finished for me 😀 I see people on this forum praising B3X but it's too expensive (and runs only on iPad whereas I can run VB3m from my iPhone too) and to my ears VB3m is so GOOD I just don't think I will ever outgrow it in any possible way. I believe it's physically modeled.

How about VB3m on an iPad? I see it’s relatively cheap. I also have Apple MainStage and I’ve read its Vintage B3 is not bad either, any opinions?

Yes, that's a good description of what I have noticed about his Hammond playing. I think I may have worded it too lengthily in my first post. So, if I use a rompler Hammond patch with a good rotary effect simulation and I play like Rick Wright, i.e. mostly chords with fixed registration and only spinning the Leslie simulation up and down, is it going to be audibly worse than a proper clonewheel? I mean, Rick isn't known for any organ virtuosity, he's not using jazz organ licks or rock-organ fireworks. And most of the time the organ is there in a pad role.

Thank you for the answers. For info, the CP88 has a rotary simulation effect, so the Leslie is not sampled, though I don’t know whether the effect is any good. I’m not even sure the Hammond sound is sampled in the regular sense. It’s AWM2 underneath, so it’s possible they use clever programming that approaches the sound better through e.g. layering of separate drawbar mini-samples or whatever…

(Moved from another thread) I've been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd recently (including Gilmour's solo albums) and thought I would like to create a similar sound in some of my compositions for a project. I've noticed there's often some rather mild Hammond organ sound in the background but to me it doesn't sound like something very prominent, rather soft with no solos or melody lines, only chords that either support/double the other harmonic instruments or playing solo chords (still no impros or solo lines) for a brief moment with Leslie on and off. I don't have a clue about Hammond sound and specifics and since I see people here are really after serious Hammond emulations, my question goes: if I just used my Yamaha CP88 Hammond with the rotary effect on and off, would you be annoyed? 😀 I mean, I have no ears or knowledge about the Hammond sound at all and to me the sampled Hammond sounds good enough but was wondering when/if some of you Hammond gurus heard the CP88 Hammond (or any other rompler Hammond for that matter) in a context similar to that of Pink Floyd, would you think: ughhh, that's unacceptable/nasty/cheesy/ugly...? 😱

Edit: I moved it to its own thread.

BTW, you can “return” a purchased app and request a refund if you do it in the first 14 days if I remember correctly. I’ve done it a few times.

Well, you know my opinion already but yeah, totally 👍🏻 In the following video I play a Moog-ish lead I created for the Hydrasynth on top of the CP88 Rhodes: Sorry about the mindless noodling 😳

Unfortunately not currently possible. But it has been requested on their IdeaScale, you may want to upvote it and Yamaha can add it in a future firmware update.

As odd as it may sound, my very first encounter with an “analog” synth was the Model 15 on my iPad a few years ago (I’m relatively young, so never owned or even seen any vintage synth besides hearing countless of records with vintage synths and I never knew how analog synthesis worked). I’m glad I started with a modular synth emulation since I have a masters degree in Physics and it all clicked to me when I followed the tutorial. I think if I had started with a “pre-wired” synth emulation such as the Minimoog I would’ve struggled a bit because one doesn’t immediately see the signal path. From there on I had no problems with various VA plugins or hardware synths. I owned a Roland SE-02, Behringer Poly D, Begringer Model D, Novation Peak, reface CS and a Hydrasynth. I kept the Model D and the Hydrasynth only. And I own the Diva, Re-Pro and the Arturia V-Collection. So, back to topic, all these synths and plugins I have or had were having a particular vintage soul, more or less. However the VA engines in some keyboards are not at the same “vintage” level hence this very thread 😀

How about switching between the standalone instrument apps, as I proposed? I initially mentioned the task manager/switcher but you can actually just press the home button once to exit the app and open the other app (just put all these instruments app on the same screen). You may have to disable background app refresh for these apps to be sure they won’t produce audio in the background.

I just tested with AUM, you can maximize the window (double tap on the top of the frame) and it will remember it for the next time. I also tested with opening 4 synth apps in standalone mode with disabled background activity for these apps and switching between them through the task switcher. It also works and is pretty fast but mine are small apps. Ravenscroft is huge, so it may reload each time with this method.

Not necessarily. Disabling background processing doesn’t mean the OS will unload the app. It only stops it from generating audio and other background activity but it will stay preloaded in memory and should open immediately next time. Provided there’s enough memory of course. But then, if you don’t have enough memory for loading 4 audio plugins simultaneously, this should also apply to the host too. As I said it’s a workaround after all. And is free to test 😀 I suggested it because the OP needs to see the plug-in controls. My experience with DAW-s (or a hosting environment, thanks for the term) on iOS is that the plug-in window cannot be full screen. Not sure about Camelot, maybe you can maximize the window?

Well, there’s the “Analog Feel” which does what I mean by vintage in this thread 😉 The manual mentions a few things about what Analog Feel is but basically it’s what the vintage knob on the newest Sequential synths does: numerous deliberate offsets, randomized octave stretches, pitch drifting, etc to make it sounding more imperfect. That’s been discussed a lot on the ASM Facebook page and Glen Darcey himself confirmed it’s not a simple gimmick but is a rather complex function with the sole purpose of emulating vintage synths imperfections.