Stephen Fortner

Who can spill the tea? https://kurzweil.com/2024/02/08/the-k20-series/

I’m trying to get a big picture as to whatever community might be out there devoted to keeping the Kurzweil K250 up and running. A friend is working on a “restomod” project, part of which is a board that would make all sounds and sample data available at once. among other improvements.

I think price will determine the popularity of the Mirror, if that is indeed what it is called. It seems we’re looking at an 8-voice, two-oscillator synth, which would have to be pretty compelling to replace my Prophet Rev-2 (even if I only had the 8-voice version; I have the 16). Quite curious to see where this goes.

Jerry, I do know about Brian’s rig with an amp head but I could swear I’ve seen him play through a braked Leslie at the Baked Potato. Guess we could ask him … Ok back to my audio comparison. It took some setup but getting there!

Well, I’ll be damned. I thought even my old Electro 2 did the 1' drawbar cancel with percussion active but I could be having a Mandela effect memory. As of firmware 0.98, yeah, there’s no menu item I can find that toggles this. In practice I don’t think it would affect my playing at all, but from an authenticity standpoint, it’s a weird and presumably easily fixable omission.

I missed NAMM as some of you know, and stand happily corrected. Casio actually did the condiment! Bummed I didn't get some.

As far as samples, modeling, and divisi programming have come, I still never try to fake a horn section in the sense of making it sound like acoustic instruments. And I had this exact issue in a cover band that had one trumpet and one tenor sax. We were also doing tunes like "You Got To Funkifize" and "Getaway" by EWF. I prefer unapologetic sawtooth synth brass and/or Hammond with all drawbars out. I don't go for too much amplitude or filter envelope on the attack phase because at a live gig that's going to get lost and make things sound wheezy. You just want to fill up the spectrum with those bright harmonics and slap people in the face audio-wise.

This is the name of one of the colors available for the new Casio Privia PX-S7000. Now, Casio may have missed an opportunity in the form of getting a white-label food products company to make a nice honey dijon spread and hand it out as swag at NAMM, but that's not even what I'm posting about. Other than seeming very whimsically Japanese, the name they chose for this color stuck in my head and had a familiar ring to it. There was a cadence about the vowels I associated with piano for some reason. Then it hit me: Thelonious Monk. Harmonious Mustard. Thelonious Monk. Harmonious Mustard. If this was intentional, someone at Casio is a genius. If not, the serendipity is remarkable.

Mobi let me check that. There’s gotta be a menu option somewhere …

There are two standards here. One is being in the room close to a spinning Leslie as a player or listener. Between AM and FM, direct and reflected sound, and subtly shifting harmonics due to phase, it’s an impossible complex acoustic cocktail. Then there’s the more approachable standard of listening to a Leslie on a record (or from the crowd at a concert) miked and put through a stereo PA system. A lot of us fell in love with the sound under those conditions, thanks to a track from Steppenwolf or Santana or Deep Purple or Jimmy Smith. So the richness and emotion is still there. In short, you can only really evaluate sims from the second standard. When I really want to jam out and blow off stress, I fire up the 142 though.

Keyboards are a commodity item in a way. Someone might pay $5k for a guitar on the spot if they pick it up and connect with the feel and it hits them emotionally — even if it’s identical on paper to other units of the same model. But a Motif or Fantom or Kurzweil or Kronos really just does do what any other Motif or Fantom or Kurzweil or Kronos does. I can also tell you first hand from talking to executive management at all the major retail chains and product managers from the keyboard companies: People taking two hours of a salesperson’s time to kick tires and then buying the item online to save sales tax was a factor. Not so much anymore because most states now collect sales tax on online orders, but the damage was done. So you’re a store manager deciding what to devote floor space to, and what kind of customer. I’m not saying we all suck but I was that obnoxious little shit through a lot of my younger years.

Rotary Simulation The rotary simulation on the Stage 4 is up there with the better ones that are built into clonewheel organs. In Nord fashion, it keeps the parameters tidy compared to simulations that let you tweak every little detail of rotor acceleration, mic technique distance, and the like. In the hands of a Jim Alfredson or David Weiser, that kind of depth can be very useful for designing a precise virtual Leslie in your mind’s ear. In my hands, it offers me just enough rope to hang myself, so I kind of like the Nord’s approach. We’re in an early firmware version, so all of this may expand. Panel controls include on/off for the organ section, a Drive knob, Stop (brake), and Slow/Fast, which also has a dedicated ¼-inch input around back. A couple of notable things: - Drive doesn’t add as much buzz and hair as some other sims. It’s max setting is crunchy but relatively civilized, like so: - NS4 full drawbars rotary drive max#04.wav - Shift-stop lets you select where the rotors park when braked: free, front center, front left, front right, back center, back left, or back right. This is cool if you’re going for that Brian Auger sound and want consistent frequency response when the rotors aren’t moving. The rest of the rotary parameters are in the sound menu. These are the pages, followed by the parameter name, followed by the values for that parameter as of firmware version 0.98. 7: Rotary Speaker Type (122, 122 close) 8: Bass Rotor Speed (low, normal, high) 9: Bass Rotor Acceleration (low, normal, high) 10: Treble Horn Speed (low, normal, high) 11: Treble Horn Acceleration (low, normal, high) That’s it. Nothing for stereo spread, nothing for mic distance, etc. The closest thing is the Type selection, which does appear to give a closer-miked setup on a 122. Here’s me starting with 122 then switching to 122 close then repeating the switch one more time: 122 vs 122 close#04.wav Incidentally, the audio example in my previous post was recorded with the 122 type and everything set to “normal.” Here’s that same registration, switching between regular and close again, with C3 chorus. You can hear the little pop where I turn the value dial. 122 vs 122 close C3 chorus#02.wav Annnd let’s do a couple more full drawbars, 122 normal, everything else set to normal. Here’s no vibrato/chorus, rotary only: NS4 full drawbars 2 no vib-chor#01.wav Here’s the same with C3 chorus (Drive is back at zero on all these): NS4 full drawbars 2 C3 chorus#01.wav Next up, I’ll pull out some other clones and do some comparisons. This is not as structured as what we’re planning for the big simulation roundup; I just want to get it up here to put the NS4 in context. Want a registration or parameter combo I haven’t covered here? Just ask!

HI friends, Working on writing up the rotary effect section for you. In the meantime here’s the first audio example I dashed off for the rotary simulation. Just some fat major-seventh chords. Full drawbars, toggling rotary back and forth, no vibrato-chorus: NS4 Full Drawbars no vib-chor#01.wav Full drawbars, toggling rotary back and forth, C3 chorus: NS4 Full Drawbars C3 chorus#03.wav

I’m liking the idea about putting real Leslies in the roundup as a reference. I mean for everything to be labeled and identified, but maybe we could have a “blind” post or adjunct thread where people try to guess which audio examples are the real deal. Heck, maybe the first person to guess it correctly wins a prize if we could team up with somebody for a giveaway. Thinking 🤔 ...

Organ Section Part 1 — Everything but the Leslie The Organ section of the Stage 4 has two parts and six organ models: B3, Vox, Farfisa, Pipe1, Pipe2, and B3 Bass, selected by Nord’s usual round-robin button. All organ models are lay-two-forearms-across-the-keys fully polyphonic. Importantly, you can select different organ models for parts A and B. You can have the Leslie simulation on any model, but both parts share it. The B3 model is of course where the majority of players will spend most of their time, but labels for the drawbars’ alternate behavior in Vox and Farfisa modes are printed in two rows above the drawbars, with the B3 footages below. In Farfisa mode, the drawbars become on/off stop tabs for the various voices. Speaking of drawbars, they’re not merely smooth faders with drawbar-shaped caps; they have just the right amount of click to feel like the “smooth” drawbars on vintage Hammond organs beginning with the B-3 and C-3. I’ll assume we’re all familiar with what pipe-equivalent pitches B-3 drawbars produce, but the user manual has handy diagrams relating these to a keyboard graphic to illustrate what pitches they trigger in each mode. It has similar diagrams for the Farfisa and Vox. I’m gonna do a quick overview of the non-B3 models first, then get to the main course. Farfisa: - Stops: Bass 16, String 16, Flute 8, Oboe 8, Trumpet 8, Flute 4, String 4, 2-2/3 - Harmonic Percussion: not available - Vibrato/Chorus has four options: light/slow, light/fast, heavy/slow, heavy/fast. Vibrato is shared by parts A and B. Vox: - Drawbars: The Stage 4 makes all the drawbars for both manuals of the original Super Continental available for both parts A and B, but provides this diagram so you can use only those corresponding to the desired manual: - - As on the original, Roman numerals refer to a mixture of frequencies. The rightmost drawbar sets the balance between sine and sawtooth character for all the other drawbars. - Harmonic Percussion: not available - Vibrato/Chorus has three options: original, less, and more Pipe 1 and 2: - Drawbars: Same pitches as the B3 model, and variable like a B-3, not just on/off. - Harmonic Percussion: not available - Vibrato/Chorus: Doesn’t add any sort of vibrato, but switches to a model with less precise tuning between the pipes, resulting in slight chorus effects between seemingly random frequencies - Pipe 1 has an immediate attack and thus sounds almost like the B-3 model, but without key click, tonewheel leakage, etc. - Pipe 2 has a softer attack and more closely imitates the principal tibia rank of a pipe organ B-3: Okay, now let’s talk about the B-3, which is the reason most of us are here. Drawbar for drawbar, it’s hard to fault this model for, well, anything. The drawbar tones sound right to my ears. So does the Harmonic Percussion, which has the correct triggering behavior (it had better, right?). The Vibrato/Chorus is tasty, but the C3 position could stand to be a bit deeper if my memory of many vintage Hammonds I’ve known is accurate. Vibrato/Chorus can be set independently for parts A and B. The Sound menu, accessed by pressing Shift-2 on the panel’s center section, houses a couple of parameters for which the organ section lacks dedicated controls: the all-important key click produced by the organ’s key contacts, and a choice of three tonewheel models with progressively more grunge and leakage: Clean, Vintage 1, and Vintage 2. Key click is not continuously variable as of the firmware I’m working with (v 0.98); there are only low and high options. There are also low and high settings in the Sound menu for the organ key trigger point — low matches that of the Piano and Synth sections and high raises the point in the key dip. Some organists find this adds an edge of authenticity in terms of the feel of a vintage Hammond. For any model, the Preset button toggles whether you’re playing the preset as stored in the program, or the live settings of the drawbars and other controls in the Organ section. (In the center section, you can hit a button that lets you dial through only Organ — or other section — presets instead of changing the multi-timbral program for all sections.) Hitting Shift-Preset matches the Preset settings to the physical drawbar positions. Note then when you’re in “live” (non-preset) operation, the LED ladders all turn off to let you know. B3 Bass: I saved this for the end because it’s sort of an adjunct to the B3 model. In this mode, the first two drawbars become the pair of pedal drawbars on a vintage Hammond: 16 and 8 feet. Except they kinda don’t. Maybe this is due to a pre-1.0 firmware version, but I found that the second drawbar was actually pulling a mixture of tones. I know — the pedal drawbars are supposed to produce harmonically richer sounds than the more-or-less sine waves of the drawbars for the manuals, but this was a bit too much to be accurate. In particular I was hearing to much of the fifth. Well, this post feels like it’s been a bit dry, just an overview of the Organ section’s features and a few first impressions. Could be I’m tired. Over the weekend we’re going to have more fun, digging into the Leslie simulation with some audio examples. This may be controversial, but for the aesthetic and emotional experience most of us want from the B-3 sound, I’ve always felt that the rotary simulation is 75 percent or more of the battle. I’ve put sounds from my original DX7 through a real Leslie, Vent, and Dynacord CLS-222 (wish I still had mine) and they had depth and balls. On the other hand, a poor rotary simulation takes me out of the song immediately, even if applied to a perfectly modeled organ.

Great suggestions all around! Real MC, I would love to hear how the CLS stacks up against modern digital sims. I expect it would hold its own favorably.

HI friends! Still writing up the organ section in the Stage 4, which I hope to have done today. Meanwhile, I was struck with what’s either a genius or a batshit crazy idea (maybe both) which I posted in the KC: MPN members collaborate on the biggest and most authoritative Leslie simulation roundup ever. CLONK IT

While working on the review of the NordStage 4 in GearLab, I got the idea to do audio examples of its Leslie simulation compared with some other clonewheels and keyboards I have in the studio. I’m still going to do so, but then it occurred to be that by making this a collaborative and crowdsourced effort, we could have an authoritative comparison of most Leslie/rotary simulations on the market today, both standalone pedals or effects and those that are built into keyboard instruments. (FYI my first ever involvement with Keyboard magazine was as a panelist in one of Mark Vail’s clonewheel roundups in 1997.) The idea is that I would do several based on what I currently possess, and forumites — looking at you, MPN Advisory Board members — would contribute examples from their collection as well. Workflow concept: We all use the same MIDI file, which can be fairly simple and I can provide. Since different organs and plug-ins and such use different MIDI messages to toggle fast and slow speeds, we’d agree to do switches at the same points, and either program them in or trigger them manually as the file drives an external MIDI instrument or a plug-in. The track is then recorded to stereo audio. Audio specs: - 24-bit, 48kHz in case we want to put any example in a video later. (48kHz is the standard sampling rate for picture.) - Every audio track should undergo a “normalize” operation with peaks no louder than -6dB to help avoid the “louder is better” bias. - Delivery format: 24/48 WAV file. The results would be posted to their own GearLab thread, and updated as new products or firmware updates are released. Deliverables: Each product would involve six separate audio examples, corresponding to three drawbar registrations: - Jazz organ: 888 with third harmonic percussion set to soft and fast - Full drawbars - “Erroll Garner”: 80 000 8888 - Two files per registration: One with no vibrato/chorus, the other with C3 chorus My rationale here is that the acid test of a Leslie simulation is higher frequencies at fast speed. The treble is of course more directional, so if a sim has any cheap-sounding panning or throbbing characteristics, they’ll especially show themselves with the Garner. As for the vibrato chorus, sims often sound deeper and better with chorus applied, so it’s important to see how they do with and without it. Now, onto the products. What I have (note that I could record all these but it will go faster if I don’t Hardware: Hammond SK-X and older XK-3C system Nord Stage 4 Studiologic Numa Organ (first-gen) Roland VR organ model inside Fantom 7 Kurzweil Forte7 KB3 mode Kurzweil K-2661 KB3 mode with K-Sounds patches from Keven Spargo Software: Arturia B-3 V “Vintage B3 Organ” (formerly EV-B3) with Logic Pro What I don’t have and would like to see in the roundup: Hardware: Hammond XK5, XK4, and/or SK-X Pro Nord Stage 3, C2D, and/or current/recent Electro Crumar Mojo Viscount Legend (any model) Current Roland V-Combo MAG Neo Instruments Ventilator II Software: IK Multimedia Hammond B-3X Of course, I’m open to suggestions for anything I’ve missed. This looks like a pretty good buffet of what a player might choose from currently, and the roundup could grow to include legacy products. So, the only question left is: Who’s in?

Main Upgrades versus Nord Stage 3 With the above in mind, let’s look to the main ways the Stage 4 improves upon the Stage 3. Aside from the multi-timbral capability we’ve been discussing, one of the biggest things that strikes me is the Synth section. The Stage 3’s synth section was basically the engine of the Nord Lead A1, the closest thing the company makes to an entry-level product. It’s multi-mode “smart” oscillator is powerful, but it’s nothing like a Nord Wave 2. I reviewed the Wave 2 in this thread a couple of years back, so you may find it worth a look to review just how powerful the Wave 2 is. Point being, in the Stage 4’s synth engine you’re getting essentially three-quarters of a Wave 2. That is, the W2 has four parts/layers and the Stage 4 synth has three. Each of those layers can function in either of two modes: Samples or ‘Analog.’ Samples are your all-purpose keymapped multisamples spanning just about all acoustic and electric instrument types. I put ‘analog’ in quotes because it actually encompasses four further modes selected using the left soft knob beneath the Synth section’s dedicated display: virtual analog, harmonic FM, inharmonic FM, and wavetable. Samples mode can load content from the Nord Sample Library, and the memory allocated for this has been expanded from 480MB to 1GB. We’ll leave the rest of the Synth section for its own more detailed post. The Piano section is more or less unchanged, except for the aforementioned true dual layers on the Stage 4 instead of switchable A-B settings on the Stage 3. You still select the piano type (acoustic, electric, Clav, etc.) with that round-robin selection button, then call up further variations with the dial below. The other big deal here is support for the version 2 iterations of the Nord Triple Pedal and Sustain Pedal, and the addition of a dedicated input for the triple pedal. The Organ section now features physical drawbars with LED ladders on all sizes of the Stage 4. With the Stage 3, only the Compact model gave you real drawbars, albeit with no LEDs; the 76- and 88-key weighted models had LEDs with those up down “drawbuttons” hailing from the original Electro. They were the one thing I actively disliked about my Electro 2. Nord says the Leslie simulation is improved in the Stage 4, and we’ll evaluate that claim in a post dedicated to the Organ section. Speaking of keyboards, all three versions of the Stage 4 now boast triple-sensor actions. The application here is that presumably the sound engine can interpret subtle timing and velocity differences between the sensors on any key as they register a key strike, then manifest that in the particular harmonic profile of, say, a piano note, adding to realism. Effects have been supercharged, especially in terms of routing. Where on the Stage 3, you could assign each effect sub-section (Delay, Modulation, Reverb, etc.) to a different instrument section (Organ, Piano, or Synth), on the Stage 4 the entire effects complement has an independent instance for each layer within a section — except for the Organ, whose A and B layers share the same instance. So we have Modulation 1, Modulation 2, Amp Sim / EQ, Compressor, Delay, and Reverb subsections on the panel. All of that has six separate instances. Not just switchable settings — separate simultaneous signal paths. (Send and return? What’s that?) The Delay, Compressor, and Reverb may quickly be toggled to Global mode so that the current settings apply to all active sections and layers at once. In the Mod 1 subsection, there’s also a new “Pump” effect that simulates a sidechain compressor keyed to a kick drum for that dance floor sound that always made me feel like I was having inner ear issues, even when I was an appropriate age to like it. There’s a lot more to the new Effects section which, again, we’ll get into in a dedicated post. Hope this has been a good summary of improvements. We’ll dig into the Organ section in my next post, because if there’s one thing I know about the MPN forums, it’s that we never get tired of talking about B-3 and Leslie simulation. Heck, I’ve been talking about it for 35 years and haven’t stopped questing. See you tomorrow!

Eric thanks for your thoughtful response! I haven’t spent much time on the Stage 3 at all, though after reading your post I did look up some videos on the A-B panel button. So, basically, you have two sets of front panel settings per Program. Lots of Arturia plug-ins have this as well. From what you and MathOfInsects say it seems like this is the first Stage (or any Nord?) to address the section level and the part-within-a-section level from the same panel, without having to flip from one mode to another. Math, I feel ya on the split points thing. I mean, there are enough of them that I can more than manage, but for a pro instrument at this price point, players should be able to choose something besides a B/C or E/F split if they want.

Imagine my excitement when Clavia’s North American distributor emailed me to ask, “If we send you a Nord Stage 4 to check out, will you write about it?” Um, no, I’m too busy eating shredded cheese out of the bag and catching up on Star Trek: Prodigy which is way better than it has any business being. Of course I’ll write about it! To be honest I’ve never been a huge Nord guy. I’ve owned three of them over the years: the Electro 2 that replaced my Roland VK7 on the bandstand, an original Wave for a minute, and most recently a Nord Grand because I fell in love with the keyboard action when I reviewed it for Piano Buyer back in April 2020. But even given the little bit of time I’ve spent with the Stage 4 so far, let’s just say I’m understanding why previous Stage models are on so many backline riders and what guys like Eric Lawson are on about. Nords have become a bit polarizing. I’ve met two types of keyboard players. If they have an opinion at all, they either think that Nord’s sound quality and approach to real-time control puts them head and shoulders above any other do-it-all stage workhorse, or they think Nord is an overpriced hipster brand that’s gotten a lot of mileage out of being … red. For me at least, what distinguishes the Nord Stage series is not the color, and we could argue who has the best piano or B3 or Rhodes sound all day and never come to a consensus. Instead, it’s the approach to accessing and controlling multiple instrument sounds and methods of sound generation. The multi-model thing is pretty much standard issue on higher-end keyboards now — samples, tonewheel modeling, virtual analog, FM, physical modeling, wavetable synthesis, etc. But for the most part, the way it’s implemented is, well, workstation-y. On a Kronos, new Fantom, Montage, etc., you pretty much choose a synthesis type and put it on a mixer/MIDI channel in whatever multi-timbral setup the instrument has. More often than not, this requires some menu diving and extended touchscreen poking. With the Nord Stage 4, you see the sections first: organ, piano, and synth. It’s a single button press to turn any section on or off, and there are mixer faders for further multi-timbral parts or layers within each section. Buttons below each fader select which layer that section’s controls are currently editing. Twiddle the knobs in each section until you hear what you like, then hit Store and you have a preset. If the user interface on modern workstations is like the Enterprise D or Voyager or Discovery, Nord is more like the bridge from the original series: lots of tactile feedback and blinky lights. A handful of things made great first impressions on me, though none of this will be news to any veteran Nord players. Across all sections, any layer or combination of layers may be assigned to “Aux KB,” i.e. an external keyboard controller. This is ideal if you have one of the weighted versions of the Stage 4 and want to play organ and synths sounds from a keyboard with a synth or waterfall action. Also, the Stage 4 is really a seven-part multi-timbral instrument. The Organ section has two parts (corresponding to upper and lower manuals), the Piano section has two parts (letting you layer acoustic pianos and EPs and such), and the Synth section has three parts. Each part/layer within each section, along with all of its associated parameters, is addressable on a separate MIDI channel. I set up a quick template in Logic Pro to test this, with Logic’s external instrument plug-ins on each of seven tracks transmitting on MIDI channels 1 through 7 and just moved an Apple Loop from one track to another. Nope, it wasn’t too good to be true. Want to sequence the Synth section in your DAW as though it’s three synths each doing their own thing? Can do. Want to do that as a single synth with three “oscillators”? Set the appropriate tracks’ MIDI outputs to the same channel. Another cool convenience: Shift-pressing the on/off buttons for the part/layer that currently has the control focus in any section toggles whether that part responds to the pitch stick and/or the sustain pedal. Speaking of pedals, you get a lot of dedicated pedal inputs: one for Nord’s triple-pedal unit (I have one that came with the Nord Grand so looking forward to testing it), one for swell in the organ section (insert Beavis and Butt-Head laugh here), one for fast/slow toggle for the Leslie effect, plus continuous control, sustain, and switch jacks. Also like: The Synth section’s filter cutoff and resonance knobs normally work per layer, but you can toggle a “section” mode that makes them affect all active synth layers at once, which is presumably what you’d want to do for dramatic sweeps in live performance. Anything underwhelming so far? There’s a 1/8-inch stereo external audio input, but it’s only a pass-through for monitoring audio from an external devices and is routed directly to the main line-level outs and the headphone jack; you cannot, for example, process external audio through a layer of the Synth section nor the effects. That, and entering program names is a pretty clunky affair. My overall first impression is that “Stage” is really the right name for this beast. Everything on it is geared for quick changes in live performance. If you’re used to more of a “workstation” configuration, there’s a moderate but totally manageable learning curve, especially in the sense that you’ll be using that Shift button a lot because if there were actually one button or knob per function, the Stage 4 would cost twice as much and the necessary panel real estate would have to go above a 176-key keyboard. But once you start to get your head around Nord’s user interface logic, there’s a certain beauty and immediacy to how they’ve minimized menu-diving. A word about the action: The 88- and 73-key weighted versions use a hammer-action Fatar TP-40M with aftertouch. I received the 88 and it’s a great action: heavy enough but not too heavy that I’d get fatigued by playing in a cover band all night — though it does fall somewhat sort of the piano purist’s dream that is the Kawai action in the Nord Grand. The Nord Stage Compact features a 73-key semi-weighted waterfall action, also with aftertouch, and is what I would choose personally as I’m more of an organ and synth player than a pianist. Not to mention, the Compact weighs 22.9 pounds as compared to 43.2 for the full 88. I’ve found that a curious thing happens to keyboards as I get older with more and more gigs under my belt: they don’t get any lighter! (BTW, for anyone wondering, “waterfall” refers to semi- or very lightly weighted keys with square fronts but no “lip” on the key like a piano. Organists in particular like it because it was the key design on many Hammond organs including the B-3.) So, from here, I intend to make posts more or less in the following order: - Summary of upgrades vs. Stage 3 - Organ Section - Piano Section - Synth Section - Effects - Center Section (the main program selection/saving and menu area) - MIDI controller functions - Any miscellany we didn’t cover in the previous sections Videos when I can! As always, butt in, interrupt me, ask anything, and if I don’t know the answer I’ll run tests and/or bug the Nord people until I do.

I'd guess that at least one of the voice oscillators also has a low-frequency range. As for the state-variable filter, well, there’s only so much you can pack into a four-octave form factor at a given price point. I think it has more to do, though, with what they’re going for. Before we had reissues of the bona fide Prophet-5 and 10 (and now the OB-X8), Sequential / DSI’s four-octave, six-voice platform was about recapturing the sounds of classic synths in something more compact and modern. The Prophet-6 was a redux of the Prophet-5, the OB-6 of the Oberheim OB series, and now the Trigon distills something that Sequential doesn’t have rights to and can’t name directly: the Memorymoog. Hence the ladder filter and the emphasis on it in their marketing. Dave Smith saw the analog renaissance coming but was careful and shrewd about it. Each product beginning with the original Evolver was another progressive toe in the water; look at the chronology of synths through things like the Poly Evolver, MoPho, Tetra, Prophet ’08, etc., and you’ll see what I mean. “Oh, that did well? OK, let’s take another step in a purist direction.” If I’d asked Dave in, say, 2015 whether he’d ever consider a pure Prophet-5 reissue, he’d have looked at me like I had five heads. (In fact, when I asked Dave what he would say to hipsters who derided the Prophet-12’s digital front end, his answer was a grinning, gleeful “Fuck ’em!”) Now here we are. So, it looks like we now have a Memorymoog-esque six-voice probably hitting around the same $3,000-ish price point as the Prophet-6 and OB-6. Shot across the bow of the Moog One? Not meant to be; the latter is way more expensive not to mention bigger and heavier.

A good friend's almost-16-year-old turned him on to this and he passed it along to me. Steely Dan meets vaporwave. French artist plays nearly all the instruments AND does the animations as in this video. (NSFW because animated nudity but also animated synths. Turn on the subtitles.) I dig it and I hope you do to. His entire catalog is worth checking out. More broadly, it makes me think about discovering new music as I get older. Mcbaise, for example, is right up my alley, the kind of thing I find incredibly hip. I would not know about it if it weren’t for a 16-year-old. (Admittedly this guy is special. He discovered Vulfpeck on his own at, like, ten.) It’s proof that there’s really cool stuff out there and that no, not all current music in the pop landscape sucks. But how do you find it without having the immersion of a young music enthusiast who goes to shows all the time? I’m lucky to still get a lot of press releases and be in touch with publicists. The “similar artists” and “if you like this you might like that” algorithms of streaming platforms are OK. If something is on an indie label I might check out other artists on that label. (Mcbaise is part of a stable of artists called Dirty Melody and it's all pretty cool.) I still listen to my local college radio station. But unless something really makes waves in the muso community (e.g. Snarky Puppy) I’m liable to miss it. That’s a shame, because I feel so much joy when I discover something new and cool. How do you discover new music that you like?

Ok folks, thanks for being patient with me. Here's my overview of the... Digital Oscillator Make that two of ’em. Each oscillator performs a different Type of synthesis (think of these as sound engines), and the two are identical except for the first one having external audio input as one of the Types. The next three parameters: Wave, Timbre, and Shape, do different things depending on the Type. Turn one of these, and the level in a little flask or beaker changes in the display — presumably to invoke a mad scientist’s laboratory. The Types are the big deal here, and if you’re familiar with Pigments, you could be forgiven for speculating that MiniFreak’s types might partially or wholly subsets of the code behind Pigments’ sound engines. (To be clear, I have no inside knowledge about this.) So let’s see what they do. Warning: This is about to get a bit geeky, and though I (or others) may correct me down the line, I’m going to write this strictly on what my ears are telling me. Basic Waves: As the name implies, basic waveforms. The Wave knob morphs the oscillator from triangle through saw; Timbre adjusts the “symmetry” of the waveform (audibly this most resembles changing pulse width); Shape adds a sub-oscillator. Superwave: A riff on the stacked-and-detunable “supersaw” we all know from Roland, but with more waveform options. Wave: selects (doesn’t morph) sine, triangle, square, saw. Timbre: Detune amount of stacked waves. Shape: Volume of detuned waves relative to base wave. Harmonic: This appears to be a very pared-down version of some features from the harmonic/additive engine in Pigments. Wave: adjusts partials content. Timbre: “sculpting,” which seems to tilt the overall spectrum around the content setting. Shape: simply adds a chorus effect. Karplus-Strong: This type of synthesis models a bowed or struck string by passing a waveform through a filtered delay line. Whether the result sounds bowed or struck will depend on your envelope settings, but Wave adjusts the hardness of the bow/hammer, Timbre its position, and Shape the decay of the string. The basic sound is very bright so its harmonic profile depends on your filter settings. Virtual Analog: Well, it’s called “VAnalog” onscreen and maybe this stands for something else, because the Basic Waves oscillator type is more how I’d expect virtual analog to behave. This is more a sort of waveshaping synthesis, with Wave adjusting a detune amount; Shape doing the, um, shaping (certain settings provide some clangorous “bad FM” sounds); and Shape controlling the actual waveform. Interesting because the next Type on deck is … Waveshaper: Here, Wave adjusts the brightness from something like sine to something like a very dirty triangle; Timbre is the overall waveshaping (i.e. phase distortion) amount); Shape balances the symmetry/asymmetry of the distorted waves. Two-Operator FM: Just like the name says, it’s one sine-wave carrier and one sine-wave modulator. Wave, Timbre, and Shape adjust ratio, amount, and feedback, respectively. Formant: To me this Type sounds more like a way to get varieties of hard-sync, Cars-squawk sounds than the vocal vowels I associate with formant synthesis. Left to right, our three familiar knobs control interval, formant, and shape. Speech: Now this one is wild. It speaks/sings various words (presumably sampled) in a more or less robotic tone whose character you can vary with the Timbre knob. Think Casio SK-1 meets Daft Punk. Shape chooses the words, which include things like “analog,” “filter,” and “synthesizer.” Yet Wave further determines the words. It seems that when Wave is all the way open, Shape gives you a selection of multi-syllabic words. Then turning Wave down reduces the number of syllables — or rather, it switches to words with fewer syllables. For example, with Shape on the “synth words” list, turning Wave down a couple of notches gave me the military alphabet (alpha, bravo, etc.). I am not yet sure how big MiniFreak’s vocabulary is, nor whether you can sample your own words using the audio input. Modal: This sounds like some kind of physical modeling well suited to struck and plucked sounds. Wave, Timbre, and Shape control inharmonicity, harmonic content, and decay, respectively. If you wanted to emulate a rack of glass bottles each containing a different amount of water, this is where you’d go. Noise: Noise buffet is more like it, with Wave continuously morphing the noise type from standard white- and pink-noise fare through more pitched/tonal sounding stuff that could be based on FM or ring modulation. Notably, the Shape knob brings in a plain-jane triangle wave — presumably to give your ravaged ears a place to put their feet down. Bass: This Type is meant for, you guessed it, bass sounds. The base waveform with all knobs at minimum sounds like a very muted sawtooth. Turn up Wave, and you get more saturation and increased harmonics. Timbre adds a sharper edge using a wave-folding function, and Shape adds a trashed-speaker-cone sounding noise element. SawX: As best as I can figure, this Type cross-modulates sawtooth waves, resulting in anything from, again, a Cars-sync sort of sound to more aggressive fare with considerable inharmonicity. It’s good at nasal, band-passed sort of sounds. Tweaking it carefully, I got one hell of an honest oboe out of it. Harm: Wait, don’t we already have a type called “Harmonic”? I don’t think that’s what this means. I think it means “harm,” as in what you can do to your psyche with this oscillator Type. It seems to be a baseline-brighter and potentially nastier version of Bass, with Timbre doing dastardly things to the waveform using a recitifer function. Turn the knobs up all the way and the Cenobites show up. Audio In: Available on oscillator 1 only, this is more than just a blank path to the MiniFreak’s filters and effects. It does … things … to whatever’s coming in the audio input. Wave applies wavefolding to the audio, meaning it turns over the positive and negative peaks of the waveform, which can add anything from a few interesting harmonics to the sort of sonic destruction we’d associate with Trent Reznor before he became America’s cuddly Goth dad. Shape brings the noise. Edit: Presumably this Type is involved in using MiniFreak as a vocoder, an application that was more straightforward on MicroFreak. Will investigate. I should mention that for the oscillator types I’ve described as aggressive, that’s only the case at higher settings of the knobs. You can get a lot of subtlety out of all of them, which speaks again to the MiniFreak’s versatility. You can push it and get weird, or you can push it a little less and get, well, anything. More to come soon!

Gents, I’ll have to get back to you on the paraphonic thing as I haven't gotten there yet, though Dr. Mike Metlay, who wrote the manual, may have something to say. For now I’ve been working on the digital oscillator, a post I hope to have up later today.