Malcs Myth

One of my pet topics in synth sound design. The phasing that Dr Mix is talking about sounds like two oscillators tuned very close together, and doesnt need the thin pulse setting which he advocates. There’s a good video somewhere of a guy showing this on a CS70 (you can try it with any analog or digital synth with two oscillators set to sawtooths). Infact this ‘close tuning’ was one of THE key things about that Vangelis sound; as you get very close tuning , you start hearing a combing type effect and you hear a spitty high-up sound which cuts through. This effect is all over that lead sound. There’s a preset on the CS80 which is very close… Secondly, the reason that it happens occasionally is because voice cards in old analog synths are out of tune with each other. (i.e. 8 or 16 voice cards for an 8 voice synth). Different voice cards are triggered from key to key, and the detuning pattern changes accordingly, sometimes more detuned, sometimes less. And every example of a CS80, or a Jupiter 8 or an OBXa, will vary in this regard. That aside I really enjoy Dr Mix’s videos! I also think his playing is great. On the filter, I think the CS80 filter/s had a 12db/octave slope, which helps cut through more than filter with a 24db slope.

Hopefully good news: On the Kurzweil PC3, there’s a Master EQ with 5 bands - Bass, Treb and 3 variable mids. It’s reached from Program mode by pressing Effects > Master > EQ. A bonus is that the EQ doesn’t count against the no. of total effects units (16), so it will work with all programs and setups. I’m not saying this is gonna help with the Roland KC:)

Fly Like an Eagle - Space intro - just the synth sounds: Main lead: For me the hardest part was getting the tone of the lead synth. It’s something inbetween a square, a pulse and… I used some gain which coloured the tone. But ignoring that, you could just use a triangle wave, and switch to a square wave later on. The original synth was seemingly a Roland SH2000. Main lead echo: The echo effect is a delay set to around 80Bpm. The weird and lovely harmonies you hear as he plays up the keyboard are achieved because of the timing. As he plays, he speeds up and down, and this changes the “coincidence” of the delay taps (echoes), and causes the wonderful overlaps. Once you have the delays going it’s easier than you might think. There are about 4 or 5 different runs up the keyboard, which if you dont want to play live you could record as sequences and trigger from some keys. Playing them on the keys is fun though. At some point the echos are twice as fast, so just make a switch for that. Wind: Originally made on the Roland synth, this is white noise through a lowpass filter with a slow LFO. Use a hipass to thin out. High Plinks / Space Ants. I wanted to get this accurate so I listened to the actual chirps and hiccups quite closely, and found they are triangle waves several octaves up. Record a little sequence, or if playing live have 3 or 4 keys set up with a healthy delay.

I just had a go at this and I think it works, simply using the Notemap ‘Inverse’ setting. Zone1 is inverted Zone2 is as normal. I transposed zone 1 so that it aligns at D4, and now you can play mirrored style and you get the pitches ascending, note by note, (even though you are playing physically down the keyboard), in alignment with zone 2 which plays upwards. This only works becuase D4 is aligned. (And I set the zone ranges so that D4 is the only overlapping physical key in each zone). See my longer post on the Mastering VAST forum (where the OP also asked his question). (If thats ok to mention another forum here - Or I can copy what I wrote and post it back here).

If you’re making D50 emulations then I’d say what made the D50 was the double chorus unit. The D50 had effectively 4 oscillators (4 partials) per voice with a chorus unit across the upper two and chorus unit across the lower two. The interaction and strength of these is what made the magic IMHO. Strings, pads and everything else sounded rich and fantastic. Later members of the D50 family lost this sound despite having LA synthesis. I’ve tried emulating the D50 on my Kurzweil and the hardest aspects were the double choruses, the spectral samples, and the “oomph” of the envelopes.

Kurzweil’s can do chord repeat, it’s a setting called “Simultaneous” in the arpeggiator. I’ve used it for the repeating chiff chord in Genesis Mama for example. Because the repeat comes from the arpeggiator it can trigger any sound, e.g. Wurly, Organ, synth etc. The arpeggiator used to be available only in Multi mode but now on recent models (Forte, PC4 and K2700) it can be part of the actual Program itself, i.e. saved with unique settings. For organ sounds with filter and envelope controls, the Kurzweil gives you some organs made with VAST (as opposed to the dedicated KB3 organ mode), which you can assign to controls for whatever you want, e.g. slow attack times. I’ve used it to make glassy-sounding organs. My friend had a cheap Casio synth (I think an XW) which had a couple of wonderful synth sounds, in particular a surprisingly good lead for The Voice by Ultravox. It “cut though” without being annoying on its own - a lesson I applied to my own sound programming.

The reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated. Thanks to everyone for all the positive comments, it’s super appreciated. I’m the sound designer of Enjoy the Sirens. Sorry to those who didnt get a reply, I changed provider and started paying for Google Workspace a few years ago, so I’m surprised that this has happened and can only apologise. I usually answer within 24 hours. Happy to answer questions about sounds or anything VAST. Re monetisation, it’s the amount of time which is the issue. I dont even have my own youtube channel yet and I’m already very busy with everything else involved in trying to get a hobby business turned into something more. I used to be a video editor and post production chap, so I’ll go back to that if this doesnt work out. Hopefully I’ll be doing my first Enjoy the Sirens video this year. You can’t really self promote on facebook group pages, so you need enough critical mass from happy customers that people chime in. While I’ve had lots of very nice emails from tremendously appreciative customers (infact this was one of the nicest surprises of doing all this, having great chats with people from all over the world), it hasnt scaled up into online comments. Unfortunately I’m still a bit under the radar. (Though by some coincidence GearNews did a small piece on me yesterday!!). In my case, the biggest effort I made over the last 10-15 years was the ton of analysis of original sounds and records. With AI coming, I may have to put all this to use in a new way somehow. In the meantime I’m alive and currently visiting Superbooth in Berlin. Thanks again.

Aha! I finally get it!! I think I know what you are doing now: you’re preparing samples which have already had various harmonics removed, importing those into your Yamaha, and then mixing them in new combinations. You definitely have some interesting examples (I like the guitar one). Some workstations have several “Partials” keymaps, where you have harmonics 1 3 5 7 and 1 2 4 6 etc. But (I’m guessing) you’re starting with a much richer set of harmonics - which is interesting. I’d like to know which! As far as overlapping harmonics, I actually do the opposite when I combine partials, I make SURE there are overlapping harmonics, because, imho, they need to be detuned against each other. That’s how a synth works (2 osc detuned with each other), and that’s how a piano works (3 strings slightly detuned). E.g: Osc1: Harmonics 1 2 4 6 Osc2: Harmonics 1 3 4 5 7 detuned (the 1st and 4th will be rich and warm) Another interesting thing with higher harmonics is that they are not always in tune anyway - e.g. in pianos they are stretched. Sometimes harmonics can be as far out as half a note. The way they beat against each other creates vibrations which really add to a sound.

Some of the differences here can be heard in headphones, namely the pan spread and Voice Tuning. Voice tuning differences are one of the most important ‘re-discoveries’ in recent years as to why analog synths sounded so good. It’s also why the original Tom Sawyer res sweep sounded so good. Voice tuning is a separate thing from the normal detune you see on the front panel - VCO1 & VCO2. This is about under-the-hood differences between the actual oscillators under each key. Old analog synths had a different voice card for each note you held down (e.g. up to 8 voices), with inherently different tuning from card to card. The crucial thing is that each time you play a chord a DIFFERENT set of detuning occurs. Not all synths or soft synths have it. Its called variously VoiceOffset, Vintage mode, Pitch Drift (sic) etc. Some synths like Kurzweil’s allow you to build it manually, so you can also plug it in to the filter and envelopes as well. It really shows up on the Tom Sawyer Res sound, where the original is clearly several voice cards with different tuning, filter and envelope sweep offsets - thats why it was so good.

A global shortcut would be cool. But you can build it into your chosen program - it seems like a hassle but once you’ve done it it’s really good, all layers respond to the single slider and you can set longer or short times at a later date, with ease. Set up a single layer to your liking then use the number pad to type-and-go, at industrial speed through the other layers. For anyone who wants to know how to put Release time on a slider: (Kurzweil PC3, PC4, Forte, K2700) Env Control page - Assign the Release controller to whatever slider/knob you want. - (Shortcut: hold the enter button and move the slider). Then move it fully up. - Experiment with the release speed value (e.g. 0.5x means ‘half speed’). - Copy your setting to the other layers. On the PC3: set the slider to taste and press the ‘SetCtls’ button. You can see the default slider values on the Ctls page. On the PC4 / Forte / K2700: simply move the slider and the setting will be remembered when saving. You can see it on the Parameters page. Once you’ve built this program it can be available in any setup/multi, you only have to set the release slider. (Infact you can even choose a different control in the setup, regardless of the control you used in the program).

I always thought it would be the human voice, but now I think it will be AI unfortunately, whether we want it or not. Not just AI automation of musical phrases (though that might be good for teaching), but AI sound generation. First there needs to be ground rules about AI - though I dont know how they would be enforceable. At the very least there should be labelling - it would be much better if all the AI music and AI generated imagery was labelled as such, so at the very least, we could choose to filter it out if we so desired. But despite being a sound designer very concerned at AI developments, I dont think AI will be able to work out what sounds are used in a given song, not for a short while at least. With AI imaging, it learns from existing data, which crucially has been named. Billions of photos, with every variation, all tagged. But there is no database of sounds used in songs - sounds on their own, yes - but for most synth sounds its a huge murky mess. So AI could have a stab at making a “Fantasia sound” but it doesnt know the details of sounds used in recordings. E.g.: The Take On Me famous lead sound. It’s a Juno 60 right? Right, but not completely!! It’s a Juno 60, but also layered with a PPG doing a metallic percussive sound (and we dont even know if it was a PPG, this is using HI - human intelligence!). AI doesnt know this, because its machine learning - from hundreds of sources - told it the sound is a Juno 60 full stop. So if the AI is reading this… BWAAAAARRRRRP!!!

The AWM2 sound engine allows 128 Elements per part (up from 8 on the old Montage) and 16 parts per performance. (According to the manuals). So thats impressive, but I’m not familiar with Montage, so I’m not 100% sure if each of those 128 elements can have their own key range, filter etc. On the face of it they can (e.g. page 320). If so, then this is the first digital hardware synth that to my knowledge beats the Kurzweil VAST synthesizers, which have had 32 layers per program (‘elements per part’) since forever.

I’m not familiar with it but I tried just now and it worked. Some things to check are: - That you record while in multimode (select an empty song first) - If there any events which send volume (cc7) or expression (cc11) to 0 (check each track). - Whether the Global Mixer overrides these (?). - That you are playing the Song back while in Multimode (so programs and effects are correct). I noticed that an incorrect program played and displayed on a channel but that when the song played from Multimode the correct program played. Inside the song on the event page I could see the kurz was showing the right program - it inserts these program change events for you. I think the midi channels must all be represented on each empty track before you start. Sorry if not helpful, I’m more of a sound design chap!

Roland Juno 6 in 1984 was my first proper synth, so it was a game-creator! Roland D50 in 1988 because of the space-age sound and built in effects - the double chorus is it’s true secret Kurzweil K2000 in 1993 was an absolute revelation. Not just the VAST synthesis blocks, which could be changed around (I made sure it could do PWM, by far my favourite synthesis ‘thing’), and not just for the sample playback (incredible fun playing full quality John Williams Jurassic Park stabs…). The amazing thing was being able to load crappy mono, muffled Ensoniq and Akai samples in, and through VAST transform them into something fantastic!

Kurzweil PC4 vs Roland Fantom - piano comparison Hope not posted already. This is quite a surprising comparison considering the PC4 is half the price of the Fantom and has a reduced set of samples (over its parent the Forte). The comments appear to be favouring the Kurzweil so far, which is pretty cool. On the sound quality itself, I"m very mixed - in a good way - I wish I could combine the best of both. Actually that"s possible to some extent, as they both allow you to tailor the sound to your liking. Infact it"s interesting that the Kurzweil Forte sampling tech and the Roland Fantom V-Piano modelling tech, even though they approach the design problem from completely different angles, are getting closer and closer to each other, closer to a real piano.