Programming Synth Programming

[Theo Verelst]

Just like autonomously changing sound synthesis engines defy a certain advantage of romplers, and programming analog synths being noticeably dissimilar to reaching the intended produced synthesizer sounds probably the target when purchasing the machine, when a digital device has the capacity to sound out exactly all sounds known to man, with accuracy and all required effects and modulations and what have you, the makers of such a device have the choice of making indeed the desired sounds available with a modern powerful choice of UI, or to try to teach their customers something in the meanwhile, or simply refuse to let anyone reach that ultimate (in some real sense) sound potential.

 

Alternatively, finding the power sounds might be reserved for synth users who now some secret code or path to the desired sound bliss, to privilege certain players to sound better than others, who could never find the exact parameters for all those top sounds. Or there could be competition between parties making the device calling for the users' attention, or maybe slight errors being built in the sounds normally capable synthesizer programmers would edit together, to warrant selling later products with increased "ease of editing"...

 

TV

[stoken6]

I don't understand all of this (I think "synth users who now some secret code or path..." is missing a verb), but I don't see synth manufacturers fundamentally introducing "slight errors" to upsell customers to more profitable alternatives. They might compromise specs (such as a cheaper DAC) to cut costs and hit a price point, driven by competition from other vendors, which is slightly different. 

 

Fundamentally, sounding good is more about the player than the instrument.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Adam Burgess]

Anything remotely technical, you have to have an idea of what you're looking for, and where you want to put it. Building a house one brick at a time without any vision is a bit stupid. At least draw it on the back of a beer mat.

Having a 'place' for a 'sound' and 'part' to sit in an 'arrangement'.

And, the way you play it (bouncing off any others in the ensemble, or yourself, recorded earlier) is soooo important. You have many tools. The trick is putting a million variables together at the right time using tools that will do it with the 'feel', 'emotions', 'groove'… etc etc

You can quantise timing to the sample level, or have equations to quantise to a 'human' approximation of timing/sloppiness/voicings from a pool of recordings alla AI. Is it good? Who knows?

 

[Theo Verelst]

Covering "all" possibilities of sound synthesis is a difficult mathematical problem. Existing sounds could be sampled, but you'd need to sample all chords too (and make the digital sound good).

 

New sounds in the area of subtractive synthesis could be made bij finding interesting parameter settings on existing analog synthesizers, or bij making new analog signal paths.

 

T

[CyberGene]

I’ll be damned if I understand what the OP is about 🧐

[wineandkeyz]

The thread title is from the Department of Redundancy Department.

[ProfD]

On 7/4/2023 at 9:45 AM, stoken6 said:

Fundamentally, sounding good is more about the player than the instrument.

Bingo. Playing begins and ends with the musician(s) behind the gear and how they choose to use it.  

 

Theo's posts come across as someone who's primary interest are 1) engineering and 2) music. 

 

Most musicians play 1st and think about or dig into the technological aspect of gear 2nd or 3rd if at all.

 

In fact, most KB players I know plug and play. They don't know the difference between an oscillator and a waveform and don't care. 🤣😎

[CowboyNQ]

On 7/7/2023 at 10:41 AM, CyberGene said:

I’ll be damned if I understand what the OP is about 🧐

I think you’ll find the answer in Henry V, Act IV, Scene IV.

[uhoh7]

" when a digital device has the capacity to sound out exactly all sounds known to man"....

 

wake me please

 

 

 

 

[Artomas]

There are new sounds in analog synthesis all the time, due to people with modular synths patching with or without intent. Buchla stuff doesn't seem to distinguish between audio and control signal paths?! It's a recent phenomena to have available fixed architecture polyphonic analog synths that offer parameter morphing (e.g. Polybrute, One).

 

There are trends, including the parameter morphing I mentioned, and "pulsar" synthesis and "thru-zero FM" spring to mind from recent times. Krell patching had a recent resurgence, online at least. Modulating a modulator that's modulating another modulator, and feedback paths. We've had fully modulatable synths like Norand Mono and Implexus (which is part of the "East Coast meets West Coast synthesis" trend also seen in 0-Coast and Taiga, and others.  But as far as new sounds from a simple synth... I don't know how much territory can be left to explore on a Minimoog.

 

As far as digital synths being able to analyze audio and resynthesize a patch for you, based on it... or even, for a synth to create a patch based on your text prompt... yeah, that's on its way. There's stem separation and additive resynthesis right now,  so it's not the most shocking idea to try and combine those. Another option, instead of additive resynthesis, is to have a massive database of presets, and a system that matches your source to the nearest preset, and then automatically modifies that preset further (envelopes, timbre, modulation, etc) to match your source even better. Maybe by 2030, programming a synth will be like listening to music on vinyl is in 2023... technically obsolete, but still a thriving community of aficionados and a small but healthy support economy.

 

As far as Roland removing some Zencore features from each of their hardware products towards the goal of product differentiation and "buy them all!" mentality, or the Yamaha CK not including their one good Leslie sim, as one more probably-not-a-technical-or-dsp-cost constraint reason that they can use to upsell me on a YC73 instead of CK88...  no, no, manufacturers would never do that! (J/k) At least Yamaha gave good pianos to the YC, instead of trying to make you buy both a YC and a CP. And with synths, Sequential ported their improved "vintage" knob from their flagships to their relatively less expensive 6-series of synths... I can name plenty of situations where manufacturers were very generous with features on lesser synths and keyboards compared to their flagships, including Roland and Yamaha. It would be unusual if their WASN'T some marketing hijinks going on. Luxury level products are usually priced so that they're aspirational... so if the companies want to sell those, it helps if they reserve their best tech for that level, even if it doesn't cost any extra to implement that tech.

 

Hey, that's like 5 different topics mangled together, but when in Rome...

[Threadslayer]

On 7/4/2023 at 6:45 AM, stoken6 said:

I don't understand all of this (I think "synth users who now some secret code or path..." is missing a verb),

I think it is actually missing the letter "k". On another note, when I saw the thread title, the first thing I thought of was creating an AI application to mine existing interesting/ commercially successful sounds to come up with new synth programming concepts.

[Theo Verelst]

A k was missing.