Synthesis Pointers (short one this time)

[Andre Lower]

Hi there,

 

I really benefited from the pointers I've got from the old hands the last time I called for help, so I'm trying again, this time with just one sound: I'm trying to nail a certain Mini solo patch on my Alesis Micron, and am having trouble with the modulation settings.

 

What my ears tell me is that the aftertouch (hmmm, did Minimoogs have aftertouch at all? ...) or something similar is controlling both the filter cutoff and the filter resonance, but I am not sure how. I am also guessing this is just a simple triangle-shaped, one oscillator affair, but could use some direction.

 

Anyway, I uploaded the relevant MP3 snippet to the link bellow and would love to know your guesses as to general parameter setup and other relevant comments that might have escaped my ears. Thanks again!

 

http://rapidshare.de/files/5343617/The_Trees_Solo.mp3.html

 

P.S. = I have tested the download link, and it is working just fine.

[mate stubb]

Sounds like standard minimoog fare to me. Use either triangle or square (not rectangle) waves for the basic hollow sound.

 

The mini does not have modulatable resonance, and I don't hear it being modulated here, either. What you perceive as the resonance change when the freq is swept up is a natural characteristic of the Moog ladder filters - resonance drops off as frequency gets lower. This turns out to be a rather musical effect, in that low notes sound fatter naturally.

 

So choose a moog 4 pole ladder filter type on your Micron if it has one, and set something like the mod wheel to control the filter (no aftertouch on the mini either), and you should be good to go.

 

Moe

[ITGITC]

Moe,

 

Something tells me that you are the only guy in Ames, Iowa with a huge modular synth...

 

I could be wrong.

 

Have you ever thought about setting up in the town commons and blowing the minds of all the townsfolk who've never seen such a beast?

 

You could stand up in the center of town and proclaim that there was trouble over at the billiard hall. That's trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for POOL.

 

Then you could talk 'em into organizing a band to keep the kids out of the pool hall and outta trouble... They'd all want to order uniforms, band instruments, and such. Then, after you've collected all the deposits for this stuff you could wait until the darkness of night to scurry away on the train out of town.

 

Good idea, huh?

 

Somebody outta make a movie or something.

 

Tom

[mate stubb]

Yeah, you are probably right, Gas. In fact, about the only place I have lived that I DIDN'T have the biggest synth in town was Cincinnati.

 

Err, but things in Iowa have changed in the last 50 years. The trouble right here in River City isn't POOL, it's crack labs.

 

Moe

[ITGITC]

Originally posted by mate_stubb:

The trouble right here in River City isn't POOL, it's crack labs.

 

Moe

That's not what your Chamber of Commerce web site mentioned when I was there tonight.

 

Anyway, it just seemed kinda funny to me how homogenious Ames is. You come out into the middle of town with this HUGE analog synth and put on a show.

 

Of course now you've blown my lily-white dream all to pieces.

 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed your web site.

 

Thanks mate_stubb,

 

Tom

[Andre Lower]

Moe, forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is a ladder filter? As far as I know there is nothing by this name in the list of Micron's filters, only a humble MG 4 pole Low pass filter. Perhaps it's something I can try to emmulate using Keyboardtrack or Envelope amount settings? If all else fails, the Micron does feature a tracking generator, which should allow me to pull out any trick (I guess).

[mate stubb]

The classic filter invented by Bob Moog (and present with subtle differences in every synth ever made with his name on it) has the following characteristics:

 

- it is lowpass (cuts highs and passes lows)

 

- it has -24db/oct rolloff characteristics (sometimes referred to as a 4 pole filter - oberheims and arps often had 2 pole filters)

 

- it has the nonlinear resonance response at low frequencies that I mentioned in my original post

 

- it is often called a ladder filter, because when you look at an electrical diagram of the circuit, it has a dual chain of matched transistors which looks like a ladder.

 

That's probably way more than you wanted to know. MG 4 IS the Moog 4 pole filter emulation, so that's the one to pick. The Micron has an elaborate prefilter mixer and postfilter mixer setup which I can't coach you through here, but what you want is all 3 oscillators into the filter using the prefilter mixer, and the output of the filter should be the only thing turned on in the postfilter mixer. This will give you the classic mono synth routing of OSCS->FILT->AMP.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Moe