Tusker

Great analogy. 👍 In synth land, variation can be created with traditional LFOs and Envelopes, but people are also inventing new tools. U-he's Zebra for example has four modulation mappers which provide 128 random values before restarting. You could think of them as 128 round robins. Once you direct those four to different parts of the synth architecture, your sound is very alive.

Same here. I need it but a smidge goes a long way. I'll add a distinction here that could help: the reverb component matters. I put the Early Reflections in to place the sound but the Room Tail is set at zero. I let the room tail arise from the room the jazz or pop band is performing in. This way my pianos aren't slamming into ear drums directly out of the speakers, but there is little to no trade-off with mud, because early reflections don't create much mud. Room tails are the mud culprits. A delay can be used instead of reverb, to emulate that early reflection. The human ear desires spatial information and recoils from a completely dry sound. My default reverb is Seventh Heaven which is not a convolution reverb based on an authentic impulse recording (IR) It's a model constructed from delay networks. That's because I don't think it matters how "authentic" the early reflections are. You can mix and match. I do. Seventh Heaven has a knob for Early/Late reflection mix (see below) which I set 100% to early, because I want only to place the sound. Pianos could be placed further forward. Pads further back. That can be accomplished through reverb volume not the Early/Late mix. All sounds are getting only early reflections because the room we are performing in will provide enough (or too much!) tail. One exception to this approach is with a very atmospheric space-music situation, where you can add your own tails to the room tails. Then nobody cares because they don't feel they are in a real room. They are in an imagined space that an Eventide Blackhole or Valhalla SuperMassive or Strymon BigSky is generating. Beat Kauffman's video illustrates these ideas. Hope this helps.

Very well said. There's a vintage car show here in the summer. One my neighbors has a Silver Ghost from the twenties which his pride and joy. When the weather is nice, he brings it out. The kids in town love to toot the rubber ball horn. I stick around when that happens. It's a great sound. At the car show, he is one of the stars. Rightly so. There's a maintenance shop here in town, which helps keep his car running, year after year. For them, it's a labor of love. Similarly, I reckon old analog vintage synths will become more and more prized inside smaller and smaller milieus. There's no doubting their immense capabilities and character, some from the design, some from the aging of the circuits. Every succeeding generation owes the early synth-makers a debt of gratitude: for the imagination, the courage, the example. That's why I love to play the old synths when I can. Can I replicate their sound? Never to a 100% to be honest. But what I love is the music, and modern instruments have a ton of character also, if you are willing to put it in. The key ingredients for character are imperfection and eccentricity in my experience. Today, if I am imitating a drum loop as it might have been performed with an Akai S900, I might want to downsample it to 12 bits. To add some crustiness. To get some character. If I am imitating vintage analog oscillators on a modern analog synth, I've been known to send tiny amounts of white noise into the pitch modulation CV of the synth. To create some jitter. To get some character.

So sorry to hear that. He hasn't been on social for about ten years AFAIK.

Yes It's odd. I am going to call his number and maybe call around with some friends. Fantastic guy. I think he's still teaching at Full Sail. A couple of decades ago I was fortunate to see keyboardist Patrick Moraz at his place. But people move on. 🤞

👏 For sure, we've got to get past the idea of hate on one side or the other. It's about mutual love and respect. I use both types of tools. Admittedly I am more in the box these days. Still, digital synth aficionados like me can respect the vintage synth makers, players, restorers and collectors. We are kinfolk. I'll be in Orlando in the middle of May. Excitedly hoping to spend a free day at Joe Rivers's museum again. It's been awhile. Hoping he's still active. 🤞 👍

You must be referring to vintage digital synths? Thanks to a half century of Moore's Law, modern digital synths can have very high resolution.

From the U-He stable … AFAIK Diva, RePro, Hive, Ace and Bazille support all MPE features except for release velocity. Zebra 2 being an older horse does not support MPE.

When I listen to guys like Nick Semrad, I realize there is a wealth of new expression to be found in older synths, let alone the new and magnificent software instruments that are on a different level entirely. Synths are just starting folks. Strap yourselves in. 💪

I fully agree that soft-sync is important and dare I mention VOSIM as well? I love using sync for evoking double-reed instruments. Digital modular is typically a super-set of analog modular, admittedly with some limitations. These limitations still occur in areas like sync, audio-rate, noise and distortion, but conversely there are nearly infinite waveforms and algorithms in digital not conceived in analog. There is also the precision of digital control systems, which open up vast navigable vistas of intricacy not possible with analog control voltage. Some say the digital glass is half-full, pointing to a handful of limitations. Not me, since I am not trying to replicate analog sounds. For me, the new sounds are exciting and my cup runs over. YMMV.

Also, please consider that at high volumes, the trusty QSC's can be a bit more shrill than other speakers. It may sound better through the PA.

I've always love what Hiromi does. There is an occasional criticism of younger, more technical artists, that they never met a note they didn't like. Sometimes that criticism is fair, often not. Yes, the notes you don't play can become more important in many artists as they mature, and I hear that a bit in today's Hiromi, even though she is still about energy. She still has the excitement, the adventurousness, the passion. It's a lovely point in her artistic trajectory. I'll just leave this here. 😉

Good call! 👏 It's the personal connection you are looking for. Can you speak through this instrument? We will put up with a truckload of inconvenience for a spoonful of that magic.

Alchemy provides up to 600 partials, and if I need the full spectrum, I just keep that setting. But you can make great tonal instruments with just the first 20 partials. The vital information is in the first 3-4 partials anyway. Almost all synths allow you to pitch oscillators/operators up and down, so you could extend the number of "partials" by changing the octave setting of an oscillator/waveform if you wanted to.

I have great sound sources and my keyboards are fine for sound-design and production work. but for performing? I'd love a 61 key keyboard controller with a good synth action, a long ribbon, an XY Pad and two or more continuous pedal inputs.