Mochika2
Playing around with the Mochika2
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kabp6BXmPag&eurl=http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded]
Description:
This synth features:
- one square and saw waveform VCO (voltage controled oscillator) with a huge pitch range, from subsonic to ultrasonic sound
- One square and triangle waveform LFO (low frequency oscillator), that modulates the VCO for the vibrato effect creating old school arcade Atari-like sounds.
- White noise generator that triggers the VCO and can create percussion like sounds.
- 8 step Sequencer with note on/off switch and pitch knob for each step .
- It has a 1/4 inch audio output, 1/4 inch CV Output (to control other analog gear).
- The Mochika features a MIDI input to sync the Mochika with any midi device sending midi clock signals, the mochika can sync 1,2,4 and 8 times the tempo of the master clock midi device.
- Also the instrument is ligthed with 1 ultra bright red led that indicates the LFO Rate, and 8 red leds to indicate the step that is being played. Very useful when you play it on a dark stage.
- The Analog Sequencer is packed in a cool laser cut clear acrilic case that shows all the hand made analog circuitry.
- The instrument is powered directly from 110V or 220V AC.
- Dimensions: 230mm(W), 170 mm(D), 80mm(H. incuded rubber feet and knobs)
Best soft synths out there…
Although a year old I still think this is a great way of making soft synth reviews, big credit to CM magazine and I hope they will make a follow up soon – since a lot has happened even though its only been a year.
“We countdown the best virtual synthesizers in the world, as voted for by Computer Music readers and forum users. Episode 1 features positions 10 to 5.”
Episode 1:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UNn2AxxaEY]
Episode 2:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyjrwSRA9E]
have a great weekend
Cheers
Walk-about synthesizer
Feeling that you always have to bring your synth with you, now here’s something for you…
The Square Band is a portable square wave synthesizer. The Square Band is worn around the wrist like a watch and includes a set of eight buttons to trigger tones of varying octaves. Additionally, a light sensor is used to change the pitch of the tone within the octave allowing for a wide range of musical possibilites.
As the Square Band is worn throughout the day, a flexible solar panel generates power that is stored within the Square Band for use whenever you choose. The Square Band is designed to be as ubiquitous as possible so that when creativity strikes you, it’s no easier than just plugging in your headphones.
Gallery
Sound Samples can be found here >>
MK Digital Keys – Retro Keyboard Sampleset Released
Hi all Nucleus has a released a new Refill that is definately worth checking out and as a bonus there is also a free demo Refill below….
MK Digital Keys is a new retro keyboard sample library by Nucleus SoundLab.
Bring the 80s keyboard sound to your productions with this faithful sampling of Roland’s MKS-20 keyboard synthesizer. MK Digital Keys is available in three format packages: Reason Refill, WusikEngine, and Kontakt/EXS/SFZ.
Back in 1986, there weren’t many good ways to take a good keyboard sounds with you while touring. Sampled pianos were in their infancy, with extremely low samplerates and small ROM sizes. One answer to this problem was SAS synthesis. This unique form of synthesis uses no samples whatsover, and produces a very realistic sound. Still, its not a ‘real piano’, so these days the sound is more useful for its retro character. It still sounds great!
MK Digital Keys brings this retro sound to your modern sampler, while removing original limitations like low polyphony and noisy outputs. This is an extremely comprehensive sampling, with 6 samples per octave, 7 octaves, and 6 velocity layers per note. All 8 tones of the MKS are represented (3 pianos, 2 EPs, Clav, Harp and Vibes). All of this comprises a total of nearly 2100 mono 24-bit 44khz samples!
MK Digital Keys is also built to be scalable. At times, you won’t have need for the full extent of the sampling described above, due to CPU/RAM constraints. For those times, 3 alternate smaller versions of each tone are contained inside – L, M and S sizes. The S versions weigh in at under 50mb and can fit into even the most RAM-starved projects. Details:
* 3.6+ GB of 24-bit 44khz samples
* 8 different classic keyboard tones
* 20 Combinators and 32 NN-XT patches inside the Refill
* 78 WusikEngine presets, including 46 custom presets by Daniel Stawczyk
* Kontakt/EXS/SFZ format pack contains raw .wav files plus patches for all 3 formats.
Listen to what MK Digital Keys offers by downloading the MP3 demos below.
In addition, a Demo Refill is available for free download.
http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/mp3s/mkdigital/burnweaver.mp3
http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/mp3s/mkdigital/Asian%20Toys.mp3
http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/mp3s/mkdigital/Fading%20City%20Lights.mp3
http://www.nucleus-soundlab.com/demos/MK%20Digital%20Keys%20Refill%20Demo.zip
3 cool KORG MS 20 tutorial videos
Hi all
AutomaticGainsay has posted three great videos on the KORG MS 20 and I just had to show them here as well. Watch and enjoy.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XQoY3gfYjs]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_B44pSuYe0]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2oNxCneCwo]
About the KORG MS 20:
The MS-20 was one of Korg’s first major successful portable analog monosynths and even today it is still a great little machine! The MS-20 is the big brother to the MS-10. It is an analog two-oscillator monophonic lead and bass synth with hard wired and patchable connections. The hard-wiring can be overridden however, using patch-cords. This type of hard-wired but patchable design was similar to the ARP 2600 of the late seventies. Of course the 2600 was much bigger and better. But the MS-20 offered a lot of flexible control and great sounds at a more affordable price.
In addition to two analog oscillators, the MS-20 featured two resonant VCF filters, two VCAs, sample and hold, a noise generator, an assignable mod-wheel and lots of knobs! The VCF filter section is capable of high-pass, low-pass, notch and band-reject which is unique and different than your basic lowpass style filter. External sound sources can be routed through the filter section as well. In fact William Ørbit uses the filter in his MS-20 relentlessly to filter and tweak his samples, beats, delay returns, vocals, etc.
There’s also a Pitch-CV converter for triggering sounds from external sources. Aphex Twin makes quite a bit of use of this, feeding the input stage of his MS-20s with drum sounds and other untrackable audio to get the synth to make a wide variety of crunch/squawp/screech noises by mistracking the filters, etc.
As for its sounds, the MS-20 sounds great! It makes a great alternative for Minimoog-seekers. The MS-20 is great for just about any type of analog synth sound you could want! Fat round bass sounds, percussive bass or sounds, noise effects, squiggly-bubbly sounds or sinuous-worm leads are all waiting to be unleashed from inside this classic beast. The MS-20 is not only a great sounding instrument, but a great learning-synth. It is fairly easy and intuitive to operate but in doing so you can learn and understand more about synthesis and signal-flow. It is used by William Ørbit, Aphex Twin, Hardfloor, Air, SkyLab, Stereolab, Vince Clarke, Astral Projection, Biosphere, Apollo 440, Mr. Oizo, Jimi Tenor, The Prodigy, OMD, Freddy Fresh, Luke Vibert, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Add N to (X), Daft Punk, Coldcut, Die Krupps, Skinny Puppy, Electronic Dream Planet, Jimmy Edgar, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, The Legendary Pink Dots, KMFDM, Severed Heads, Royksopp, The Faint, The Shamen, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Portishead.
Thanks to Vintage Synth Explorer
Cycling'74 – the never ending Pluggo concept
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly1rQkTUIjM]
Video taken from Gearwire
pgs-1 (Pretty Good Synth version 1) is an analog-style monosynth with some extreme flexibility and a whole lotta filtering. Three oscillators, two filters and four envelopes are the start of this machine. An integrated effects section (with overdrive and digital delay) allows presets to provide a total instrument experience.
Pluggo 3.5 is an extraordinary collection of more than one hundred audio plug-ins. Pluggo works with sequencers and audio applications that support Audio Unit, VST, and RTAS plug-in formats. Version 3.5 is available for Windows XP and Mac OS X. Originally just 74 eccentric plug-ins such as the legendary Feedback Network, Tapped Delay, and Swish, Version 3 added over 19 Essential Instruments–tasty and nourishing instrument plug-ins in a variety of flavors for your Audio Units, VST, or RTAS host application. These elegant and immediately effective instruments were created by eowave, the developers of the iSynth, and make full use of award-winning Max/MSP audio programming environment.
The Stylophone in action
The Stylophone appears on a few commercial recordings, most notably David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Slip Away” and the commercial rave single “Stylophonia” by Two Little Boys in 1991. Kraftwerk used the Stylophone on the track “Pocket Calculator” from their album Computer World.
[youtube=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR34vQDSoNA]
The Dubreq Stylophone is a miniature stylus operated synthesizer invented in 1967 by Brian Jarvis. It consists of a metal keyboard played by touching it with a stylus – each note being connected to a cheap voltage-controlled oscillator via a different-value resistor – thus closing a circuit. Some three million Stylophones were sold, mostly as children’s toys. Rolf Harris appeared for several years as the Stylophone’s advertising spokesman in the United Kingdom.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZt64_XOflk]
Read more here about the Stylophone >>
Mopho – with some weird new stuff
Synth mofo (in the best possible way) meets Mopho synth
This latest synth, the monphonic MoPho is based on the voice architecture of the Prophet 8 and the parameter access of the Evolver series and turns it yellow. The user interface has been paired down to give access to the most commonly accessed parameters, Pitch, Cutoff, Resonance, Attack and Decay/Release, with a further four assignable controls – which can be programmed from the front panel – you can fully program the synth from there, or via the Mac/PC basic editing software. There’s also the intriguing looking button labeled ‘Push It!”
Mopho is a compact and affordable—but powerful—monophonic analog synthesizer. The voice architecture is identical to a single voice of the Prophet ’08, but with a couple of unique twists to distinguish it from its award-winning sibling. We have added two sub-octave generators—one per oscillator—for additional girth and crushing basses. It also has an audio input that lets you process external audio and mix Mopho’s own audio output back in pre-filter for feedback effects that can range from subtle distortion to extreme skronk. The Push It button is a manual trigger that lets you play a specific note or latch notes and sequences on. It can also step through a sequence to play short melodic lines without a keyboard. Of course, Mopho can also be used with a MIDI controller or external sequencer.
Listen to it:
Arturia goes hardware
“We are extremely proud to be shipping Origin”, says Frédéric Brun, President of Arturia. “The project has taken much longer than we initially thought and, since we had announced the product early, Origin has been eagerly awaited by the market. In the end, taking more time has proven necessary to foster quality and details.”
 "Origin")
Loaded with modules extracted from the best synthesizers of all time, Origin lets you combine these modules and take advantage of the additional possibilities put onboard. The result: a new type of sound accessible through an extremely intuitive interface.
Listen to it:
Origin Audios
| Dub
by Arturia (JM & Vinx) |
This dub track has been entirely made with Origin, except the bass drum and the hi hat. Delay, chorus, phasing and short reverb effects all come from Origin. |
| Play it loud, I’m Origin and I’m proud
by Thomas Koot |
Progressive song entirely made with Origin, including drums. No external effects, compression or EQ-ing. Sidechaining effects made with sequencer driven envelopes. |
| Electro demo
by JMB Arturia |
A demo track based on the Multi “Dark Side 80s”. it originally uses 4 program playing in layering mode: 1 leads sound, a warm and fat bass sequence, an electro drum sequence, a complex dual percussive sequences program and a rich pad! The mix of this track has been done in real time using the Program’s volume MIDI CC controllers and the mod wheel opening the cutoff frequency of the pad sound’s filter. |
| Lake and Forest
by TJam |
A nice Jazz ambient soundscape using the “Jazz Guitar”, a “12 strings” Guitar, a warm and deep strings pad and a light lead sound. |
| Wes Montgomery Four on six
by JMB Arturia |
A jazz trio standard played by Origin. The jazz guitar and the double bass parts have been played with a Guitar MIDI controller to keep the guitar and bass intact feeling. The drum parts have been played with Drum Session thanks to a MIDI drum. |
New updates on Image Line's synths
Image Line just announced a series of minor updates to their core line of virtual synthesizers. To expand your sound palet Image Line offer a complete range of synths and effects like Sytrus, Morphine, Toxic Biohazard, Edison, Poizone, DirectWave, DrumSynth Live, SimSynth Live, DX-10, WASP
– fixed crashes/freezes when closing plugin in OSX
– fixed threading in Windows version
– fixed compatibility with the Toxic Biohazard installer in OSX
– better tablet pc / stylus support
– fixed polyphony issues in FL version
– several small changes
– fixed threading issues
– made it more stable
– better tablet pc / stylus support
– fixed polyphony issues in FL version
– fixed crash when changing presets on PPC macs
– several small changes and fixes
Toxic Biohazard 1.0.2 released
– fixed crashes when closing plugins in OSX
– threading-related fixes
– fixes on PPC macs
– fixed some crashes related to downloader in OSX
– several small changes and fixes
DATAMASKIN
