You guys psyche me up! :-)

[~David Vesel]

Hello all,

Well, the feedback and comments are starting to come in, and I love the fact that you guysare interested enough to tell me what you think, the good and the bad.

One thing I wanted to talk about that came up a couple of times, and that is sound selection. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the greatest at sound selection. My taste in sounds seems to be a bit dated, and I also must admit to not being much of a sound programmer.

As embarassing as it is to admit, all of the sounds on my new album, <i>Calliope</i>, are actually presets on my Alesis QS-6. A couple of tracks (most notably "The Caves") has some sounds from the EuroDance card. But historically, I've never put much emphasis on sound programming.

Part of it was, it's hard! Digital synths have some of the worst user interfaces ever devised.

Hopefully the next time around (i.e. later this year), I'll bring up some fresh sounds. I've added some toys to my studio, including a couple of analog synths and a sampler.

If you're a musician out there, where do you get your sounds? Do you largely use sounds other people have created (either presets or bought patches) or do you do your own programming?

[~arronc]

Hi there !

This is my favorite subject, so I might be going to go on for a bit !

There is nothing wrong with using presets, but to be it is not in the spirit of electronic music. The reason i got into electronic music was because it allow you to do something new, something unique, in a way that you cant with a guitar, organ or piano.

An electronic artists soundscape should be as original as their songs, ann the two things together are the composition.

The important thing to release is their is a big difference between writing a song, and making a recording. When you do electronic music, you are committing yourself to making a recording, and have to take reponsibility for all of the elements to it, as you are putting your name to it.

I accept that most people would not know what is a preset and what isnt, but most people can tell if something is wrong.

Classic preset errors are :

1) Envelopes, filters, and vibrato out of time with track tempo. If you were playing an intrument, you would naturally "play" these correctly with the pedals on the piano, dampning on guitar etc. It is fundemental, and if you dont do it, you music will suffer.

2) No variation in timbre. Every sound on a synth responds to velocity curves, aftertouch etc. If the way its set up dosnt suit your style of playing, it sounds as bad a someone playing the piano badly : the notes may be there, but the tequnique isnt.

3) Commitment

Probably the biggest one of all. Just by saying "I will program all this to be right" you are making a commitment to the quality of the recording. If you are not really listening to the sounds in a critical "could that be better/is that right/is this going in the right direction" type of way, you are leaving the quality of the recording to a hit and miss process. You cant manage what you dont measure, as they say.

As for advice, waht i normally do is when I'm not in the mood or barking up the wrong tree with a song, or just getting nowhere, just turn off the computer and program sounds.

Play the melody you want to program for on a sine wave, and listen to it. I always get an idea in my head for what I imagine the right sounds should be, then start from the sine wave to shape the patch to fit what you hear in you head.

This also has the advantage of making it obvious if the melody is no good.

Hope this helps !

[~skylla]

uhh david... you nearly gave me a bad conscience. just for the record i'll repeat myself: i really like your songs.

as for presets i'll have to agree with arronc. you can find many presets on most machines that sound fairly good, but making the sounds yourselves is part of the creative freedom that makes being an electronic musician so great.

what i was critisizing when i made the comments about the sounds you use (in the chart section) was not your use of presets in general though. most often i won't even notice the presets because i don't know the machine (and i don't own an alesis). it was more the use of those standard "let's make it sound like a real instrument" sample presets. these sounds seems very flat to me and just screams: GENERAL MIDI SOUND.

when i make sounds i usually start of on a preset sound. first i search through the different presets on my hard and soft-synths until i find something that sounds close to what i want (usually i have an idea of what machine to use for different types of instruments though... fx. the waldorf microwave tend to be superior in making basses). then i try to make myself clear what this preset is missing, and i start modifying the sound until it fits. often the sounds gets modified as the track progresses as new sounds change the overall feel of the song.

finaly, as for the user-interfaces on digital synths. have you ever tried to use e-magic's sounddiver??? that seems to do the trick for me.

[~cliffwalk]

Sound Diver is a savior. I'm yet to meet a digital synth with a programming interface that doesn't make me want to kill small animals.

Lately I've REALLY enjoyed working with Soft Synths for heavier sound design. The interfaces are so much easier. I really like Reaktor A LOT but be prepared to read the manual a few times... it's an investment as far as software goes. It helps to have recording software (I use Sonar 2.0) that allows you to plug-in a softsynth as a Midi instrument in a virtual sense. Exporting and importing MIDI files was how I used to do it and it was a pain.

I'm just starting to learn the science behind electronic sound design (or even sound production in general), for the longest time (and I still do this) I would blend samples because my first experiences with "Sound Design as an Artform" was using "real world sounds"....

Unleash the power and experiment. I wont go any further in depth because most of what I'd say is already said above. There's a whole new part of the canvas you're depriving yourself of by using too many.

Dave

[~arronc]

Many digital synths have excellent interfaces : I think that you just have to approach them differenly : you cant just mess with them until they sound good. Have less controls like on the yamaha dx and tx series actually helps you be more focused.

But then, I am a progrmmer. Hex dosnt worry me. I used to program a lot on my old mirage sampler, and that had a 2 character lcd display !

Digital favororites of mine for sound design are :

Technics wa1sr pysical modelling synth
Tx81g FM synth
Korg Trinity

[~skylla]

i agree with you arronc. struggling with the user-interface on the machine seems to give you a deeper understanding of the intricacies of a given machine. however, sounddiver sure makes the everyday work with music more easy and makes it easier to focus on the musical part of making electronic music. and the greatest thing about sounddiver is that you can make the user interfaces yourself and make the setup just the way you want it. all you require is (very little) programming skill and the midi-codes being send to and from the machine (which usually are in the back of the manual to the machine).

i wouldn't loose my sounddiver for anything...

[~digidrummer]

well this might be a bit of a different ¤¤¤¤¤ session.. but i have found it very frustrating that no one seems to put out drum modules that have a bulk of the voices being artificial. most every drum module i have used puts a load of acoustic drum voices on it and (i guess) assumes that some jazz trio is gonna use it. i get some *bent* sounds out of my td-6 but as with all the rest..i had to take the time and alter everything.

M

[~arronc]

Well I can think of loads of drum modules that are 100% artifical :

Waldorf attack rack
Korg ER-1
The electron machinedrum
Novation DrumStation

Im sure someone can add to the list !

[~David Vesel]

Originally posted by skylla
uhh david... you nearly gave me a bad conscience. just for the record i'll repeat myself: i really like your songs.

No need to be concerned, I appreciated the feedback and took them in the spirit intended, which is why I didn't name names when I started the thread.



as for presets i'll have to agree with arronc. you can find many presets on most machines that sound fairly good, but making the sounds yourselves is part of the creative freedom that makes being an electronic musician so great.


I think it's a matter of market. The stock QS6 patches are much more pedestrian than what's on the EuroDance card.


what i was critisizing when i made the comments about the sounds you use (in the chart section) was not your use of presets in general though. most often i won't even notice the presets because i don't know the machine (and i don't own an alesis). it was more the use of those standard "let's make it sound like a real instrument" sample presets. these sounds seems very flat to me and just screams: GENERAL MIDI SOUND.

I think I see what you're saying. In that regard, I think some tracks are worse offenders than others. As a general rule, I do try to avoid patches that are obviously imitative, which is why I'm happy that I've overhauled my studio. I now have several instruments that completely suck at realistic sounds and shouldn't try. :)

With my main synths now being an Ensoniq ESQ-M, an Oberheim Matrix-6R, and an alphaSyntauri, I should be able to come with all sorts of rude noises. :)




when i make sounds i usually start of on a preset sound. first i search through the different presets on my hard and soft-synths until i find something that sounds close to what i want (usually i have an idea of what machine to use for different types of instruments though... fx. the waldorf microwave tend to be superior in making basses). then i try to make myself clear what this preset is missing, and i start modifying the sound until it fits. often the sounds gets modified as the track progresses as new sounds change the overall feel of the song.

I get frustrated with synth interfaces very quickly.



finaly, as for the user-interfaces on digital synths. have you ever tried to use e-magic's sounddiver??? that seems to do the trick for me.

Actually, I did recently get a second-hand copy of SoundDiver 2.0. I was contemplating whether or not to upgrade to the newest version and dive (ahem) into it when eMagic got bought by Apple and promptly announced it was ending all Windows development.

I'm looking at moving over the MIDI Quest, but even the competitive upgrade is $159. Gotta save up my money.

[~digidrummer]

ok see i actually play this instrument i don't just program it (yeah there was a smart*ss tone to that) i need something to plug my pads into.

M

[~Sean X]

I'm a 90% software boy, but I'll just add that I don't bash anyone for using presets. When I'm writing a song, I think about what's best for the song, and not about whether that sound is a preset or not.

Guitarists don't have this problem... they write their songs without worrying about whether other guitarists will notice they didn't invent a strange new tuning to do it with.

I love my interesting sounds, but a lot of them are preset tweaks, and I think it's a shame to ignore the best sonics someone else could get from a machine just because other synth owners might notice that you used the best patch and not the most original one......

[~skylla]

Originally posted by Sean X
I love my interesting sounds, but a lot of them are preset tweaks, and I think it's a shame to ignore the best sonics someone else could get from a machine just because other synth owners might notice that you used the best patch and not the most original one......

oh, but i do think we can limit the number of people who has a problem with presets in general to a few synth-fanatics. however samples that imitates "real" instruments... or just sound like they try to is annoying to me. it does so even though the sound might work reasonably well as it does in DV's stained glass track. it just sounds somewhat unfinished to me.

also i think in many cases the use of presets only, is a consequence of lazyness (no offence to anyone intended). i mean, in most cases you will be able to get a more "polished" track, if you atleast just tweak certain presets to suit the song. actually i find the best way to do sounds is to start of on a preset. anyway, thats just me.

and completely out of context... has anyone in europe any experience in buying from ampcast (ie. delivery time, dependability and so forth). i'm thinking about picking up davids album...

[~Sean X]

never, at this point, bought from Ampcast - but I'm dying to find out how their CD program turned out (being in the CD production biz myself, I'm always trying to find out how we fare against our peers with price and quality).

Agree with what you mean about "Real" instrument emulation - that was a criticism aimed at Absynthe (which I love), that it doesn't sound "real"... but I figure that's what samplers are for...