Here’s an arpeggio I recorded with my Casio CZ-1000 that’s part of a composition I’m working on. I really love this synth. There’s something special about the way it sounds when combining phase distortion with ring modulation. I added a bit of reverb to give it some space.
Bell Like Casio CZ-1000 Arpeggio
Here’s another segment from the recording I made of my Roland Juno-106 while it still had a bad voice chip. This time I decided to run it through some spacial processing, including ping pong delay and reverb to hear what it sounded like with some atmosphere.
Roland Juno-106 Processed Glitch
I setup and recorded this example of pulse width modulation using my Roland Juno-106. I started out playing an octave with the pulse width set to half way. Next I moved the pulse width up and down covering the full range possible. Eleven seconds into the recording I enabled the LFO on the pulse width and adjusted the speed of the modulation all the way up and then all the way down again. The picture shows the LFO in action. Notice that the LFO operates as a triangle, but with slight curves on each slope, which is probably a result of the analog circuitry. Here’s what it all sounded like.
I created the following generative sequence using GMS (click for details), during a solo performance at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, October 2010. One of the virtual instruments I used in the set is an Open Source, Roland Super JX10 emulator made by MDA. The Roland Super JX10 was one of the last great analog poly-synths produced by Roland, and the first Roland synth to receive velocity and aftertouch treatment on the 76 key keyboard. Although I never owned one of these, I have played one before, and I imagine that programming them was brain surgery without the optional PG-800 programmer. In the documentation for the MDA JX10 they state, “[this] plug-in is designed for high quality (lower aliasing than most soft synths) and low processor usage – this means that some features that would increase CPU load have been left out”. To me this plugin sounds very good. I’d like to hear from anyone who owns or has played a Roland Super JX10 for their perspective on this instrument.
Here’s a sound I coaxed out of the Korg Monotron during my live set at Nick and Eddie Thursday Funhouse that I mentioned in the last article. One again, you can download the entire set here. In my previous demos of the Monotron I used no processing, so this time I decided to present it exactly as it was performed in the live set, through stereo delay and reverb sends. The sound of this minute instrument never ceases to amaze me.
Here’s a sound I produced during a live set at Nick and Eddie for the Thursday Funhouse series under my Ostraka moniker. You can download the entire set that I released as a holiday gift last month. I used Grain Machine which is a touch based granular synthesis instrument that I developed in Max for Live to create the sound. Grain Machine requires a device running TouchOSC such as an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android device for the touch based control. There’s a rotary wheel with friction modeling, and an x-y pad for granular exploration.
Grain Machine from Thursday Funhouse
Here’s a test composition using another patch I created for Curve titled Auto Octave Filter Sweep by AudioCookbook. On this patch I used two of the LFOs. The first one I setup to alternate between the octaves with a square wave, and the second I used with a sign wave to modulate the cutoff frequency on the filter configured with a 24dB low pass filter. On the second LFO I used the fixed rate that ranges from 0.020 hertz all the way up to 5.24 kilohertz. I mapped a MIDI controller to the LFO speed and adjusted it over the full range during the sequence. I also made adjustment to the cutoff frequency, resonance, and envelopes during the 5:20 minute recording.
Cableguys.de have recently released an excellent community-driven software synthesizer called Curve (downloadable demo available). The synth has three, aliasing-free oscillators, three five stage envelopes, two filters each with ten modes, and four LFOs that are either, beat, note, or frequency synced. One of the coolest things you can do is draw your waveforms in the editor. You can even randomize them for some interesting results. Here’s a sequence that I created and recorded without any processing using Curve. This is one of my first attempts at creating a patch in Curve and I shared it to the preset community (available within Curve’s interface) as Bouncy Arpeggiator by AudioCookbook. Stay tuned for a lot more from this powerful and great sounding software synth.
I extracted this recording of the Posc from a performance of Words to Dead Lips at Intermedia Arts last November. I left the processing on it that I had used during the performance. At some point I’m going to acoustically record one of the “noise shields” that built for the dancers to use in the piece as a comparison. The “noise shields” have a distinctive sound tailored by the amplification, speaker, and the body of the instrument that is quite different for the direct sound below.
Words to Dead Lips Posc Example
Here’s another result of experimenting with the Roland Juno-106. I created this sound by using the VCF as a pseudo oscillator. I cranked up the resonance to full, and put the cutoff at about half way, then turned off both the square and sawtooth DCOs. You might assume that with the oscillators off, including the noise and the the suboscillator, that the synth would make no sound, well it doesn’t really until you almost max out the resonance. Maxing out the keyboard slider changes the pitch of the notes on a roughly twelve tone scale, but it’s not well tempered, so this creates an eerie detuning between the notes. See the photo above for the exact settings. In the recording you’ll notice an abrupt key change happening a few times where I turned on the sawtooth oscillator. I also nudged the LFO on the VCF here and there to add to the spooky factor.
I’ve done a similar thing with the Pro One before, but it sounds really nice in six voice polyphony on the 106. My guess at what’s happening is that a sort of controlled resonant feedback on the instrument’s noise floor is creating the pitches. This is something that doesn’t really work with digital filters on modeling synths, as far as I know. I know that I haven’t been able to reproduce this behavior on the Korg MS2000. I don’t fully understand what’s happening, but that’s my theory. If anyone has better insight, please share a comment on the article.