I found this arpeggio that I created in Ableton Live and rendered on the Roland Juno-106, in a temporary folder weeks after I had deleted it from the set I was working on. I listened to it and decided it was worthwhile using it for today’s synthesizer sound. It includes some nice manual filter sweeps as well as some other tweaks. I added an un-synched delay to give it some depth, but that was it for processing.
Lost Arpeggio Passage
Before I continue I must admit that I have always had a problem with the term “pad” as a catch-all term for sustained synthesizer textures. I also have an aversion to using sounds that are described in that manner. I’m not exactly sure why, but it might have to do with the idea of padding. Padding is an unnecessary stuffing use to protect things from hard edges, or prevent delicate items from being broken. I’ll stop there with the metaphors, but my aversion comes down to not wanting to produce work where any sound is considered filler. However, I realize that this term is impossible to escape, so over the years I have tried to embrace it, but it still doesn’t sit right for me. In any case here’s a “sustained synthesizer texture”, produced by the Roland D-50, that I’m quite fond of.
Glassy D50 Pad
Here’s a little arpeggio I recorded using my Roland D-50 and the factory preset, Vara Coma Veri La. A quick search shows that the patch, somehow on my D-50s internal memory, was part of the Cinascope Studio soundbank programmed by Paul Naton. All the processing heard is native to the D-50. No additional processing was added. Patches like this really show off the spacial qualities of the instrument with hard, slow auto-pan drenched in reverb.
Spacey D50 Arpeggio
This is an organ part from a track that I’m working on, and will probably perform in my set at Nick and Eddie this Thursday, February 3, 2011. The sound was produced on the Casio CZ-1000. I modified the original slightly by adjusting the speed and amount of the LFO (slower and less).
Sleazy Organ
On a few occasions during the One Sound Every Day project I presented a sound without any explanation and left it to the readers to guess at what it was and where it came from. Bragging rights went to the first reader to get it right and post their answer in a comment.
So here’s a mystery sound for you. You can tell it’s a recording of synthesized drums, but from where? What device made this beat?
Clue: I’ve used it on a couple of mixes that I have posted on ACB. Bonus goes to anyone who can identify exactly what device it was.
Mystery Analog Drums