Because of the nature of the instrument and how it’s played the reeds tend to vary in pitch so I added a touch of subtle modulation with a slow rate LFO to the oscillator’s pitch so that it doesn’t sound perfectly in key.
Of course my intent is not to duplicate the instrument (it would be impossible to accurately represent the nuances of this fascinating instrument with any electronic device), but to create a synthetic simile with a character of its own.
Here’s another attempt at programming an effective bass patch on the Roland MKS-80. This time I put the oscillators in sync using the square wave for both the upper and lower partials. Then I tuned the synched oscillator until I heard the most bass. For some odd reason it ended up being tuned to the D# above C. In other word a minor third above created the thickest bass result. What’s nice about this patch is that I can adjust the filter to make it a bit brighter if necessary and it still maintains the bottom as long as I don’t turn up the resonance too high. It sounds the most bassy with the resonance all the way down. I added a touch of reverb for presentation purposes.
The Roland MKS-80 is an exceedingly versatile synthesizer, but one thing that it seems to be known for are punchy brass patches. These are probably a result of the sawtooth waveform available on each of the sixteen voltage controlled oscillators and fast hardware envelopes. Here’s a brassy string patch I programmed for a melody line in a piece I am working on.
Although I’ve used it for few things before, I have decided to try using SoundCloud to distribute some of the sounds from my One Synthesizer Sound Every Day project. I really like the way that people can comment on the audio at different points within the timeline. It also seems like a good way to share beyond the scope of AudioCookbook.org.
On the other hand I recently had a reader comment on how they liked ACB’s current audio player (WPaudio) because it works on iOS. Unfortunately, because it is Flash (iOS doesn’t support Flash) the SoundCloud player will not work on iOS. Conversely WPaudio doesn’t work on Android, although it should. I am curious and would like to get some feedback from ACB readers on this. How many of you use SoundCloud? And what do you think of it becoming the main method of distributing sounds on ACB? Are you an iOS user and will that be a problem for you?
I’d like to use the HTML5 audio element, but then Firefox users would not be able to play the MP3s and although I would like to, I’m not going to find time to convert three and a half years of audio to Ogg files. My ideal audio player would automatically use the HTML5 audio element when it was available and compatible with the format, otherwise it would automatically switch to using a Flash player, and lastly default to a link when nothing else worked. If you know of a player that does this, please let me know. Perhaps it needs to be developed, but it seems like something like this should be out there by now.
In any case, without further ado here’s the first of my daily synthesizer sounds to be published on SoundClound. I’m including it with the WPaudio player and HTML5 audio element as well for comparison purposes. To produce this analog noise I used the LFO on the Roland MKS-80 to slowly sweep the filter. Nothing fancy, but pleasant none-the-less. I ran it through a ping pong delay for some stereo imagery.
The Original WPaudio Player:
Analog Noise Slow Filter Sweep
I programmed this patch on the Roland MKS-80 to simulate the sound of a Sho – a traditional Japanese reed instrument capable of playing dense and eerie harmonies. 
