Manually Modulated Polyphonic Wind

Posted on April 12, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

I created this polyphonic wind sound on the Roland MKS-80 using the Bitstream 3X to manually modulate the filter to give it a more natural and irregular sounding whistle. I did this rather than using the LFO because although I could adjust the rate the sweep would be automated and too regular instead of being based on human judgement. I am presenting it here in mono with no processing. If I were to use this I would process it in several ways including some volume automation, panning, equalization, probably a bit of slap back delay for stereo imaging, and a fairly short linear reverb that doesn’t sound too roomy.

Nightmarish Synth Effect

Posted on March 30, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

One of many things that the MKS-80 is really good for is creating synthesizer effects. Through the use of the XMOD (cross modulation) parameters strange, metallic textures can be obtained similar to FM or frequency modulation. As heard in the Synthesizer Noise Jam series , I’m discovering a variety of ways to use these techniques to create unique and fascinating effects perfect for electronic music, or scifi thriller sound tracks. Here’s a short segment from one of these experiments processed through reverb and delay.

Nightmarish Synth Effect

Synthesizer Noise Jam #5

Posted on March 21, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

This segment from an extended noise jam was recorded while my Super Jupiter was still in disrepair, although quite capable of creating dark and frightening experimental noise textures. I added some stereo imaging as well as delay and reverb to enhance the dystopian nightmare.

Synthesizer Noise Jam #5

Synthesizer Noise Jam #4

Posted on March 12, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s the forth entry in my series of synthesizer noise jams. Once again I chose the Roland MKS-80 because since I have repaired it I’m spending most of my time programming this magnificent synth. I just can’t seem to leave it alone. Although this segment is almost two minutes long, it came out of a recording that ran over ten minutes.

Synthesizer Noise Jam #4

Ableton Live Arpeggiating Analog Polysynth

Posted on January 14, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Today’s One Synthesizer Sound Every Day involves using the arpeggiator built into Ableton Live. The arpeggiator, found under MIDI Effects, is a pretty simple tool, there are the usual up, down, up/down patterns as well as random, random once (repeats a random pattern), and random other (doesn’t play the same note twice).

This one minute and fifty second microtrack is composed of two layers of arpeggios created by routing Ableton’s arpeggiator to my newly restored Roland Juno-106. I added some filtered tempo delay and mixed in some reverb on the fade out to polish it off. I wish I had a piece of hardware that did exactly what Ableton’s Arpeggiator does (perhaps with the addition of a tap tempo button). In fact I started a discussion about this on the Electronic Musicians Network, a Facebook group started by my friend Robert Luna. Friend me, then message me there if you’d like to participate in the group. I’ll write an article soon compiling my research into dedicated hardware arpeggiators and hardware sequencers. Here are the arpeggios combined.

Two Layered Arp at 114 BPM