Message 22/41
Date: 09-Jan-02 @ 06:40 PM -
RE: Are new synths boring !!
i don't disagree with you, one of the main reasons for analog's success is that there are large scale changes you can make with predictable results (filter cutoff, volume, pitch, waveform). but even there some 'knowledge' is needed - do you know how to create a string from scratch? if you didn't know how, and were presented an analog or virtual analog that was completely 'blank', could you do it? or brass? or snares? in any case, with an analog you CAN decide what you want and target it, but it also works well to just tweak things and see where you end up.
other types aren't like that... FM, one knob can make large changes, but these aren't necessarily logical for most people. the K5000s had most of the same sort of 'large changes' as analog, so didn't offer much new.
however... if you use sound diver doesn't it have all the stuff you want craig? i am hoping anyway that when i do get a k5000, that this is one of those cases where a CS degree will come in useful
sound diver does do some sort of resynthesis, though it's not supposed to work THAT well, it should break something down into a representative 'frequency spectrum' which may be good enough to do the sort of morphing you mention.
but in general... other types do require you to have an idea of 'where you are going'.
one 'end run' around this is the 'spectral' waves present on both the virus and the nords (at least the modular). even better is to use the wavetables as sort of an 'additive primitive', since you can create any sort of spectral progression to the 61 waves in the wavetable; perhaps the limited resynthesis of sound diver will be useful here (if i can ever get it to work with my midi card i'll try it
. once you have a few of these done, you can use them sort of like 'custom oscillators', and tweak sort of like analog.
one thing i am hoping the k5000s will do, perhaps with its formant filters, perhaps with its envelopes, is to be able to assign one or two knobs to make these kind of 'large scale' changes that aren't just 'brighten, darken' or 'louden, soften'. it already has the 'odd/even' and 'high/low' knobs which i found sort of interesting. i didn't really like the raw sound of the k5000s that much, but this ability really interests me, and i got interesting results tweaking these knobs along with the more 'traditional' ones...