Post your keyboard controllers, synths, drum machines, etc!

Complex beats are good.

I'm working on some minimal techno/noise stuff at the moment, let's see how it turns out.

Oh, and I found some old tapes that I recorded in 1994/95, it's kinda cool to listen to that old stuff again, especially if you only partly remember the tracks. I'm thinking of transferring them to mp3, some of them could be worth it.

New track: Slow Control

It would appear this thread's dead(or is it?...) - what happened to everyone?... I've actually been away myself

I haven't had a chance to work on anything in awhile. That is, until today. Managed to get another track done(finally!)

and another one today:


that's all till next weekend(hopefully)

I'm good, just a bit lazy at the moment.

I've seen and listened to your new track on SoundCloud already, nice one!

Been busy noodling around with my two new acquisitions (see below) and re-doing my studio for the n-th time. Made a new track yesterday but haven't uploaded it yet.

I've bought some new machines, one is a Yamaha CX5MII/128 MSX computer with a builtin 4op FM synth based on the chip that was also used for the DX100 and FB-01, this is what it looks like:



It came out in 1985, has MIDI in and out and RCA audio out. There are about 20 or so cartridge-based music programs for it, I have two of them, a sequencer and DX7 voice editor. Of course it's also compatible to tape or disk-based MSX games and tools.

The CX5M-series was meant to be the centerpiece of a modern home studio but turned out to be a commercial failure, mainly due to its initial price tag of more than 1000 UK Pounds for a standard unit with mini keyboard but also because of the MSX standard which had its fans over here in Europe but wasn't as big as in Japan or South America.

I'm very happy that I got one now (with a little help from me friends...! ), been looking for one for ages. They're very hard to find in good condition, this specially goes for the MK-II version with full MIDI support.

Why would one buy such a rotten old 8bit machine, I hear you ask? Well, for a start, its builtin 4op FM synth sounds bloody great, it bears some similarities to the FB-01 but has a much "hotter" output. This and the excellent voice editing and sequencing programs that come with it make it a must-have for FM nuts like me. It's easy to use, very stable and built like a tank, and yeah, I also have a soft spot for 8bit computahz...

My Teenage Engineering PO-12 rhythm also arrived a couple of days ago:



Thomann said that it won't be available before June, guess I was lucky this time.

I'll spare you a long-ish review about it since there are tons of it on YT already, just this: Whoever says that this is just a toy has no fucking clue what he's talking about. It's a little drum monster with 16 patterns, each with 16 steps, a song mode, parameter locking of all parameters and FX per step and a sound that will blow you away. Its drums and percs sound very modern and are much more powerful and mix-friendly than the Korg Volca Beats for example. Also has a Cirrus Logic DAC chip that is well-known for good sound and most importantly a very good signal-to-noise ratio. The Korg Mono family or Volcas can't hold a candle to it in this regard.

In other words, very cool little machine, highly recommended.

Oh, and it also comes with a silly display that looks like a Nintendo Game & Watch from the 80s and has a clock and an alarm function that plays the active pattern at wakeup time...

EDIT:

Made a track today with the new machines: Chtonic.

All drums except for an reverby snare (Akai S-2000) and the 16th hihat (Roland TR-626) come from the PO-12. The deep metallic jabs in the background were made on the CX5MII/128.

A couple of more tracks, all fresh from the studio:

Play User Voice

Sub Manati

Giroblau

It's good to have some free time for making music again, I was quite busy for the last few weeks and my mind kept on wandering away when I went to my studio, I noodled around a bit and that was that.

Today I created a nice set of samples with drums, percussion and loops from synth that were made in Russia in the 1980s, found a bunch of awesome demo sounds on this website: Museum of Soviet synthesizers. The Polivoks is still on my wanted list, it has one of the meanest, dirtiest filters I've ever heard. Built quality is decent and it looks really... ...Russian! They usually go for about 1500 bucks, don't have that kind of money but who knows, maybe I can get one for less. We're doing business with two Russian fireworks companies and I've already told them to look out for synth bargains, preferrably for Polivokses and Aelitas. I used some of the Russian synth samples for my latest track Giroblau.

rewind selecta !

sorry they've been playing some new 2 step remix of that lately

cool tracks sir! going to check out those demo sounds today.

i have some free time today & tomorrow, going to do somethin'.
also sort of feel the tracks from last week weren't done up properly so may go back and fix those

I've used some drum samples created on the Polivoks for the track Giroblau, they're great, love the bassdrum.

Check out the samples for these synths first: Aelita, Polivoks, Altair Estradin - 231 and the rhythm boxes, awesome stuff.

On to another topic... the new Casio synths. Anyone followed the introduction of the Casio XW-P1 and G1 synths in 2012/13? I was quite excited about the news that Casio was about to release a new line of synths, the CZ-series was quite cool and it's been long since they released a synth and not a home keyboard or stage piano (even though the Privia series is very good).

The first reviews were quite enthusiastic, then the machines appeared in shops all over the globe but vanished quite quickly. I was specially interested in the XW-G1 with a bunch of really cool sequencing and sampling functions, next to various useful PCM samples with basic modulation stuff and a analog-style monosynth with real-time controlling options, all that for a street price of about 500 to 599 Euro bucks.

It didn't take long for those machines to appear on ebay and ebay classified ads, sometimes for less than 300 bucks. The cheapest offer I got so far was 199 Euros for the G1. Ah well... future abandoned machines in the making, and I'm thinking of giving a G1 a good home but... ah well, I had some other priorities in the past, mostly wiring-related.

I'm a bit at a loss as to why people shun the new Casios... maybe it's because they're some sort of bastard breed between a real synth and an arranger keyboard. The sequencing and arranging part of the P1/G1 indeed has some genes of Casio keyboards in its circuits but that's a non-issue for me, you can do you own stuff as well and don't have to use any presets if you so decide. I find the sequencing functions and the loop-sampling option of the G1 very useful, especially if you're a hardware guy like me who prefers hardware sequencing over software-based stuff.

What's more, they sound really great and in-your-face, quite characterful I must say. The G1 is still on my wanted list... ah well, let's see.

I'm all for Casio vst's

Also had time to do a couple tracks...

yesterday:

today:

Wow, your two new tracks are awesome, man, Binary is really good. Got any new instruments or plugins?

I also made a new track: Watt Ihr Volt.

I'm heavy into FM again, my new CX5MII is very inspiring.

Nothing new. Just experimenting more with what I already have. Will listen to your new track while I'm driving

Another new track: Nu Urban.

Bit of a relaxed tech-housey thing this time. I constructed the track around a new patch I made on the CX5MII/128 which is some kind of e-piano with a soft attack and a bit of LFO amplitude shimmer.

...and another sunday track: Ho Hum.

I call it SlowTech.

Finally it seems that I've solved my hum problem. The culprit was an old exciter/fx machine that was still sitting in the audio chain but not active anymore. Apparently it caused a feedback that led to nasty 60Hz humming. After removing the exciter and completely rewiring the audio chain, the hum was gone, thank god for that, it really drove me crazy.

Anyone followed the development of the Modal Electronics 008 8-voice analog poly synth? They're talking about it in the latest Sonic Talk episode and I also saw some MusikMesse footage. Very interesting machine but I guess it will be out of my price range.

I'm anyway more interested in the new digital Modor synth.

Ah man, I still could kick myself for not buying the Gotharman deMoon when it was still available. Gotharman is a small Scandinavian maker of boutique synths and the deMoon is a purely digital synth with some granular options and a really, and I mean really gritty and dark sound that would perfectly fit to my noisy music. I couldn't afford it when they were still made (all Gotharman products are made by hand on order) and now prices went way up. Well, can't have it all I guess. Click here for a short demo. Isn't it great? Yeah, well, at least I like it...

Been inactive for awhile

Anyway, I made a new track a few days ago.

And another one today(well, started last night). It's my first "drum & bass" track:

Cool new tracks, Cylo. If the DnB track would have slightly less boomy drums, it'd remind me of 80s EBM... dunno why...

I've also made some new tracks, see my sig.

I also bought a new multi effects module, it's a DigiTech Studio Quad that I picked up for 50 bucks on ebay. Very cool machine, you can use up to four seperate channels/effects in mono, two independent stereo effects, etc. It's easy to use and sounds awesome, can't get enough of the auto panning effect. A electric piano-style patch routed through a phaser and auto panning makes me sechs fall out!

With that DigiTech, I'm expecting that you're next track is going to have constant panning throughout the entire track(similar to "Yves Deruyter - Feel Free")

I also made another track the other day under 'Altern8 Frequen-C':

Had the day off so programmed another track:

Nice. You know what, it's kinda weird that you chose that title, I've been dabbling with Carpenter voice samples lately... good track.

I've started making YT vids again. My old Toshiba laptop broke after 9 years and the new Movie Maker on Win7 (on my ersatz Lenovo laptop) is completely different to the old one I used on Vista. It doesn't even support animated gifs out of the box, you have to convert them to AVIs first... ah well. Here's a vid for a track I've uploaded to SoundCloud already:


I've also made a new track, minimal Techno this time:

Leuchtfeuer.

This is the first in a series of minimal tracks that I'll release during the next few weeks.

The sunday track:

Modul V2.

The track is a bit noisy due to the drums I've sampled from the TE PO-12. It kinda fits to the elastic and off-beat-ish nature of the track, will do some tweaking of the samples to get rid of the noise, though.

I've undusted my good ol' MC-202 again... damn, the faders became quite scratchy over the years, I'll have to get me a pressurized air spray can to do some cleaning.

I got a musical instrument (A money pit, actually)

I've been toying around with lo-fi noise boxes for around the past year. I'm still working on my own home-made lo-fi Noise modular, but I wanted a real synthesizer.

Only had this pittsburgh modular Eurorack setup for a couple days, but been having a lot of fun. Got it hooked up to my computer today with some recording software.

My setup has Midi-In - If I wanted to send Midi from my PC how would I do it?

The Midi module only has a Midi DIN plug though and not the (apparently?) more common these days midi USB.

Lagduf said:

My setup has Midi-In - If I wanted to send Midi from my PC how would I do it?

Click to expand...

You need a USB-to-MIDI interface for your PC (USB on the computer side and DIN jacks (IN/OUT/THRU) on the other side) which can be had starting from about 20 bucks (cheap MIDIMATE interface cable) to a couple of hundreds for a combined MIDI and audio USB interface with advanced features and higher/better frequency rates. If you don't use the MIDIMATE solution, you also need a MIDI cable.

Then get yourself some sequencing/digital audio workstation software which can send MIDI clock out, like Reaper, connect the MIDI interface to your PC and configure it to use with the software, plug the MIDI cable into the OUT jack and the other side into the IN jack of your synth and you're set.

Nice setup, btw. Also looking forward to your new devices, I like that sort of stuff and wish I would be better with the soldering iron...

a couple more tracks...

Thanks for the help Tak! Getting MIDI setup was easier than I thought. Just got a USB cable with a Midi IN and OUT and had my PC sequencing my synth in no time.

Been playing around with this midi sequencer which I was stoked to stumble upon:

http://www.defectiverecords.com/m185/index2.html

Intellijell made a Eurorack version of this sequencer that's pretty badass:


It has a lot more features than the software one I'm using which is based on the Roland original. But I don't have $500 to spend on one atm. I need more basic modules for my synth (LFO, VCO, etc)

I'm finding out there are a lot of free MIDI sequencers which is cool.

Anyone use a tablet/ipad for music creation?

Lagduf said:

Anyone use a tablet/ipad for music creation?

Click to expand...

I have a Samsung tablet and tried to use it for making music but the latency is pretty much unbearable for serious stuff. It's much better with the iPad but I can't afford one.

Intellijel stuff is great, I've seen a review of the Atlantis synth module and immediately fell in love with it. I only have a super small rack with four basic modules (Doepfer) and always wanted to expand it a little but mostly put the money in other projects.

Modular synthesis is like a drug, it treats you nicely at first but before you notice you'll spend all our money on it, your social life starts to suffer and you will sit in your studio all day and night fiddling with cables and thinking of how you can expand your setup... dangerous stuff!

Has anyone used the Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controller to adjust hardware synth parameters in real time? The MicroKorg XL's controls blow, so using this would be awesome. I'm just not sure how difficult it is to get the BCR to "learn" the right parameters and if they can be saved / recalled after the unit's powered off.