Gray on 3/7/2020 at 09:36
Quote Posted by bjack
Gray, you may want to try out a Juno-106.
Back in the 80s, I was in a band, and my bandmate had a 106. I toyed with it extensively. It was the main reason I bought my Juno-60. The 106 was, at the time, a bit too expensive since it had MIDI and the 60 did not, but I got a DCB-to-MIDI converter for that.
But the JU-06a does both, pretty much. There's a switch on it to either emulate the 60 or the 106. Audio professionals have tested it with oscilloscopes and found minor discrepancies, but to my ears, the 60 sounds like the 60, and the 106 sounds like the 106. Filter cutoffs, resonance, the whole shebang, and yes, even I can tell the difference.
[Edit]
My first synth was a Roland Alpha Juno-1. It was pretty darn good and could do a lot of things, but not very immediate to program. My bandmate had a 106, and his was cooler. I always wanted one. And now, only 35 years later, I sort of do with the JU-06a.
Over time, I bought two more Alpha Junos because I had figured out how to make them sound good. I even wrote a MIDI controller program for them, to save sounds to a PC. Sitting beside me right now is the MKS-50, the module version of it, but in all honesty I've barely used it since moving to Scotland 9 years ago, perhaps mainly since I didn't have a keyboard controller. Which I now do. So I'm out of excuses. I've not yet read the manual to the JU-06a, and whether or not I can control the filter through key velocity, which I know how to do through MIDI on the Alpha. It's something I'm itching to get back to.
Jason Moyer on 3/7/2020 at 10:21
Looking at the manuals, the JU-06A's engine can only map velocity to the amp. You can use MIDI CC #74 to control the VCF cutoff, but you'd need to be able to map the velocity of your midi controller to send CC in order to do that.
Gray on 3/7/2020 at 10:25
I think mine can do that, I just need to be arsed to make it work. But that's good news, thank you. The Alpha does not have a velocity sensitive keyboard, but the sounds respond to velocity, so I'm used to programming and controlling filter effects that I want. But that was back in the 80s/90s, and I haven't yet learned how to do that in my new software/hardware.
demagogue on 3/7/2020 at 10:47
I had a Casio growing up in the mid-80s. Actually my parents bought it for my older brother, but I was the one that actually played it so he eventually gave it to me. It's been so long ago I don't even remember which model it is. I've been trying to track it down just from my memory of the voice selection and color scheme but it's a needle in a haystack kind of search. There was nothing particularly great about it; I think it could only play like 6 voices at a time, and the quality was low. But I'm fantastically nostalgic for those wonky voices.
While I'm posting, I may as well post one of the dogmas of the synth life.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/HJOwnz0.jpg
Gray on 3/7/2020 at 11:40
I'm quoting myself here from another thread, sorry about that:
Quote Posted by Gray
The hardware I already own or have owned, but is mostly in another country, is as follows:
Roland Alpha Juno-1, I have two of those, and the MKS-50, the rack version. So three. I like that sound. One Juno is with my brother the actual musician, the MKS is here with me but I don't think I've even powered it up yet since I took it here 4-5 years ago. It's needs a keyboard controller and MIDI cables, and I've been too lazy to deal with that. One Juno is in a box.
Roland Juno-60, awesome bass, but no MIDI, but I got a converter for that. My brother the actual musician has borrowed that for the last 10 years. [Edit: now donated to him]
Korg Poly-800. It was cheap, but it does some stuff pretty well. Again, brother has it.
Roland D-110, rack. Annoyingly tedious to program, but I've used it on so many tracks and tried to bend it to my will, and make it do what it isn't supposed to. Sometimes you just find the limits of your hardware, and I certainly found them on this. In a box far away.
Yamaha TG-55 rack. Fairly decent thing that I used lots, but it took ages to program. In a box.
Yamaha TG-77. The cooler more versatile version, which I haven't actually used much yet. In a box. Better than the 55 because it has so many FM options I've not yet explored.
Akai S-700 sampler. Decent machine, but terrible storage media, 2.8" floppies, I spent more money trying to track down this obsolete floppy format than I did on the machine itself. Turned out it was only used by this machine and old word processors. If at least it had only been 3.5", they were everywhere. Gave it away when I moved to Scotland. And all the floppies. Hundreds of samples. Maybe the guy I gave it to can never again find more 2.8", but at least he now has a vast library of drum machines and noises. I was very thorough back when I had a brain.
Akai X-7000. Keyboard version of the same sampler. Same problem. Same solution. Gave it away.
Nord Micro Modular. Probably the coolest bit of gear that I own. Got it with me here, but I haven't used it lately for the same reason as the MKS, need cables and a controller.
A four octave controller keyboard I can't even remember the name of now, but with 8 assignable knobs that I could map to important settings on my Nord, the two of them made a great pair. In a box. It might be the next thing I bring with me to Scotland. No onboard synthesis at all, but lovely knobs. That is not a sex joke, it just sounds like a Carry On double entendre.
Zoom RhythmTrak RT-123 drum machine. Pretty good for quickly getting things down, but terrible for syncopation. Got it less than two feet away just now.
Yamaha CS1x virtual analogue, given to me for free by one of my Scottish friends. It is so far my only current main controller keyboard, and I haven't fiddled around too much with the onboard synthesis just yet, I've only had it what, four years..? It's 5 octaves and a bit too big and clunky to move easily, but it helps me to get chords and melodies down. [Edit: replaced now by a smaller, more convenient 2 octave, see below]
So you see, it's mostly 80s/90s digital crap, with a few exceptions. No wonder so many of them are in boxes in a country far, far away.
The thing I've used recently is an Android app called Caustic. It lets me do several things fairly easily, but is also quite limited in other ways, hence my urge to buy new hardware.
Since then I've bought another cheap electric guitar to replace the one I gave away to my niece, a small 2 octave keyboard controller (Alesis Q25), and the aforementioned JU-06a. Oh yeah, and a microphone and small mixing desk to utilise the very cool vocoder patches on the Nord Micro Modular.
I'm still a talentless hack, but I do enjoy making noise.
[Edit]
For those of you considering the Alesis Q25, I can recommend it, but it does not come with a power adaptor. A very helpful shop assistant at Guitar Guitar Glasgow helped me find one that they didn't even sell. Thank you, Andy! The Q25 even neatly hooks up to my tablet via USB and I can play the app Caustic through it. Just to test, it even hooks up to Caustic on my phone. Very neat.
Aja on 3/7/2020 at 17:56
Quote Posted by faetal
Aja - I am really loving that track you linked above.
Thank you! I have more than an album’s worth of material pretty much ready to release, but I don’t know the best way to actually get people to hear it. Everyone and their dog makes ambient music these days, and I’m not sure how one stands out.
And I would definitely be down for a synth-off contest. For anyone without a synth, there are lots of free software synths you could compete with. VCVRack might be my first choice. There’s also Dexed, which is a pretty spot-on DX-7 emulation.
faetal on 3/7/2020 at 18:45
I use VCV rack. I'm going to be getting a disting ES-3 at some point so that I can use Ableton's CV tools with my semi & full modulars and I think being able to get VCV integrated would be a great way to test which modules I want to get next.
As for getting people to listen to music? Tough one.
I think if your music is good enough, it'll just happen organically - you'll play it to someone, they'll play it to someone else and so on.
I came to the conclusion a fair while back that my music just isn't good enough to get its own momentum.
That said, I'm probably being pessimistic, as larger issue is that there is just so much music out there, it's really difficult to stand out enough to pique people's sustained interest.
Gray on 3/7/2020 at 22:44
I know my place. I know I lack talent and the music I make isn't very good, so I see no point in promoting it. I just enjoy making it, and if there's the occasional track I feel pretty good about I might put it on SoundCloud, knowing full and well that there is lots and lots of better music out there made by more talented people. If someone stumbles upon it and likes it, fine, but I'm not promoting it.
Aja on 3/7/2020 at 22:55
Quote Posted by faetal
I use VCV rack. I'm going to be getting a disting ES-3 at some point so that I can use Ableton's CV tools with my semi & full modulars and I think being able to get VCV integrated would be a great way to test which modules I want to get next.
As for getting people to listen to music? Tough one.
I think if your music is good enough, it'll just happen organically - you'll play it to someone, they'll play it to someone else and so on.
I came to the conclusion a fair while back that my music just isn't good enough to get its own momentum.
That said, I'm probably being pessimistic, as larger issue is that there is just so much music out there, it's really difficult to stand out enough to pique people's sustained interest.
Yeah, I worry about that lots too, but I guess all I can do is make the music I want to hear.
Getting an interface from modular to computer is a good idea. I wouldn't mind doing it except my laptop is old and chokes up when running VCVRack.