synthgeek's blog

Since I’ve been putting together the material for the upcoming SC show (see the website for details), I decided it’s as good a time as any to post about the setup I’ll be using. Here’s my ugly but informative diagram:

The centerpiece of the rig is a Tapco Mix 260FX mixer, which I probably spend more time “playing” than any actual instrument in the rig, unless you count the Nocturn. The “brain” of the rig is the K2000S, which handles most of the sequencing duties and serves as a source of synth sounds. The laptop serves as a sort of virtual rack, hosting several synths and effects in a modular host (namely energyXT). I’m generally not doing anything very complex sequence-wise in a live setting, though the K2000 could certainly handle it if I wanted to.

The K2000S can play multiple sounds at once, but only has two assignable outputs (there are 3 pairs of stereo outs, but one is the “mix” out), so in most cases I only use two sounds from it at any given time. That may not be a lot, but with the laptop it works out fine in practice.

The laptop (on loan from Kris) is not exactly a powerhouse (2.8GHz P4 w/512MB), but it can handle a couple of synths with effects. It usually handles the drums and one or two other sounds. I also have the output from the SoundBite loop sampler routed into its inputs, set up so I can sample whatever’s playing through the mixer’s control room routing and mess with it via software. This is one of the nice touches on the Tapco mixer I’m using- unlike many budget mixers, it has a ton of routing options- including the ability to choose which sources go to the control room/headphone outs (the choices are main mix, submix, and CD/tape input, and all 3 can be engaged at once).

Speaking of routings, I have some unorthodox stuff going on there too (nothing extremely crazy, but not quite “right”). You may have heard of the old dub trick of routing a signal out through an aux send, through a delay, and back into a mixer channel, which can then access the same aux send for feedback purposes. I have an old ADA digital delay setup that way, coming back into a mono channel- the mono channels have sweepable mids, which is very handy in this application. I also have the submix outs routed to a Kaoss pad, and back into a mixer channel, stereo in this case. I didn’t do that one so much for the feedback possibility, but to have a sort of freely-patchable insert effect. Since it comes back through a channel, it can also be used with the other effects.

Although it’s rather simple, I find this rig quite flexible, and lots of fun. All in all, it may be better suited to noise than anything resembling music, but it can be tamed. Something I would like to point out is that my use of hardware does not imply any lack of faith in a software-based setup, it only reflects the fact that I don’t have that much power available in software here. I do enjoy sequencing on the K2000, but I’m much more comfortable in a more visual environment. Also, the dub-feedback thing is easier to pull off in hardware.

I added a page of educational links here, all related to electronic music, digital audio, and synthesis- a reference library, if you will. I will be adding to it over time.

My Poly-800 MkII has developed a problem where the noise source is always on at full volume. Neither the envelope or volume parameter has any effect. The envelope still works on the filter.

I’ve got it pulled apart to see what I can do, if anything (will probably require replacing a chip I’m thinking, not sure)- and while I’m in there I’ll probably do some mods too, starting with the moog slayer mod. I’ll be posting pics as I go. The first set of pics are the innards before any poking around (other than some air dusting/vacuuming- it was pretty dirty in there):

main board 1

delay board

delay board- no flash

long view

main board above

The project may take awhile, since I’m not sure how easy it will be to find replacement parts. If it requires buying another Poly to cannibalize, then it will definitely be awhile before the repair gets done. However, the parts for the mods are easy to come by & cheap, so that may get done first.

Saw this posted at Matrixsynth, so awesome I had to repost:

Complete with examples, graphs, reference, and the ability to save your output as an image or audio file.

http://madtealab.com/

I don’t expect it to be on par with the pricier stuff in terms of build quality (looks like one of those wal-mart beginner guitars), but this still looks interesting: You Rock Guitar

If the MIDI control is as good as they claim, this will definitely go on my must-have list. I still think Guitar Hero is lame, but if it spawned something this cool, I guess it’s good for something.

Another interesting bit seen on Matrixsynth- the ONDO Music Editing Phone. That’s right, phone.

Could be a fun toy I guess. Read more at the Matrixsynth post:

http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2009/04/ondo-music-phone.html

(1st) thread link: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3551206

For those who don’t know, xoxos is a strange & talented audio software developer who frequents KVR. His specialties are physical models (such as the bird synth I designed some of the presets for) & midi generators/processors.

I’m not entirely sure what he’s up to, but he’s started a thread entitled “PhysMo week 1: bcc install”, which begins with a guide to installing Borland’s C++ compiler. I’m gonna take a wild guess that it will be some sort of guide to physical model programming. I’m also gonna try like hell to catch every bit of it.

I’ve had a few people ask me what software I use for my graphics & web design work, so decided to make a post about it. Free software ftw.

For graphics, my main tool is The GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/ – I’m not familiar enough with Photoshop to make comparisons, but I have yet to run into anything I need that GIMP can’t do (and it also runs on Linux). I also use an old version of Paint Shop Pro which was given to me as a gift. The only reason I still use it is because I know it so well it’s sometimes quicker than using GIMP for certain things. Had I not learned it first, I wouldn’t be using it.

For coding, it depends on what I’m doing- the standard windows Notepad is what I generally use for simple html & css. If I want nice color-coded context editing (handy for both php and more complex css stuff), I use a program called Notepad++: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ . On Linux, I like Kate for the same thing.

That’s it for the creating/editing side of things. There are also a couple of utility programs every web designer should have: Firebug (http://getfirebug.com/) and YSlow (http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/). These are great programs for troubleshooting or just figuring out what’s what. Firebug is like an advanced version of “veiw source” in the Firefox right-click menu, and YSlow (as the name implies) can tell you why a page is loading slowly.

I’ve also worked with several CMS packages, my favorite so far is Drupal: http://drupal.org. I’m not a huge fan of the default forums, but those can be replaced. There is a thriving community of Drupal users contributing themes and other add-ons, and the documentation is some of the best I’ve seen for free software.

For blogging software, I guess it goes without saying that I like WordPress.

Last, but not least, a couple of essential reference links:

http://www.w3schools.com – learn xhtml, css, etc. Has a really cool in-site editor that lets you try out code while you learn.

http://www.php.net/ – the home of php. Has downloadable manuals in a few formats.

So there you go- everything you need to build a damn fine website, totally free.