the watmm GAS thread

Had dreams about the Octatrack... bought it, but short affair... made me appreciate the  Push II way more

just got the sh01a and po33.. fuckin got 5 pocket operators now

 

this is the LAST IM EVERY BUYING I SWEAR

I got a Morley Classic Wah and a Pedaltrain Nano this weekend, but they both came from the trash so it doesn't count.

 

Looking forward to doing some dual-wah low rent formant synthesis.

Edited November 26, 2018 by RSP

  On 11/26/2018 at 4:54 AM, Stickfigger said:

 

  On 11/26/2018 at 12:53 AM, MIXL2 said:

just got the sh01a and po33.. fuckin got 5 pocket operators now

this is the LAST IM EVERY BUYING I SWEAR

The 01a is quite good - enjoy

cheers

FINALLY was able to preorder the new version of Polyend Perc Pro. Slightly less expensive overall (assuming the price of individual beaters is still $300), but kind of lame they only come with one beater now.

Three more weeks and I'll have saved and raised enough money for the Linnstrument!

I'm extremely close to diving into eurorack. Every time I sit down to read up on it, though, I learn enough new stuff that I feel like I barely have any idea. And then I remember Max can do basically whatever I want. I still want a Shelves though.

 

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Waiting for an Ableton discount so I can get M4L and an upgrade to 10. Not that I really need either but M4L would be nice to have.

The other side of gas is debating if you like a piece of gear knowing you'd miss the shit out of it if you sold it, just to get something else. Ive sold way too many great synths. Just because I was on some different musical tangent. 

If you want modular, Look into the BOM Buchla stuff. BEM the actual company makes crap gear now. The under ground diy world of Buchla clones is good

  On 12/1/2018 at 9:23 AM, Stickfigger said:

Should I get into max ? Yes / No

 

Try out a trial or Pure Data and find out. I don't think I care a lot about the audio fuckery but making sequencers and stuff for controlling gear over MIDI is interesting for me.

  On 12/1/2018 at 10:33 AM, marf said:

The other side of gas is debating if you like a piece of gear knowing you'd miss the shit out of it if you sold it, just to get something else. Ive sold way too many great synths. Just because I was on some different musical tangent. 

Yeah, I've sold a few that I still hadn't quite finished discovering yet (0-coast, machinedrum, OP-1) but they were all part of the journey to end up where I am now; they were all great synths though, and I'll probably buy one of them again someday.

 

I'm at a point now where I can't think of what I would sell if I really wanted to buy something. Everything I have is either a super workhorse (nords, elektrons) or at a perfect level of portability (TE stuff, gameboys) so I can't imagine getting rid of any of it. 

I'm getting a small bonus at work, and obviously I'm looking at music gear to buy with it rather than putting it into savings etc. I keep thinking of an MPC1000, even though I really don't know if I'd get along with the workflow.. can anyone vouch for it? I can't seem to find many non-hiphop videos of it..

max for live is basically like modular for your softsynths anyway. i love my modular, but it cost an absolute bomb. its real power is subtle modulation, but M4L has a whole suite of envelope followers, LFO's, and random outputs to control the parameters on your vst effects and synths anyway. 

  On 11/30/2018 at 8:22 PM, Braintree said:

FINALLY was able to preorder the new version of Polyend Perc Pro. Slightly less expensive overall (assuming the price of individual beaters is still $300), but kind of lame they only come with one beater now.

 

 

Right, well, this turned out the way I thought it would. Now each beater is sold individually, not able to be expanded with more beaters, and now they're $500. What a greedy fucking company.

Damn that sucks. It seems like a great idea though. I wonder how much it'd cost to build one myself. I'm very interested in something like that, but not "$500 each" interested..

 

edit: if anyone has any good DIY solutions for MIDI-controlled mechanical percussion please post here!

Edited December 19, 2018 by modey

 

  On 12/18/2018 at 11:58 PM, modey said:

I keep thinking of an MPC1000, even though I really don't know if I'd get along with the workflow.. can anyone vouch for it? I can't seem to find many non-hiphop videos of it..

It's a great machine for what it is. I always thought of the workflow as garbage in, garbage out - it's a no-frills, meat and potatoes sampler/sequencer. In my opinion there's nothing better for chopping up loops. With JJOS it's just so easy to smack a pad, twirl the jog dial, repeat until you've got them all lined up, and then just go to town on those pads. I used to lose hours just cutting things up. It's been too long.

  On 12/19/2018 at 1:15 AM, modey said:

edit: if anyone has any good DIY solutions for MIDI-controlled mechanical percussion please post here!

See if you can track down a MIDIwidget second hand:

http://www.midiwidget.com

 

https://youtu.be/E_2Yo0d4fTk

  On 12/19/2018 at 12:00 AM, messiaen said:

max for live is basically like modular for your softsynths anyway. i love my modular, but it cost an absolute bomb. its real power is subtle modulation, but M4L has a whole suite of envelope followers, LFO's, and random outputs to control the parameters on your vst effects and synths anyway. 

 

Right, but M4L does not have a Wasp filter, which is a filter made by making a specific chip do something it was not supposed to do (filter audio).

 

That, and I just really like patching by plugging in cables with my hands instead of with my mouse or track pad.

 

Finally, if all you're after is subtle modulation you're better off using M4L as modular is fairly expensive and every extra source of modulation costs money.

 

I just use mine for analog, which M4L can't do. And for the subtle hiss you get by running electricity through cables. I like hiss.

  On 12/19/2018 at 11:05 PM, Stickfigger said:

I'm looking at that GR-1 but it feels like a jumping the shark moment when I could get a new laptop , run some granular synths/samplers and get a controller for that cash .

 

But , it does look neat. And I am lazy . And would probably never program a granular synth in max. And if I had a laptop would just end up procrastinating instead

 

I find myself more and more not really liking the "granular" paradigm. More and more I'd rather just use samplers to do faux-granular stuff. I'd rather spend the money on a used octatrack MK1 and just be able to put on some timestretch(or not) and put on some combinations of LFOs, parameter locks, and slide trigs that modulate retrigger times, start times, lengths. I can't really get that super dense cloud of sound grains sound but I can get pretty close and get all the sounds I really want + some good filtering and some good reverbs. And if you really want that cloud of grains sound you can throw in an axoloti and do it yourself for way cheaper than $1000 for not much effort. That GR-1 looks kind of meh to me, it's powered by a raspberry pi and the build quality doesn't look that great to me. The screen is neat but besides that I just, it doesn't seem that nice otherwise.

I played the GR-1 in Berlin last month and it sounded lush as fuck, but I couldn't figure out how to load any other samples so I didn't get a good grasp on the capabilities. Build quality seemed pretty good to me.

 

.. I was ultimately distracted by the LYRA-8 though, which I will have to pick up at some point, for sure.

  On 12/19/2018 at 11:38 PM, Bubba69 said:

 

  On 12/19/2018 at 11:05 PM, Stickfigger said:

I'm looking at that GR-1 but it feels like a jumping the shark moment when I could get a new laptop , run some granular synths/samplers and get a controller for that cash .

 

But , it does look neat. And I am lazy . And would probably never program a granular synth in max. And if I had a laptop would just end up procrastinating instead

 

I find myself more and more not really liking the "granular" paradigm. More and more I'd rather just use samplers to do faux-granular stuff. I'd rather spend the money on a used octatrack MK1 and just be able to put on some timestretch(or not) and put on some combinations of LFOs, parameter locks, and slide trigs that modulate retrigger times, start times, lengths. I can't really get that super dense cloud of sound grains sound but I can get pretty close and get all the sounds I really want + some good filtering and some good reverbs. And if you really want that cloud of grains sound you can throw in an axoloti and do it yourself for way cheaper than $1000 for not much effort. That GR-1 looks kind of meh to me, it's powered by a raspberry pi and the build quality doesn't look that great to me. The screen is neat but besides that I just, it doesn't seem that nice otherwise.

 

 

Yeah, after experimenting a bit, I too have come to the conclusion that granular is meant for breakfast, not music.

  On 12/19/2018 at 11:38 PM, Bubba69 said:

That GR-1 looks kind of meh to me, it's powered by a raspberry pi and the build quality doesn't look that great to me. 

 

 

Whoa ... I missed that ...

 

Charging EUR 850 for a Pi in a box with some buttons and a screen is ridiculous.

  On 12/19/2018 at 1:15 AM, modey said:

Damn that sucks. It seems like a great idea though. I wonder how much it'd cost to build one myself. I'm very interested in something like that, but not "$500 each" interested..

 

edit: if anyone has any good DIY solutions for MIDI-controlled mechanical percussion please post here!

 

 

The more I think about building my own, but the more I realize I know absolutely nothing about mechanical engineering.

 

The beaters are basically little pistons though. If you can figure out how to get a low power piston working with MIDI, that may be an adequate solution.

Let's take this opportunity to reverse engineer this thing.

  On 12/20/2018 at 8:07 PM, Braintree said:

 

The beaters are basically little pistons though. If you can figure out how to get a low power piston working with MIDI, that may be an adequate solution.

Let's take this opportunity to reverse engineer this thing.

 

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/staskevich/midiwidget-control-anything-via-midi/posts/1163262

 

  On 12/20/2018 at 8:07 PM, Braintree said:

 

  On 12/19/2018 at 1:15 AM, modey said:

Damn that sucks. It seems like a great idea though. I wonder how much it'd cost to build one myself. I'm very interested in something like that, but not "$500 each" interested..

 

edit: if anyone has any good DIY solutions for MIDI-controlled mechanical percussion please post here!

 

 

The more I think about building my own, but the more I realize I know absolutely nothing about mechanical engineering.

 

The beaters are basically little pistons though. If you can figure out how to get a low power piston working with MIDI, that may be an adequate solution.

Let's take this opportunity to reverse engineer this thing.

 

Yeah I think the value in it is that it's super fast and strong; I think there was a video of it triggering at audio rate, which apparently isn't easy/possible with regular solenoids? Much like you, I don't know anything about the mechanics behind it!

 

Over the next few weeks I'm going to try to put some effort into making some kind of arduino based MIDI -> voltage trigger device so I can possibly connect solenoids/stepper motors/etc., hopefully at least make a start on it.