the watmm GAS thread

  On 2/25/2018 at 5:13 AM, RSP said:

Not that I have the money, space or time to spare myself (plus they're all in Eastern Europe so shipping to where I am is more expensive than the accordions themselves), but an industrious person could combine parts from a broken button accordion like this with a relatively inexpensive MIDI retrofit like this and have a pretty interesting controller.

I could swear I found this video from watmm, but

I got an MT-32 (version 1, the slanted face kind like i the preview image) for $15 a few years ago when I was visiting the old record shop where I used to work (well, technically it was $20 for that and a Radio Shack Electronic Reverb that I recently fried by using an adapter with the wrong polarity, but might be able to fix) and it's one of my all time favorites.  On the synth engine side it doesn't do anything youcan't achieve much easier with a D-110 but there's something about the shitty converters, shitty reverb and the specific drum sample set that make me lik it more than almost any other digital synth I've used.  It sounds cheap in all the right ways, and I really wish it had battery backed up user memory because I'd use it constantly if it didn't revert back to the presets any time you turned it off.  Still easily my favorite drum module I've ever used.

This is going to sound dumb because it's probably a dumb statement

but if Ableton could release a hardware synth of their Analog instrument

I would probably buy it.

Like a 1:1 copy except it would be actual analog oscillators and filters, tweaked accordingly. But otherwise just as powerful? (maybe concede down to like a 4 voice instead of the 16 or whatever it allows)

....fuck.

Yes, there are similar hardware synths, I know. It's obviously modeled to replicate an analog synth. And it's great as it is, no concessions or qualifications. It sounds great. But I just can't help but wonder...what if?

  On 2/25/2018 at 6:43 AM, RSP said:

I got an MT-32 (version 1, the slanted face kind like i the preview image) for $15 a few years ago when I was visiting the old record shop where I used to work (well, technically it was $20 for that and a Radio Shack Electronic Reverb that I recently fried by using an adapter with the wrong polarity, but might be able to fix) and it's one of my all time favorites.  On the synth engine side it doesn't do anything youcan't achieve much easier with a D-110 but there's something about the shitty converters, shitty reverb and the specific drum sample set that make me lik it more than almost any other digital synth I've used.  It sounds cheap in all the right ways, and I really wish it had battery backed up user memory because I'd use it constantly if it didn't revert back to the presets any time you turned it off.  Still easily my favorite drum module I've ever used.

Someone: Conan, whatz best in life?

Conan: shitty reverbs and shitty delayz!

<3

Edit: id pay million money to know what efx was used on quaristice. Two millions!

That shitty Audio Centron knockoff Microverb I was talking about earlier in the thread has turned out to be really good for completely mangling an input signal, some of the normal reverbs sound really weird at full wet and the reverse and random algorithms are... different from other equivalent reverbs I've messed with.

I have to boot up my desktop first (working from home today) but some time before lunch I'll post before and after clips of what happened to a CZ-101 sequence when I ran it through the Alesis Philtre into the reverb.  It sounds kind of amazing and both of them dogether cost about the same as a Boss DS-1 or something.  Definitely a lot more useful than a DS-1.

I can't find any other effects sold under that brand name, just crossovers and PA speakers and stuff.

Oh, I haven't recorded it yet but you can get an interesting, shitty sort of sound on sound delay loop by logging on to a video streaming service in one browser tab while watching your own stream in the other browser tab and playing your dry signal in a media player of some kind, with the stream's audio source set to the main outs of your computer.  No control to speak of and the delay time is determined by network traffic and geolocation, but I've heard it happen a bunch of times when people have messed up trying to stream games or shitty movies and it has potential as an experimental thing. I bet a few people on Skype could get something really strange happening with judicious use of feedback and muting.

Not GASsing over Digitone cause i have PreenFM2 and OT

That's the first thing I've heard from a PreenFM2 that makes me think maybe I should build one even though I have an underutilized TX802 already.

Just got an FM synth so I certainly don't need one, but you're getting some cool sounds out of that Preen FM2. How usable is the physical interface? I've not looked into it much, but it seems very much a software side thing. Reminds me of the Nord Micro Modular.

  On 2/27/2018 at 12:13 PM, telefunken said:

Not GASsing over Digitone cause i have PreenFM2 and OT

Nice work, as always 

so i went for Push2. really nice bit of kit. even just the ease with which you can add XY controllers and midi assign external VSTs is already making me seriously happy. 

i havent actually digged into the manual yet, is there a way to set it up so you can have four separate MIDI channels being triggered by a quarter of the pad each? so i can live create drum triggers for my modular on the fly?

  On 2/27/2018 at 7:37 PM, messiaen said:

so i went for Push2. really nice bit of kit. even just the ease with which you can add XY controllers and midi assign external VSTs is already making me seriously happy. 

i havent actually digged into the manual yet, is there a way to set it up so you can have four separate MIDI channels being triggered by a quarter of the pad each? so i can live create drum triggers for my modular on the fly?

I think you'd be able to do that with the external instrument plugin in live, put those in a drumrack and put push in the 64 note drumrack layout. (just push note a few times while the drumrack is selected). Although maybe live will send everything to ch1 if you have one drumrack that uses multiple midi channels. If that is the case you'll have to use m4l to get around this.

  On 2/27/2018 at 5:14 PM, Alan Ord said:

 

  On 2/27/2018 at 12:13 PM, telefunken said:

Not GASsing over Digitone cause i have PreenFM2 and OT

 

Nice work, as always 

 

  On 2/27/2018 at 4:40 PM, auxien said:

Just got an FM synth so I certainly don't need one, but you're getting some cool sounds out of that Preen FM2. How usable is the physical interface? I've not looked into it much, but it seems very much a software side thing. Reminds me of the Nord Micro Modular.

I never used it's vst editor. Physical UI is pretty usable so i always tweak it standalone. Everything is logically layed down and clear. It is somehow based on MI Shruti's UI framework i guess. There are plenty of helpful shortcuts and modes also. Perfomance mode for example, when encoders can be assigned to various parameters via mod matrix. Perf mode assignments are stored with voice patch.

By the way i binded my Zero SL mkII to TX81z yesterday after long hiatus and it feels now like i tweak some analog polysynth. It sounds rich and alive and i can operate it really fast because it has rather simple engine. 3 years ago i sold alpha juno 2 cause it sounded really dull and dry in comparison.

  On 2/28/2018 at 9:32 AM, telefunken said:

 

 

 

By the way i binded my Zero SL mkII to TX81z yesterday after long hiatus and it feels now like i tweak some analog polysynth. It sounds rich and alive and i can operate it really fast because it has rather simple engine. 3 years ago i sold alpha juno 2 cause it sounded really dull and dry in comparison.

 

I bet that works great with a 4op synth.  I tried using a ZeroSL MKI with my TX802 and usually ended up programming it from the front panel most of the time anyhow, it took 7 pages worth of parameters, some of them with more than one function per control, to actually program a 6op FM synth and it ended up being more confusing keeping track of what was what among all of the unlabeled knobs than it was to just use the keypad.

  On 2/28/2018 at 9:32 AM, telefunken said:

 

  On 2/27/2018 at 5:14 PM, Alan Ord said:

 

  On 2/27/2018 at 12:13 PM, telefunken said:

Not GASsing over Digitone cause i have PreenFM2 and OT

 

Nice work, as always 

 

 

  On 2/27/2018 at 4:40 PM, auxien said:

Just got an FM synth so I certainly don't need one, but you're getting some cool sounds out of that Preen FM2. How usable is the physical interface? I've not looked into it much, but it seems very much a software side thing. Reminds me of the Nord Micro Modular.

 

I never used it's vst editor. Physical UI is pretty usable so i always tweak it standalone. Everything is logically layed down and clear. It is somehow based on MI Shruti's UI framework i guess. There are plenty of helpful shortcuts and modes also. Perfomance mode for example, when encoders can be assigned to various parameters via mod matrix. Perf mode assignments are stored with voice patch.

 

By the way i binded my Zero SL mkII to TX81z yesterday after long hiatus and it feels now like i tweak some analog polysynth. It sounds rich and alive and i can operate it really fast because it has rather simple engine. 3 years ago i sold alpha juno 2 cause it sounded really dull and dry in comparison.

Oh wow, I saw that you could do editing with the physical knobs and menu diving, wouldn't have guessed it was that usable that it's the preferred method for you.  That makes it all the more intriguing to me. The button placement seemed way too tight on videos, but then again I use stuff with some pretty slim spacing for the buttons so it may not be a big thing. Performance mode assignments being stored separately with each patch sounds absolutely perfect. Thanks for relaying some of your experience with it, looks like a fun and useful little machine.

Digitone is pretty great, gotta admit.

  On 3/1/2018 at 10:51 AM, modey said:

Digitone is pretty great, gotta admit.

 

should i know the song? at the beginning it sounds like a metal cover of someone... are the outputs connected to any external fx or is it raw? nice jam :thumbsup:

btw i wondered, does any of this kind of machines have a cue function so that the user could listen to what he's doing while the audience kept jamming, like on a dj mixer?

lol are you kidding? it's a cover of the music from the first level of doom

Outputs are raw, except for a light limiter on the final mix.

  On 3/1/2018 at 10:51 AM, modey said:

Digitone is pretty great, gotta admit.

 

Haha, this is awesome! Good work!

  On 3/1/2018 at 2:56 PM, modey said:

lol are you kidding? it's a cover of the music from the first level of doom...

yeah it sounded familiar but i haven't played doom for ages so...

btw what a coincidence i was downloading it and some other dos games this morning...

Nice! Did you load the midi file in there or painstakingly slog through each note?

Painstakingly slogged through each note. It took a couple of hours (most painful part being the fast arpeggios) but it was a good exercise in maximising patterns using Elektron sequencer tricks. Thankfully the E1M1 music is pretty simple, with only guitar, bass and drums playing at once, but I still had to do some tricky stuff!

^sounded great modey!

Came here to post this. I've got a fetish for weird little sequencers I guess...I don't even have a modular anything but this looks interesting.

https://youtu.be/xqWwSKXZuRA