Moog and Rhodes lovers, this is for you! If you enjoy the sound of pure analog circuitry sweetened through juicy Moog filtering, and the bell-like tones of a fine-tuned Fender Rhodes playing your favourite chords, -plus, if you wouldn’t mind to have a bunch of nicely-cut dusty vinyl sounds as a bonus!- This is definitely [...]
A little taste of Moog bass sound! Hello dear sample-heads! The release of “SWEET CHORDS Vol.1″, our highly anticipated low cost library, is only one week away! We’re just polishing the little final touches of it, setting up some new plugins on the site and so forth. So, to make the wait less painful we’ve [...]
Breakwaters “Release The Beast” sound on an 1978 Octave cat SRM The second “Positif Synth School” chapter is HERE! This second volume keeps it on the funky side, it explains the synthesis theory behind Breakwater’s “Release The Beast” synth lead sound -also sampled by Daft Punk on “Robot Rock”-. We’ve recreated it once again on [...]
Deluxe TR-606 sample-set: Not another 606 sample library, this one is special. We’ve sampled the usual sounds, but also we’ve sampled stuff that users often forget about this machine. So, what is different about this sample library? -When you clock the 606 to a long tempo you can hear hi-hats and cymbals with a longer [...]
Experimenting with an incredible instrument! As I said before, I usually work with the Moog distributor in Spain. I’m not a guitarist so, although she always caught my attention, I’ve never played or recorded a Moog guitar. A few months ago I had the opportunity to bring a friend to play (the Paul Vo Collector’s [...]
I love my pen and my pad! My pen and my pad! Have you ever noticed the noise made by a rapper when writing a new song? I was with a friend who’s recording on my studio and I noticed he was writing at the same tempo as the beat was playing. Also, he beats [...]
VOL3: Vinyl scratch simulation on a Future Retro XS Analog Synthesizer
This is a special Synth School class, because it’s not about a particular song, but a homage to the art of scratching: from Grand Master Flash to Qbert.
This is SYNTH SCRATCHIN’ !!!
So, how is it made?:
Well it’s a very simple patch believe it ir not!, pulse width modulated VCO (sync’d to another vco, wich wont sound at all), medium-high resonance, low cutoff and an ADSR routed to VCO pitch. Make sure attack is not too low, and set a high decay, and pretty much zero sustain and release.
The bad news: we don’t have $6k to spend on this sound.
The good news: we don’t need $6k. Enter the doepfer R2M!
We’ll be using this thing wich is about $350 quid new (NICE!). You could also make your own ribbon controller for a LOT less with a ribbon strip and some electronics knowledge.
The R2M converts your finger movements over a ribbon strip into CV voltage control and MIDI CC signals. This way you can get a smooth pitch transition similar to a theremin, but MUCH easier to control.
This CV messages go into a synth with an EXTREMELY simple patch. It’s a pulse waveform VCO, into a filter with medium cutoff ,medium resonance, into an VCA with slow attack on it’s ADSR. I achieved it with an SH-101. I then applied a little bit of delay via a BBD pedal (MXR carbon copy) and voilá: instant $6K RADIOHEAD SOUND for a lot less!
For educational purposes we’ve now decided to make patch diagrams, in order to make our explanations easier to understand.
The modules are scanned from Roland’s “Practical Synthesis for Electronic Music”, a promotional 70’s vintage book on modular synthesis that uses the company’s old SYSTEM 100M for examples. We thought it gave the section a nice touch!
(To correctly view the image above at the original size you have to press “right click + view image”)
If you enjoy the sound of pure analog circuitry sweetened through juicy Moog filtering, and the bell-like tones of a fine-tuned Fender Rhodes playing your favourite chords,
-plus, if you wouldn’t mind to have a bunch of nicely-cut dusty vinyl sounds as a bonus!-
This is definitely your library!
PART I – “Rhodes2Moog”:
This library is a collaborative work with Hi.Moez and Arecio Smith who have accepted to shut themselves up in our studio with just a Clavia Nord Electro 3, a Moog Voyager and a bunch of classic studio effects!
The magic lies in the methodology: we’ve connected the audio out of the Clavia -set to a Rhodes patch- into the Filter input of the Moog, while the Moog was controlling the Nord Electro via MIDI. This way the keyboard player was able to “play a Rhodes through a MiniMoog” ie: play Rhodes sounds & Moog VCOs mixed together and then filtered by a stereo Moog Filter.
Trust us, it sounds even better than it reads!
To put the icing on the cake we’ve passed those samples through several boutique FX boxes such as the Moog Murf -sequenced analog filter- the MoogerFooger MF104 -analog BBD delay- or the Roland Space Echo 201 -tape echo- giving this collection an special “underwater” sound.
The outcome is a collection of more than 750 high quality chords and licks, neatly organized by mood.
PART 2 – “Well Dressed Vinyl”:
But it doesn’t end here! As a bonus we’ve loaded our MPC with lots of vinyl-sampled chords and intervals we’ve pitched them up & down to later process them through the same effects as the Rhodes2Moog library.
The result is “Well Dressed Vinyl”, more than 200 tastefully gathered dusty vinyl samples!
Sweet Chords Vol.1 info:
Technical Specifications
964 stereo Wave files at 16bit 44khz
Library size is ≈ 400 MB
63 Maschine Groups
32 MPC pgms (compatible mpc with 1000/2500/4000)
All files are organized and tagged with metadata compatible with Maschine
The release of “SWEET CHORDS Vol.1″, our highly anticipated low cost library, is only one week away!
We’re just polishing the little final touches of it, setting up some new plugins on the site and so forth.
So, to make the wait less painful we’ve decided to give our loyal subscribers yet another free library!
“MOOG BASS TONE” includes painstakingly sampled -yes, you guessed it-, Moog bass patches recorded mono with UA 6176 directly into the MPC 4000 (yes! another beast at home. Welcome MPC 4000 users!)
Including 117 MPC/MASCHINE One Shot sounds for classic 16-level beatmaking.
If you like it, be sure to come by next week for the release of “SWEET CHORDS VOL1″, the first in our series of sampling delicacies.
