Prophet 12 feedback filters and other features

Published on Aug 5, 2018 Adrian Wardle

"I've been half thinking about selling my Prophet 12 to fund a Prophet X, so thought I'd put together a demo to let me take some time to really focus on the instrument. This uses some of the sounds I've programmed that use the P12's unique features such as the tuned feedback, the polyphonic delays. Also a couple of sounds leaning heavily on the much maligned now pass filter.

This has helped me decide that I'm not selling it. Although it can be a real pain to dial it into the sweet spots, it does things that no other hardware synth can.

Sounds:
Bigger Bully. This is an effort to make a really big polysynth sound. A lot of people think the P12 can't do this sort of sound at all. Uses all for oscillators running detuned PWM's, with the sound layered and all the filters on the second layer have a delayed start.

Enceladus. Sine waves, AM and a lot of tuned feedback.

Fmod DDL Cloud. This is using a sine wave oscillator to modulate the delay time for some delay FM. I'm pretty certain no other hardware polysynth can pull off this trick.

Food DDL Chime. A variation on the above technique to create a very different type of sound.

Resonance in D. This is uses the delays with the time parameters tuned to act as a crude resonance bank. A hefty dose of tuned feedback and lots of subtle and not so subtle routing of velocity to various parameters makes this very organic. I'm probably not showing it off to it's full potential in this vid.

Silver Voices. I've heard a lot of talk about people liking the choir samples in the Prophet X. This started off as a bit of an experiment to see if I could dial in expression to a single cycle wave rather than being stuck with whatever I'm given in the form of a sample as you get on the Prophet X. I then added some Prophet 12 metallic weirdness to complete the sound.

Meditation Bowl. This is using the delay lines as a kind of resonant bank again and a little bit of tuned feedback.

Dark Filter Slow. Just here to show the the Prophet 12 can sound warm and analog when it wants to.

Rez Epoch. Another rich analogue sound leaning heavily on the much maligned Curtis filter."