BladerVerb II: Sequential OB-6, Alesis MDIVerb II, Source Audio Ventris, CME XKey (poly aftertouch)

video by thesrabbit

"Inspired by feedback received from my last video [posted here], I wanted to do some more Blade Runnery things with the same foundation as last time: Sequential OB-6 GeoSynths 016 preset with internal FX turned off, Alesis MIDIVerb II preset 29 "XLarge Warm 15 sec.", and the CME XKey 37 for poly aftertouch. Someone brought up the vintage knob and of course I totally forgot about that until after I recorded the last vid. This time I dialed it up to somewhere between 10 and 11 o'clock. Another person suggested maybe using an Alesis Quadraverb or Wedge to get that modulated swirl reverb going, a characteristic of the Lexicon 224 sound used in the original Blade Runner soundtrack. I don't have either of those, but I do have another unit that's capable of modulated reverb for days, the Source Audio Ventris Dual Reverb. I thought it would be fun to put that at the end of the chain, after the MIDIVerb II. I set it to E-Dome, mod depth pretty high, and the mod speed very slow. In the video, you can see the light on the Ventris glowing, that indicates its internal LFO speed used for modulation. In order to have any sort of clarity, I had to dial the mix on the MIDIVerb II back to about 50/50 dry/wet, which is less than I would like for this type of sound.

After the main tune, I play a small rendition with varying degrees of effects so you can get a better idea of what each "layer" sounds like: OB-6 completely dry, OB-6 with MIDIVerb II only, OB-6 with Ventris only, and just for fun, the OB-6 with its own internal FX (closer to the sound of the original 016 GeoSynths preset)

Something happened when I patched this up and I might have a bad cable running to the MIDIVerb II from my patchbay. The signal coming into the MVII is a bit weak on one of the channels. The unit still emits a stereo signal filled with spacious reverb, but it's as if there's an extended pre-delay happening on one side. After a while there's so much reverb built up that you don't really notice. I didn't notice it when playing, but I definitely did when setting up the little demo of each FX layer afterwards. Unfortunately, I did not capture the dry output of the synth, so there was no way to go back and fix it.

Once again there is no post processing. You're only hearing the synth running through the two reverb units. That's it."

Follow-up to this post.