Black Corporation Xerxes MK2 :: Building a Pad from Scratch :: Sound Design

video upload by Harry van Mierloo

"Little sound design session on the Black Corporation Xerxes MK2 to test a lightweight recording setup directly to my phone.

No fancy post-processing, maximizing, review, just me building a pad from scratch on the wonderful Xerxes and exploring various variations of it, to give you an idea of the sound design freedom. The patch is initialized from a basic single saw wave patch and I play around with low pass and band pass filtering for the pads. Later in the recording I add some reverb from the @Strymon BigSky, which always helps on a pad.

Like most synths, a basic patch like this might not immediately sound '5K expensive' without effects, refinement and post-processing. Fortunately this versatile machine can do a lot more and is a real joy to use with all its hands-on control. Some typical Elka-features like Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM), sync phase control and oscillator self resonance, add to the unique character of this synth. It's a really enjoyable synth and I feel it's going to be one of my main workhorses.

I love how good a DCO-based synths can sound, and they are usually great for pads. Like on the Matrix-1000 and JX-8P, DCOs are super stable by nature, so imperfections need to be added manually. Apart from tuning tweaks/modulation, the Xerxes has a nice drift control for this.

Enjoy, and next time I'll clean the camera lens, I promise! 😅"