Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep.6) - Making Drums (+ MIDI Sync with Polyend Tracker)

Miltos Schimatariotis

"This episode is my take on making Drum sounds with the Medusa. I am demonstrating a workflow that may help you build a basic kit quite fast and I also describe how to use the sequencer with them. Since the Medusa is not a dedicated drum synth the sounds that we can achieve aren't like the usual 808, 909, etc sounds but I think we are able to have some drums and percussion with their own personality. As you will see in the sound design process something that will help us a lot to achieve some punch for the sounds is the FM feature of the synth. Furthermore, as an outro of the video, I have a demonstration of MIDI syncing the Medusa with the Tracker. It is a small song with the Medusa playing the drums and the Tracker adds some music around the rhythm.
I hope you 'll find this video helpful, feel free to leave your comments and thanks for watching!

Find me also on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/miltos_schima/

0:00 Intro
0:27 Kick / Bass drum
3:46 Snare drum
5:47 Hi-Hats
7:18 Toms
8:34 Programming the Sequencer
10:13 Demo song with Tracker"

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep.5) - Drones & FM

Published on Jun 1, 2020 Miltos Schimatariotis

"This new episode demonstrates the sound of analog FM in the Medusa and a good way to explore these FM capabilities of the synth is by creating Drones. Since this type of evolving sounds can be created in many different ways, here I 'm just giving you some general directions in order to find your own sound. I also demonstrate how you can alternate your FM timbres with wavetables for more diverse soundscape creation.
Beyοnd the sound design, this video also features an example of using the MIDI CC capabilities of the synth for controlling and modulating external effects (or other MIDI gear) with the internal LFOs and Envelopes.
Finally, don't miss the second half of the video with my 'stereo' Drone jam with two Medusas.
Lots of content in this one, I hope you 'll find it interesting! Thanks for watching and feel free to leave your comments or questions!

0:00 Intro
0:56 Exploring the Medusa FM sound
3:10 Drone sound design
8:35 Controlling and Modulating external effects
11:14 Drone jam with two Medusas

Find me also on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/miltos_schima/"

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep.4) - Lush Pads

Published on May 18, 2020 Miltos Schimatariotis

"In this episode, we see an example of how we can create a rich-sounding pad sound with the Medusa and the things we can do to make it as lush and wide as possible. At the music demo section, I also demonstrate how I use two Medusas to play in realtime this pad sound in stereo.
Let me know if you found this video useful or if you have any questions.
Stay tuned for the next videos where we will take advantage of the FM feature of the Medusa to create drones and other interesting sounds.
Thanks for watching, and take care!

Find me also on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/miltos_schima/

0:00 Intro
0:29 Pad sound design
5:40 A trick with the chord voicings
7:03 Music demo"

Miltos Schimatariotis Dreadbox Medusa posts

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep.3) - Deep Bass & the new Black Limited Edition!

Published on May 1, 2020 Miltos Schimatariotis

"In this episode we cover a deep/fat bass sound that is simple on its own but very useful in many situations. Also Polyend just sent me the new Limited Edition Medusa that is out from today (1st of May), so here I also have some first video shots with it!

This version comes with firmware 3.0 preinstalled and has some mainly aesthetic changes. What I personally like most is the anodized finish, the knobs that fill a bit "heavier" than my other Medusa (but this is maybe because it's brand new), the new button-encoder that now has steps and the new faders that protrude more and are easier to handle.

In future videos we are also going to take advantage of some new features of firmware 3.0, like the random LFO and some use cases with two Medusas, so stay tuned!

Thanks for watching, and take care."

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep. 2) - Mallets/Keys & how to setup the Grid for chords

Published on Apr 20, 2020 Miltos Schimatariotis

"Today we have a relatively simple sound to make and depending on how you tweak it sometimes it may sound like a mallets instrument and sometimes a keys or bell patch. Βut this is also a tutorial on how you can set up the grid to play chords in an interesting way that can help you find musical ideas and chord progressions easily."

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa posts

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep. 1) - A warm brassy lead (Vangelis style)

Published on Apr 5, 2020 Miltos Schimatariotis

"This is my first attempt for a tutorial / walk-through of creating a patch for the Medusa synth. In this video I explain how I made the lead sound of my 'Vangelis - Rachel's Song' cover. It's a relatively simple patch but if there is an interest in this type of videos I could make this a series where more sounds will be covered. Thanks for watching, and take care!

Listen to my 'Vangelis - Rachel's Song' cover here" [posted here]

Stranger Things (Eleven's theme & Main title) with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa synth

Published on Jul 24, 2019 Miltos Schimatariotis

"As a follow-up for my Medusa synth covers I decided to do something about the Stranger Things series. Here, instead of just recreating the 'Main title', I added as an intro one of my favorites in the soundtrack, 'Eleven's theme'. All sounds are made with the Medusa only, with the addition of effects and especially Byome which helps a lot in the background atmosphere.

A few words about the process I followed for creating this video:

At first, I decided what parts of the soundtrack I was going to cover and roughly planned the arrangement. Then I started designing the sounds on the Medusa. That was probably the most entertaining part but also the most challenging because for the creation of the original tracks the composers had a lot more gear in their disposal. But since I have decided to restrict myself to only one synth, the Medusa, I ended up just creating sounds that sounded good to me without necessarily replicating the originals. So I would say that this is a free cover and not a replication. (especially Eleven's theme is way different from the original). The other restriction I wanted to add in the process is that I wanted to have as few sounds as possible in order to not over-complicate things and to be able to visualize almost everything in the video.
So, after making a rough version I started the final recordings. I was recording the audio part and the video part simultaneously, the audio in Cubase and the video in my Pocophone F1 smartphone with Filmic Pro app. The difficult part here was that I had to name the takes every time for the video file and the audio clips in order to not lose track of what I was going to use in the final product (I used DaVinci Resolve). So the clips you see in the video are corresponding to the same audio recordings you hear. The only exception is the pad at the intro which was double tracked and panned left right, so there I used only one video clip.
I have mixed/mastered the track in Cubase and I had in mind to not over-process the sounds of Medusa, so I have mostly the necessary EQing and compression. The effects (reverbs-delays) are all routed in parallel. The main effect processor I used was Unfiltered Audio Byome and some patches make use of the beautiful Carmen collection from patchpool/Simon Stockhausen."

Vangelis - Rachel's song (cover) with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa synth

Published on Jun 23, 2019 Miltos Schimatariotis

"While exploring the warmer/sweeter side of the Polyend Medusa and the play-ability of the grid, I ended up making this small cover of one of my favorite tracks by Vangelis from the Bladerunner soundtrack. Some more details:

The Grid for the lead sound is setup so that the X-Axis goes one semitone up so on the X-Target I have the value of 10. With this setup it may be quite difficult to play always on tune so if you look at the video I always tend to touch the pads from the left side. This way doing the slides is also easier. I treat them somewhat like guitar frets. For the Y target I just have some filter cutoff. And for z-target a tiny bit of FM.
The pad and the drone are double tracked and panned left-right.
For the bass in order to fatten it up a little I have used the filter resonance.
The bell sound is just self resonating filter. The tuning here was a bit tricky, so I ended up doing some extra tuning later.
Generally the sounds are left without any significant post editing except of course the addition of effects and some basic mixing/mastering at the end. I have used Softube Tsar mainly on the lead sound to make it sound "bigger" as this reverb blends nicely with the sources, and for the long reverbs I have used NI/Softube RC 24. For the "shimmer" effect that is audible mostly at the outro I have added the Pitch shifter from NI Replika XT before the RC 24. There is also a little bit of Clouds at the pluck sound from VCV rack.

For the cover itself, I was partly influenced by the version of this song from Vasilis Saleas, a famous clarinet player in Greece. His version of the song is included in his album called "Orama".

Update:

Sound Design with Polyend Dreadbox Medusa (Ep. 1) - A warm brassy lead (Vangelis style)

Published on Apr 5, 2020 Miltos Schimatariotis

"This is my first attempt for a tutorial / walk-through of creating a patch for the Medusa synth. In this video I explain how I made the lead sound of my 'Vangelis - Rachel's Song' cover. It's a relatively simple patch but if there is an interest in this type of videos I could make this a series where more sounds will be covered. Thanks for watching, and take care!"