"I have a few Prophet tunes available but they're not exactly demos. All the sounds are my own. Only the first one is completely effects free, but the others have only a little reverb (except for one track in the last one).
http://music.boxoftextures.com/track/mountain-rhythms Everything is Prophet except for the swirly textures (which is an Oberheim Matrix 6R). The pulses track and the stringish track have no effects. The "lead" track, on the other hand, is, uh, drenched in flanging, reverb and compression, so it's altered pretty far from the original sound."
Solaris general demo Published on May 13, 2012 boxoftextures
Don't miss the Rotor demo below. It's one of the unique features of the Solaris.
"A brief exploration of some of the capabilities of the John Bowen Solaris synthesizer, showing the flexibility and depth of what you can do with it. This isn't a full blown tutorial but more of a taste of how you can program the synth.
"A demonstration of the basics of the rotors in the John Bowen Solaris synthesizer. The rotors are a somewhat unique module. They're not a sound generator on their own, but instead they let you mix and modulate several different inputs, be they sound sources or some other sort of signal. Using the rotors you can make either subtly motion-filled patches or you can go wild and make some crazy sounds.
"Saw a tweet from Cherry Audio about the newly released set of VM900 modules about two hours ago, instantly purchased them, and then made this video as a quick demo. Nothing fancy, single oscillator, no LFOs, minimal envelope count, but it still sounds fantastic. For me it was a no-brainer instabuy. Will certainly make some more in-depth videos of the VM900s, just wanted to get this out there."
"A new Bud app! Binarhythmic, from Cem Olcay. Binarhythmic, which seemingly has far too many H's in the name because I keep leaving some of them out, is a combination of binary and rhythmic (and I only said combination because I can't spell portmanteau LOL). It's a really interesting sequencer app as instead of beats and measures it counts in binary, with each digit (potentially) being a trigger. This opens up all sorts of possibilities, because instead of "simple" patterns of four or eight notes you're counting in binary, so 1, then 2, then 4, then 8, 16, 32, etc. So you could use three binary digits to have a kick on 1 and a snare on 4, but you can go way beyond that to have some notes be conditional on others or to "gate" notes so they play for a while until a trigger hits and then they stop, to start up again at the next trigger. Endless possibilities. And that's only with three digits. If you use eight digits your sequences can now have 128 beats. And it doesn't stop there because you're transmitting MIDI notes, so you can use them to trigger other events, such as starting/stopping other sequencers, say.
When I first tried out Binarhythmic it seemed very random—flashing lights, things happening at odd times and unpredictably. But once I got the hang of it it all started to make sense. We generally work in even measures, all with the same length for the most part, but in Binarhythmic each measure can be twice as long as the last. The beauty of this is that you can use it to trigger seemingly random events because humans just can't keep track of large numbers like 32 or 64, so if something happens once every 32 or 64 notes it feels like it might be a little out of the blue.
So a couple of video housekeeping notes. Seems I was a little careless with where I ran my headset cable and picked up a bit of hum along the way. It's not terrible, but let this be a lesson to us all. But mostly to me. Also, there's a bit of chord noise as the headset mic too easily picks up the vibrations if one is not paying attention. Again, "one" being me. And lastly, reasonably sure I was able to avoid picking up any playground wailing children noise but just in case I missed any it won't be too much of a surprise. Hopefully.
And finally, the quote intended use unquote for Binarhythmic is rhythm. So of course I did not do that and instead headed out towards some sort of ambient generative territory LOL. But fun was had along the way, and of course that just shows how usable and flexible Binarhythmic can be. Definitely worth a look.
Stuff used Binarhythmic - http://keybudapp.com/binarhythmic Arturia iSEM - https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-stor... Atom Piano Roll 2 - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atom-pi... Pipa - https://klevgrand.se/products/pipa Ravenscroft 275 - https://www.vilabsaudio.com/ravenscro... Velvet Machine - https://phonolyth.com/products/velvet... AUM - https://apps.apple.com/app/id1055636344 ScreenFlow - https://www.telestream.net/screenflow... Audio Technica BPHS1 broadcast headset - https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/...
The two snippets are called Heavy Sequence and Light Arpeggios. Heavy Sequence is rude and impolite and is done in a single patch. It's also, uh, a little rough around the edges as well. The sequencer is running on one layer and the lead is on the other. I did cheat a bit because I couldn't do two stereo channels at once into my Mac, but it more or less could have been done in one pass with only two hands (if you ignore the pitch bending, that is).
Light Arpeggios is much more polite and gentle. Both arpeggios are again done in a single patch and were recorded in a single pass live. I then put in a lead-ish type patch on top of that to make it a little bit more interesting.
Four tracks, recorded in Live: 1 - Arturia Minimoog V - arpeggios 2 - G-Force Mtron - texture chords 3 - Prophet '08 - fretless bass 4 - Prophet '08 - lead
Notes: 1 - no effects in Live, but the Minimoog V's internal chorus and echo were used as part of the sound 2 - dry 3 - a lot of reverb while it's playing alone for the first few bars at the beginning, then just a little reverb 4 - a bit of reverb
So these were my first two sounds I programmed on the Prophet '08. If you're wondering why the glide in the tune above sounds so different then what you might be used to, it's because each oscillator has its own glide knob (!) so you can set each one for a slightly different glide speed (or a greatly different speed, for that matter). This makes them reach the target note at slightly (or greatly) different times, and the sweep through the intervening frequencies happens differently for each one. Also, four LFOs is fabulous. I used one for vibrato, one for each of the oscillator's pulse width modulation, and I still had one spare.
While programming the bass sound, I held three notes and then latched the arpeggiator down. I then proceeded to spend about half an hour playing with all the controls. Man, that was fun! I wish I had recorded that on video for YouTube. I haven't touched the sequencer yet, but it looks like it'll be just as much fun. Plus, I think you get four sequences as modulation sources and can send then anywhere you want, not just for notes. How about one sequence for notes and then another for pan position? You could have each note happen in a different position in the stereo field and with a different pulse width and cutoff frequency. Add some slapback echo in your outboard gear and you're in for some real fun. You can have the thing chugging along sending notes flying all over the room. Uh, I'm patenting that one, so don't go using the idea, OK?
Oh, and just by the way, all four LFOs can be set to sync with the sequencer. Not only can you put different notes in different places in the stereo field, but you can move them once they're there. Madness!
The knobs are - different. Not bad by any means, but I'm still getting used to them. The most fabulous thing in the world is that you can touch a knob and turn it, and when you do, the sound changes the way you expect it to. There's no jump, no turning it back and forth until you pass the stored value, they just work. On the other hand, you can't just look at a knob to see what the value is. This feels really odd when choosing waveforms, for example. Again, it's not a bad thing, but it definitely feels different than what I'm used to. On a "normal" synthesizer (i.e., a Minimoog) you look at the knob to see the values. On the Prophet you first find the knob, then you have to find the display to see what's up. It'll take a little getting used to.
Same thing with the envelopes. I've always wanted DADSR envelopes, and now that I got 'em I have to get used to them. I always pictured a steady volume for the initial delay, then the normal envelope. Problem is, there isn't any steady volume before the ADSR portion, it's just a delay. Totally useful, but definitely not what I'm used to. There's a VCA level control, so you can have the VCA always open a little and have the envelope work the way I expected it to work, but then the VCA is always open even when you don't expect it to be. Again, none of this is a problem with the Prophet, it's more a problem with me. I can see an incredible amount of things you can do with these, and I can also see using up the four modulation routings in seconds on a lot of patches, and I can see it may take me a little while to wrap my head around it.
In re-reading this I can see that I've said "I have to get used to it" about five times. Hmmm. I guess I'll come back to this post in a week or two to see how I feel then. I've only been knob twiddling for about three hours last night. Six months from now everything I'm noting as different will probably feel completely natural.
So, in my few hours of sound programming I ended up being surprised by what the thing could do so many times that I just can't believe it. Is this why people rave unconditionally about the Evolvers? I've always wondered why. If so, I may just have to pick one up. So much thought went into the Prophet '08. Little things like individual glide controls. Such a simple idea, but a completely unique sound. Imagine something like oscillator sync, except that now you can apply glide to only -one- of the oscillators. Four LFOs, three envelope generators, four sequencers. Heck, you can even modulate the modulation amounts as all four modulation amounts are also modulation destinations!
The thing is brilliant. That's all I can say. Seth"
"Another excellent module for Voltage Modular, from Cherry Audio. Kind of a whole synth actually rather than just one module. It's based on the Polymoog, although it has a lot of added features because it's modular, which means you can throw half a dozen LFOs at the resonators, say, if you would ever feel like doing such a ridiculous thing. But who would ever think of doing something like that anyway?
I put together a fizzing and buzzing and moving around drone patch today. It uses the Polymode module, far too many LFOs, and a reverb. Everything's internal to the Voltage Modular app, with nothing external except for an Arturia Keystep, on which I pressed only two keys for the whole thing. You can of course make much more than drones with the Polymode but as soon as I saw all those control voltage jacks on the resonator I knew what I had to do.
The Polymode module sounds great, is quite useful, and is surprisingly inexpensive. Not many of us will ever get our hands on a Polymoog but the Polymode synth module is certainly within the reach of far more of us.
"A quick minute with the Korg Arp 2600 M. VCO 2 and 3 playing square waves. VCO 1 as a square wave LFO, doing both pulse width modulation on VCO 2 and being the clock for the sample and hold.
"My first contact with Matrix Dude, a new synth app from Digituria. I really like this app. It's kind of Minimoog-ish but with a lot more possibilities for modulation. Easy to use, sounds good, it's even bright and colorful!
A few notes though. One is that this is more or less an alpha version, still very much in development. As such, things will definitely be changing in the app. Many for the better I'm sure but things in this video may also be changed or eliminated. So be sure to remember the early-in-development status of the app when I'm adjusting the fine tuning of the oscillators a number of times, for example. I've spoken with the developers and they know about this and are definitely working on the tuning algorithms. I'm also told the look and feel of the app may be changing substantially so followup videos may look quite different.
All that being said, I had a lot of fun patching up sounds in Matrix Dude. Was quick and easy, and it sounds darn good. Looking forward to future updates to the app.
Lastly, I was going to make a quick one-minute tune as the outro music but ultimately decided the bass sound didn't really mesh with the arpeggio sound as it had a bit too much in the high frequencies. Next version I'm thinking I'll greatly lower the envelope 2 amount so you don't get as much of a burst of high frequency energy at the start of each note. It's fine with just the arpeggios there at the end but I was definitely planning something a bit more musical as a short demo of what you could do. Same with the lead sound, might soften the attack of the envelope just a bit to make it a bit less percussive at the beginning of a note.
"Well they did this one backwards, it seems. Usually Cherry Audio tweets out new product teases a week in advance, then they have a 30-second video reveal here on YouTube while at the same time putting the new thing up for sale on their web site. Which is all fine! But this time there wasn't a pre-announcement (although it's possible I just happened to miss it), and there wasn't a short video reveal, or a tweet or anything. I just happened to see there was a new Cherry Audio video on here and there it was. So I bought the Miniverse Module set for Voltage Modular and made a quick Mini. And here it is.
So far I've only built a 'Mini' with just a few effects, but again, because these are modules you can do all sorts of gnarly things with them. Which I shall proceed to do over the next few days. I mean, just being able to add three more envelope generators and half a dozen more LFOs make this worth the price of admission. And that's not even counting the polyphonic Mini module versions, which I haven't even had time to try out yet. Like I said, more to come.
Textquencer Quick Minute video upload by boxoftextures
"Just got Textquencer, a new 'bud' from Cem Olcay. It feels like it was one of those bonkers 'hey, what if I…' ideas you get when you least expect them. Absolute madness, in the best of ways LOL
It takes your text and converts it to MIDI notes. Can be randomly chaotic, reined-in ordered, or even manually composed, if that’s your style.
"Textquencer is a text-based MIDI Sequencer. It creates MIDI sequences from the plain text!
Each letter in the alphabeth triggers a note in the scale you are working.
Letter A triggers the Note C (the first note) in the C-Major Scale
Letter B triggers the Note D (the second note)
Letter C triggers the Note E (the third note)
Letter H triggers the Note C but an octave higher"
"OK, two videos in two days, a new record for me. But I saw that BLEASS released their iPad plug-ins for desktops and I immediately bought them all. Then I loaded them up in Logic and tried them in my randomly opened last used file, which happened to be my video intro and outro track. As soon as I loaded the Shimmer plug-in and heard how it just totally transformed things I knew I had to record it all. I know I sound a little ridiculous but it was kind of a magical jaw-dropping moment when I pressed the Shimmer plug-in "power" button and it kicked in. And I (almost) never use presets, but I liked this one so much that I didn't bother to change it except for fading the dry/wet mix in and out.
Synth drone sound is done in Phase Plant, by the way.
"Tangram, from Tangerine Dream. The sequence that starts it off has been in my head for over 40 years, and I was always a little annoyed they didn't let it run longer before they stepped on the end of it with the start of the bass line LOL. But thanks to modern technology I've now been able to fix that oversight and can press Play and let it burble along for hours and hours with none of those pesky interruptions. As it was meant to be heard. Sort of. Well, not really I guess.
Not much to it in a sense—a relatively simple synth voice, four sequencers, a voltage controlled switch, and a clock and clock divider. But in another sense it's a pretty involved patch. Which was a ton of fun to put together.
Video captured with ScreenFlow 10
Audio recorded in Logic Pro X
Voiceover recorded using an AudioTechnica BHPS1 Broadcast Headset
Audio routing done with Loopback
Edited in DaVinci Resolve 17
On a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
"Ratcheting is when you take one step in a sequence and have more than one note play in the same amount of time. Some sequencers let you specify how many notes you want in each step, but most just play one note per step. Ratcheting can take a "regular" sequence and give it a bit more pizzazz, and that's fine as far as it goes. In this video we're going to use clocks, a sample and hold, and a special ratcheting module to insert occasional ratchets in randomly chosen steps to take things to another level. Standard ratchets are perfectly fine, but when they come in at unexpected and unknowable semi-random moments the whole sequence keeps you just that much more on edge.
One thing I should perhaps mention is that I got a snazzy new lavalier microphone. However, due to user error I think what I actually did was record the voiceover in Logic using my laptop's built-in mic. I route my audio in Loopback but even if you set everything up correctly you still have to double check and make sure Logic knows to use Loopback for the audio routing. I've made this same mistake before with my headset mic but I've always caught it in the past. So let's all take this as an opportunity to learn that no matter how hard you try it's very easy to realize you didn't quite try hard enough. Or something.
This video description brought to you by the letters A and Z, mostly because it's hard to believe I actually use both pizzazz and snazzy in the same bit of text.
Video captured with ScreenFlow 10 Audio recorded in Logic Pro X Audio routing done with Loopback
Edited in DaVinci Resolve 17 On a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
Cherry Audio Voltage Modular https://cherryaudio.com/voltage-modular Screenflow from Telestream https://www.telestream.net/screenflow... Loopback https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/ DaVinci Resolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/prod...
"A quick minute with the Quadrature VLFO, from Cyberwerks Heavy Industries. Cherry Audio mentioned this somewhere a few days ago, possibly in a tweet I can no longer find, and my immediate thought was, "this will be brilliant for drones." And it is! The VLFO (the V stands for 'very') lets you make ridiculously slow LFOs, but the module also puts out three additional signals that are 90° apart from each other. Which makes it perfect for long, slow drones as each LFO can drive multiple things very, very slowly, but each output is different, because when one is high another one might be low.
So in this patch I have two VLFOs, four out-of-phase outputs in each, running at two different very slow speeds (70,000ms and 15,000ms cycles, respectively) and controlling the volume level of the eight partials in an additive VCO. And I have another VLFO (33,000ms) controlling the volume of the mixer channels of three supersaw oscillators. And just for fun I threw in a super-slow envelope generator to slowly fade the patch in and out (12 seconds in, 50 seconds out).
In a way this is a terrible demo LOL. Because a quick minute is too short to really hear the very slow changes that are happening, and I thought about just making a much simpler straight demo with much faster and more obvious changes but, well, didn't, alas. But I think you can get the idea, and see what these VLFOs are capable of. And also, they're not limited to being very slow either, just to mention it.
No external effects used, everything's in Voltage Modular.
"Got my UNO Synth Pro today and am super happy about it. Did a quick-minute, handheld, camera mic video of a bass pulses patch that I made, first one. Patch is my own but there are still some things left over from the preset, like the arpeggio patterns, for example. I made a second patch, not in this video, after I figured out how to initialize things so was able to start from scratch on that one.
Gotta say I think this thing's a winner. Sounds great, easy to program, will fit in a backpack no problem, even came with a USB-charging battery power supply which was a nice touch. I've literally had the thing for an hour or so and totally love it already.
Cast of characters:
UNO Synth Pro (Desktop)
iLoud Micro Monitors
"Is it a travel video? Or is it a rail fan video? Or even, is it a music video? Nobody knows. Overcast day for an Amtrak train from Boston to New York, basically the entire view of the Manhattan skyline as we go from the Bronx through Queens and then into the tunnel to Manhattan.
Music details: Arturia V Collection synths, but most sounds are from Pigments, one of my favorite soft synths. All sounds are original patches I made for this tune. In fact, our motto is:
Box of Textures: never* sullying your ears with a preset
Recorded into Logic Pro X on a 16-inch, 2019 MacBook Pro using their new Live Loops feature, because that's how I've preferred to work ever since I got Digital Performer seemingly a thousand years ago.
I like making these travel videos and their accompanying soundtracks. Apparently though it seems I only travel from right to left. I'll try to work on that for the next one but to be fair it's only the second one of these I've done recently.
Doc acquired a Wavestate, and I've always loved the original Wavestation. I even have one, but it's one of my several synthesizers that need a new display backlight, alas. But Korg came out with the Wavestate a few years ago, and they also have a software version. So I was "forced" to pick it up so I could make patches to send westward. And honestly it's amazing, capable of incredible changing textures, among many other things, of course. You can have a sequence of up to 64 samples per layer, and have them either crossfade into each other or sound discretely, and you can separately have up to 64 notes with each keypress, or just have it play the one(s) you're physically playing on the keyboard. That's per layer, and there's four of them, with a handy programmable joystick to let you fade the different layers in and out. Incredibly powerful. I have the software version, but now I'm seriously considering getting the hardware version as well.
In this video I'm making a new patch from scratch, and then I show a number of other patches I've made over the past few weeks.
"When I was a kid growing up in New York City in the early 1970s I would listen to WNEW-FM all the time, but especially from 10pm to 2am when Allison Steele, the Night Bird, was on the air. WNEW was a progressive rock station, not really the same meaning as today's term 'prog rock,' but more that the DJs played what they wanted with no playlists. And one night in 1974 Allison Steele played a song from a new band I'd never heard of before, Todd Rundgren's Utopia. I was 14, and I was instantly hooked. The song was over 14 minutes long, and was from a live show. I was heavily into keyboards and they had three keyboard players, one with a giant modular. The bass and drums were incredibly tight. And on top of that was Todd Rundgren, abandoning his pop stylings and going full on prog. And then, after being entranced through the first half of the tune, they all stopped, and the sequencer started up. That was it for me. Instant favorite, and started me down the path to synthesizers. Where I still am today.
So that sequence has pretty much always been in my head, and in a way influenced my entire life. It was life-changing for me. And so here it is, recreated. A 'simple' six-note sequence, but super fast, and constantly shifting. Six notes, but that section of the song is in 4/4. Except that the main lines are on the ones but the answering lines start on the 3 before the one beat. So you have six against four, and your four is being interrupted by the answering refrain. You're constantly off balance, but then again things are also constantly being resolved. And then they all pause, back at the sequence, and he rips into the most amazing guitar solo I've ever heard. The whole thing is genius. Todd Rundgren, perhaps at his peak.
Featuring Multiphonics CV-1 from Applied Acoustics Systems
Video captured with CleanShot X
Audio recorded with QuickTime Player
Voiceover recorded in Sound Studio using an AudioTechnica BHPS1 Broadcast Headset
Audio routing done with Loopback
Edited in DaVinci Resolve 17 on a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
"This is not exactly a synth demo, but rather a demo of how to connect a "standard" sustain pedal to a laptop or iPad. Not too difficult a task but it took a little research to find a good pedal-to-USB adapter. I'm using the Beat Bars FS2M adapter, which I'm very happy with. 1/4" TRS jack on one end, micro USB on the other. Can take pretty much any one- or two-switch pedal and send it right to your computer. I mean, not that big a deal but didn't realize how much I missed having a pedal when using piano apps, for example. And yes, some MIDI keyboards have a pedal jack input, but with today's super-thin portable bluetooth MIDI keyboards that's perhaps starting to become a thing of the past.
"Really powerful sequencer technique, I spent a lot of the past weekend working on variations of these sequences and am pretty stoked about it. The concept is not my original idea, was from an 'I had a breakthrough' post in one of my iPad music Facebook groups. Using one sequencer, Euclidean, not for notes but to start and stop two other sequencers, so you end up with ever-changing note patterns. Sounds amazing, really happy with the idea and with the results.
AUM as the studio, with Euclidean stopping and starting two copies of Atom Piano Roll 2, which are sending notes to two copies of iSEM. And another iSEM playing a bass sequence from Euclidean for good measure.
Euclidean, from 4Pockets - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/euclide... Atom Piano Roll 2 - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atom-pi... Arturia iSEM - https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-stor... AUM - https://apps.apple.com/app/id1055636344
One thing I neglected to mention in the video is the gate length. Default is I think 25%, which is fine for most normal purposes. But if you set it to 5% it might only play the first four notes of a 19-note sequence. But on the other hand, the reason my A sequence plays twice through before it stops is because I set the gate length to 80%, so the "note" is held for quite some time, which then means that the sequence it triggered keeps playing. Different gate lengths, different effects. I spent a good bit of time on that in the first take but completely forgot it in the second, alas.
Also, you can probably do this with any number of sequencers, doesn't necessarily have to be Euclidean and Atom Piano Roll 2. I just happen to like those.
This one came in via Seth Elgart on the AH list:
