Simple questions on synth tech basics...

[JCJR]

It sounds like you might enjoy something like the roli seaboard. They are probably fun. I think they get the independent note-by-note depth of control by either assigning each note to its own midi channel, or an equivalent of that.

I don't pay much attention to alternate controllers because have tried various alternate controllers in the past and was too lazy to put in enough work to learn to play them proficiently. It is hard enough for me to manage a barely-acceptable sloppy job on ordinary keyboards. I don't have time/patience to get remotely accomplished on something requiring a different skill set.

But i am old and set in my ways. If you want that kind of control it might be worth practicing and getting good on something like the Roli.

[fluffy_little_something]

Wow, that Roli thingy indeed looks very interesting, it does exactly what I described, pitch bend per key
Once you are used to using it, a normal keyboard will feel very little expressive, I imagine.

[fluffy_little_something]

Deleted.

[fluffy_little_something]

I was demoing Spire and noticed that with 2 of the filters (perfecto and scorpio) there is an ugly grinding noise more or less limited to the 4th octave, especially when playing chords. What's interesting is that I have observed the same noise on the same octave with one of the Predator filters and also with the digital filter option in Hybrid 3. Also on the same octave.
The noise is only there when using two oscillators and using different semitone tuning, like 0 and +7 or +5, which I like to use for pads.

But both on Spire and Hybrid 3 there is no such noise with the remaining filter options, nor is it there on Sylenth1 or Repro 5.

I thought maybe it has to do with the sampling rate, so I tried different ones, but it makes no difference.

So, where does that noise on just 1 octave or so come from?

[fluffy_little_something]

As I was playing around with the new version of the Messiah plugin, which emulates the Prophet 5, I liked the sound of a brass pad for instance. So I tried to recreate it in Sylenth1 and failed, initially. Until I changed the stereo parameter to zero. That somehow did the trick. The whole diluted EDM sound character of Sylenth1 was gone and it sounded dense the way it should, with a very similar sound stage as in the P5 emulation.

Makes me wonder: were analog hardware synths mono inside?

[Delta Sign]

Yes, pretty much all of them (can't think of an exception at the moment). Remember, if the oscs were stereo, the filter and the amp would also have to be stereo (in a classic Osc->Filter->Amp design), which would increase the cost immensely. That's why many analog poly synths had a chorus, to add a stereo effect.

[fluffy_little_something]

OK, good to know. So I will simply change stereo to zero in my init patch because I get the impression that stereo has contributed a lot to the modern sound I don't like.

[fluffy_little_something]

As I was playing with portamento, I noticed that in polyphonic mode it works in a way I don't like. Wouldn't it make sense to be able to optionally specify a key/note, below and above which portamento is separate? This way there would not be big pitch jumps when playing a new bass note with the left hand and then a new high note with the right hand...

Is there a synth that already does that?

[aciddose]

There are simple ways to deal with that issue: for example inspired by the option on the DX7, Xhip implements "follow" and "retain" as well as "voice" polyphonic glide options.

With "retain": glide from the last note to the new note.
With "follow": glide from the last pitch (in-between notes, where ever the last glide was) to the new note.
With "voice": each individual voice maintains its own pitch. (edit: "like most analog polysynths" ??? brain-fart?)

A work-around using "retain" mode is that when you don't want a glide you can double-tap a note. This "skips over" the glide since the second tap jumps from the same note and so doesn't have any glide at all. If you combine this with voice recycling you can double-tap to force notes to jump to the target pitch. Unfortunately that's a compromise: you can't get "follow" effects at the same time with a global "glide mode" switch. That works "okay" in sequencing since you can really easily use a super short 128th immediately before the actual note to disable the glide.

It would be easier though to apply something like velocity or poly pressure to switch the glide on/off for those specific notes.

During live playing it can create some interesting effects but isn't very useful to control which notes glide or not; you always hear the lead-in glide from the first note as it's quite hard to use your fingers to produce 16th triplets or anything smaller.

https://soundcloud.com/aciddose-1/follow

My wrists got tired really fast haven't been playing keys enough lately. The first few notes were spot on but by the second group timing was way off. I should've started recording earlier when I was testing the idea. Regardless if I only lasted two minutes... my arms are fairly out of shape now (I haven't played keys every day for years, just recently got back into it) but this kind of demonstrates the technique while cool isn't completely practical.

What you're talking about would be an advanced keymapping system where you could set "zones" and apply those glide rules to them. For example you could set up a split bass + piano&strings where the bass was monophonic lowest and used legato glide. The piano wouldn't have glide at all. The string pad would have polyphonic "follow" glide.

I've wanted to do such a "key zoning" + "layering" + "mapping" combined system for a long time... honestly it's mostly G/UI stuff as the implementation is reasonably trivial. The difficult part is providing a very easy to use UI.

You can already accomplish this with a set of plug-ins though! You just need a keyboard splitter to send sections of the keyboard to different plug-ins or MIDI channels. Then each instrument can use the usual parameters to configure those "zones" independently.

[fluffy_little_something]

Yes, the double-tapping sounds difficult. Might work with pads with slow attack, but not so well with precise sounds like a piano with its fast attack.

Indeed, my idea was a kind of keyboard splitting or zoning for portamento only. A multi-timbral synth goes beyond that of course.

[fluffy_little_something]

Hard pans aren't great in headphones. Although you could cook up a basic crosstalk simulation, in your DAW with a basic delay plugin (MSED and Sound Delay can do it)

While I generally agree that hard pans aren't too great, I actually think almost any simple "cross-talk simulation" tends to make it all sound a lot worse. It's a nice idea and it sounds cool when you try it first time on a hard-panned mix, but really it doesn't work with anything else and doesn't really sound good in the long run. I think a much better strategy for making things "headphone friendly" is to make sure there is a little bit of stereo reverb on the mix to give the sound some spatial context and possibly some slap-back echoes on the other channel (on per track basis) if you have some very strongly panned sounds.

YMMV, this is just my thoughts on using headphones a lot.

Also, I don't think hard-panning is a good strategy to "maximise width" on speakers either, it tends to collapse the sounds to one of the speakers and if do something that keeps that from happening the result usually sounds quite fine on head-phones too.

As I was searching this thread for another issue in order not to repeat myself, I stumbled upon this older post, for which I had an idea some time ago: why not make headphones where the headband actually forms a little air duct (.5 x 2 inches) that connects the two cans and allows some of the signal of each channel to travel to the other side. There would automatically be a tiny delay, just like in a room where the signal from one speaker also hits one ear faster than the other. The delay and sound character could be determined by the way the interior walls of the duct are shaped, and the material of course.

[fluffy_little_something]

Anyway, while playing around, I noticed something that seems to apply to both synths I tried, I also tested another DAW, same thing: on the highest octave the synth seems to produce weird pitches, as you go higher note by note, g#9 becomes g#8 etc. Is it a general Midi problem? O my specific Midi keyboard's fault?

Also, I have come across a synth behavior I do not understand: when you apply a key follow -> volume modulation in a synth, there is an almost quiet note somewhere on the keyboard, and beyond that note it becomes louder again instead of going completely silent. When you set the mod amount to max, the turnaround note is very low, and vice versa. Why is there a turnaround note? Aren't those things linear? So that when I use more identical modulations, they simply add up and increase the volume difference between lowest and highest note? Instead when adding identical modulations, the almost quiet note moves across the keyboard towards the middle.

[mystran]

Anyway, while playing around, I noticed something that seems to apply to both synths I tried, I also tested another DAW, same thing: on the highest octave the synth seems to produce weird pitches, as you go higher note by note, g#9 becomes g#8 etc. Is it a general Midi problem? O my specific Midi keyboard's fault?

With many keyboards I've seen, if you go over the valid range of MIDI notes (which incidentally ends at g9), they just drop it down by an octave until it's back in the range. If you go into your DAW piano roll, there's a good chance that g9 is also the maximum note you can actually place there.

Also, I have come across a synth behavior I do not understand: when you apply a key follow -> volume modulation in a synth, there is an almost quiet note somewhere on the keyboard, and beyond that note it becomes louder again instead of going completely silent. When you set the mod amount to max, the turnaround note is very low, and vice versa. Why is there a turnaround note? Aren't those things linear? So that when I use more identical modulations, they simply add up and increase the volume difference between lowest and highest note? Instead when adding identical modulations, the almost quiet note moves across the keyboard towards the middle.

That sounds like a weird (buggy?) implementation of key follow modulation, but things like these are not really standard at all, so you should expect just about every synth to do a different thing. It's also possible you are using key follow in a way that you're not really supposed to. In this case I'd guess it's probably linear modulation that goes past the zero-point into negative volumes or something, but who knows. If the synth in question also has an exponential gain modulation target, then using that will probably produce a lot more sensible results.

[cron]

Wow, that Roli thingy indeed looks very interesting, it does exactly what I described, pitch bend per key
Once you are used to using it, a normal keyboard will feel very little expressive, I imagine.

I picked a Seaboard Block up recently and it's a mixed bag for me. Insane potential, but my 'standard' keyboard skills were way less transferrable than I expected so it's going to take a lot longer than I'd hoped to learn and become comfortable with it. My biggest issue though (and I appreciate this isn't applicable to most people) is my ridiculously sweaty hands. The sweat seriously interferes with my playing and make 'glides' difficult because of the added friction.

[fluffy_little_something]

Wow, that Roli thingy indeed looks very interesting, it does exactly what I described, pitch bend per key
Once you are used to using it, a normal keyboard will feel very little expressive, I imagine.

I picked a Seaboard Block up recently and it's a mixed bag for me. Insane potential, but my 'standard' keyboard skills were way less transferrable than I expected so it's going to take a lot longer than I'd hoped to learn and become comfortable with it. My biggest issue though (and I appreciate this isn't applicable to most people) is my ridiculously sweaty hands. The sweat seriously interferes with my playing and make 'glides' difficult because of the added friction.

Hm, and why do your hands sweat so much? There is laser treatment for harmless excessive sweating. Or is it some other, more serious condition?

That Roli Block controller looks waterproof