Sunday Synth Shenanigans | Berlin School | 2024.05.19

e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] happy Sunday [Music] everybody Hill Co coil you go have pizza man [Music] Rich Audrey Anna Andy Jeff all the jam [Music] suspects wine rubber Garden hey Carl pizza's already pizza's already eaten okay you're baking bread in your pizza oven 6 kilograms of dough wow [Music] [Music] I'm just going to make a little noise for a bit [Music] hey DOI [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] let that run in the background [Music] there we go happy Sunday again everyone ah let's see what's going on here in the old chateroo said hell to a few people already let's see uh once again we're gardening a lot this week I keep thinking the gardening's over and yet someone keeps buying plants and it's not me I just got to dig the holes so H ignis hey let's see leer from the Netherlands welcome welcome back I think you were here before so if I misremember that's you can correct me but uh nice so next year in May 2025 Sarah and I are going to go to Berlin for uh super Booth so I'd love to meet those of you who are in the area whether you make it to Super Booth or not but uh we're going to do some trips around as well I'm not looking for a place to stay we're going to stay in hotels I'm not mooching U but uh we definitely want to get over there we haven't been to Europe for almost 10 years and so like to get back and uh and meet some people who I only know only know through the onlines and through chat so uh so what's going on today all right uh you can slow down just leave this pad running uh what's going on uh nothing dramatically new uh I have acquired a new synth since the last time we spoke picked up an an Sonic sd1 um my and my just in time my esq1 is exhibiting strange behavior um behavior that allegedly has something to do with the power supply going starting to go uh and as voltage drops the logic board starts doing strange things and it's definitely doing strange things believe it or not my digital esq1 is exhibiting tuning problems so it was it was like 40 cents flat today I don't know why and I couldn't fix it and it's a digital synth which is like the irony is incredible um but uh oh well we'll f figure it out but in its replacement not replacement but as uh maybe it's having a tempered tantrum it's upset that I brought its younger brother the sd1 in the house so uh let's see let's pause this pad so let's talk about some sounds today all right so what are we playing with today today we're playing with the Waldorf aridium it's on pad Duty here [Music] maybe a tuning pot being funky Jeff there are no tuning pots on an esq1 um so yeah I don't know I think it's the rumor has it it's the logic board being low voltage like strange things are a foot at the Circle [Music] K anyway uh so the idium is there and using the blow Feld a similar Pad but different so there's a good comparison so iridium which is a rather very powerful uh and rather expensive [Music] synthesizer and in the in the scope of pads that's very nice um but the one sixth the cost Waldorf blofeld both Waldorf [Music] SS equally suitable for pads I've been trying to get uh a friend of mine task boy to uh to get a blofeld because he likes desktop sense small format [Music] ones and he likes multi- tambal sense and the blow Feld is so that right so playing with the idium and the blow Feld today for pads and then this n Sonic sd1 get ready for the [Music] 90s right that's right off the Legend soundtrack [Music] I'm super happy so I bought it from there was someone in my area selling an sd1 it was pretty beat up and they wouldn't let me come try it like test it uh they were like you have to sort of like take my word for it and I'll shoot videos of it and send you the videos just ask whatever questions but it was just a little too I'm not saying the person was dishonest I'm just saying they were overly cautious and I really wanted to lay my hands on it uh but I couldn't find another one in the area and then the uh the synth repair res restoration guys uh Centaur out of Texas uh had a fully restored one for sale and they are well they're reputable it's not like it's an unknown person uh and so uh I bought a used sd1 from them fully restored uh it's great it's feels good plays well um and the floppy drive has been replaced with one of those go Tech uh USB stick floppy Drive uh emulators so you know I'm happy with it and this sound is great I have not yet read the manual I need to get in there I the esq1 you could sit down and just start programming it's super easy to program and and everything you need to know is right on the front panel um the sd1 everything's on the front panel sort of um there are some there are some Menu Pages you have to go through but the synth architecture is weird not weird it's different than anything else I have and uh it defied my like manual no no rtfm just screwing around I got I was like I not I'm turn I'm changing this parameter and nothing's happening I'm obviously an idiot or not need to read the manual but we've been gardening so much I haven't had time to uh to really dig into it so this is just a preset right off of it we're going to call it the John Anderson lots of pollen floating through the air preset so super happy about it uh let's see oh the Cent video about the move modular I like the Centaur people s that guy Sam I don't know his last name I've forgotten his last name he seems pretty sincere uh and his like helper does his bunnies in the you know working in the background seem to be okay like they're they're not like minions they seem like they're having fun so it's like all right it's always a mystery whether a an employer or you know a sole proprietorship is uh cracking the whip at their minions or you know equal parts and he they seem pretty happy so no 432 Andy bad if anyone here likes a432 just keep it to yourself anyway so sd1 uh and then uh I've got a Cobalt I finally swapped out so as if you've been here before you know my the patches I play tend to shift slowly over time but you'll hear the same patch on the same synth for a few weeks and then I'll change it so the Cobalt 8 is doing this pluck here bring it back up no longer is it doing this sort of mini Moog lead I wanted a shimmery Berlin School pluck we're kind of mid-range heavy [Music] today lots of Shimmer on things and not the Shimmer Reverb just just phasing and chorus effects with a lot of shimmery on it so that's the Cobalt 8 and let's see a420 nice oh Jeff uh this is similar I wanted a similar sound slightly different this is the third wave bring that up [Music] too we've got the uh the sort of clamping down to mid-range on the um the delay reverberations for that old timey radio kind [Music] of they're sort of pulling out all right so uh Hey K uh Hey quor jet lagged oh that's right you just came back from Japan was it nice um I got into organ a little bit last week and now I've got an organ lead going [Music] on with a little little sort of phasing on the on the [Music] Echoes and a lot of big Reverb and this coming off the hydr synth actually [Music] there we go last week we talked about muscle memory and like riffs that's a riff that's a riff uh things runs in fourths [Music] so we talked about Landing zones and then having riffs and licks going between them so watch last week's video if you're interested that then we have the [Music] base and here you go Audrey the just let that drone for a [Music] second this is the sd1 on top of the base with a Taurus droning underneath it [Music] does muscle make muscle memory make you less creative in playing finding new riffs no but muscle memory is a crutch um easily becomes a crutch right and so I think Andy said it last week as well you have to sort of let go and break yourself out of the riffs and licks to discover new things or to force yourself to broaden your horizons so that's and that's fine um but the the point of riffs and licks was that it's you can sound good relatively quickly by learning a few licks [Music] [Music] so those weren't licks that was me trying to choose something so it varies right it's whether sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't right you'll end up being like you be like I'm trying to play there there's a good example of duh I'm trying to play Two Nuts at once but the bass patch is monophonic um for for clusters so one thing that's nice about omnisphere which is what I'm using to make this bass patch um it understands the concept of Base strings and so on any given string it's a monophonic instrument and it's not until you go up a fourth uh to the next string that it will allow you to play um a chord basically so if I try and play two notes at once that are effectively me trying to play the Frets right next to each other it won't let me but if I go up a string it will because if I go up it's effectively another [Music] string so you get a basik behavior using omous I pretty sure most sample libraries like contact and stuff also do that but uh hammer on [Music] work so anyway uh so there we talked about some Hardware we talk about a little software and I've got a drum going in today all right uh what else is coming up so next week I will put this down um we get something running here let me just start a little pattern here all right real simple there we go all right so next week the 26th um an hour before this normally starts 1:00 um the Dennison's here in the chat and or we're going to be doing another Jam taba Jam so all of us streaming at the same time but also using Jam taba to run our stuff together and doing another drone like we did a few weeks back so that's next weekend at 100 p.m. Eastern um and basically we'll we'll publish uh I think uh Andy uh Jeff and Anna already have animotion music already have and Jeff Hopkins already have uh placeholder events on their streams uh Andy may have done one or is about to I'm going to do one later today or tomorrow so you'll see the little notifications and you can watch whichever one you want because we're all doing sort of the same thing from different perspectives it's super fun but we're going to do that an hour before this stream would normally start and we'll do that performance and then um I'm going to run the regular stream here as like an Afterparty cool down decompression so feel free to watch that on any channel you want and then come here if you're interested to hang out with us and give us feedback on what we did right uh so that'll be next week uh and uh we're experimenting the last one was thoroughly drone this one's going to have drones but also people are trying to play with some sequence things and keep them in sync it's a bit of an uh it's a challenge but it's not that much of a challenge I we've we've been messing around and it seems to be working pretty well so uh it should be fun so no one should stress about it it's not like as much as I would like to be able to charge people $1,000 for a ticket I'll uh you know Taylor Swift it's really not going to happen so anyway so that's next week uh this week um that was the sound overview I'm just going to build up some stuff here uh and uh Make some noise I have the global transposition stuff actually active today so I may pull that in once I've got things running uh let's see uh my case the low drone is the rickenbacher with a sustain pedal it is there's also a Moog tus um emulation running underneath it an octave down so it's like Rick with a Moog on there um and that sound is inspired by Tony Levan so if you ever listen to um it's really prominent on Peter Gabriel's album so all the base on that is uh Chapman Stick or a regular Bas with an octave uh below and an octave up so every time you hear any note it's actually playing a three uh three octaves worth of bass so uh so I like having that drone under there and the Taurus sounds so good right uh sron is 5050 for showing up next week okay so show up if if you're an Andy fan he may be here he may not so we're all Andy fans right if Andy can't come we're cancelling it's on you Andy no pressure um let's see Jeff yeah Jeff's also the super multi- instrumentalist right and and Anna I think just Jeff and Anna I've been listening to their recordings they've been droning uh or or jamming a lot lately and it sounds good so uh uh it is the Foot monster in trillion yep it's the Moog Taurus uh although I I've tweaked it a little bit but yeah Foot monster is a very good Taurus um preset in uh for trillion which is in omos here uh let's see all right uh so I've got this let's build on top of this shall we hey Boreal all right so what do we got we got a pad running little chord progression we've got one pluck going let's add another pluck let's add a pluck that's an odd time or um an odd length [Music] there we go so I highlight this all right so we've got two patterns all right so we've got this pattern playing it's one bar it's 8 beats long or four beats long and then we've got this one playing and we'll stick a little organ lead over [Music] it a 16 Bar organ league and we'll make it fixed length so I don't have to worry about starting and stopping it [Music] all right so we got a pad playing in progression we've got two pluck doing a bed we've got a little Melody here with her organ let's bring in a subbase [Music] patch Dr Cynthia welcome come [Music] [Applause] there we go let this run through once I'll have a [Music] drink when I compose this way does every instrument have its own Reverb or are they all sent to one Reverb at different levels I do not use sends morial n i everything has its own Reverb And Delay um which is not efficient at all um but I have a because I'm using external hardware the Daw has a lot of extra CPU floating around and so I don't have a problem with that and I like to use Reverb as texture so some of the Reverb instruments have like the Shimmer Reverb on it um and some of the reverbs are you have other kinds of modulation on them and so you know I I have everything with an inline Reverb so if I was using all vsts I would probably be crushing my CPU if I did all reverbs there um but because most of the sound generation is in Hardware I'm [Music] okay let's bring in some [Music] Rhythm just for a minute [Music] hey biscuit since Samurai welcome bud I'm sorry I haven't been to the Kum much but I am I've been gardening so much I like tend to fall asleep and collapse at the end of the day so sorry man I hope it's going well [Music] yeah Andy has a Andy has a very nice Hardware [Music] Reverb the poly brute 12 is my answer to buying a cs80 it's cheaper right still can't afford it [Music] but all right so we're going to do a little Global transposition here I've got another control surface over here I'm going to try and shift everything down a scale degree and we'll see what happens it might [Music] suck could you even tell there we go sometimes when you're doing Global transposition if you've got a pad sustaining for many many bars it says it since it's sustaining the global transposition won't pick it up and shift it so you get something that's not quite right let's go [Music] back for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about this is another control surface so we got the push then I've got another grid over here and this is just a midi control surface that's mapped to a transpose device on every track and when I play choose new notes on this device it shifts the midi that's coming in for everything and sort of moves it around the key let me give you a more extreme example I'm going to bring everything up three scale degrees it might sound [Music] bad see everything's up we're still doing the walk down cord progression that sounds okay I used to do it with Max for live devices sasor but now in Ableton 12 all the devices are scale degree aware and you can just do it with the stock instrumentation stock devices will let you do [Music] it and now we're back to our route works great yeah no you don't need sweet yet you can do it now with just 12 and standard or even light um or not light um intro pretty sure you can do it with the intro [Music] all right I'm going to bring the Rhythm out cu I am so guilty of just letting a loop play Forever [Music] let's bring this out [Music] there we go and we'll delete those so all right how we doing on time ah 2 240 plenty of time let's see someone asked a question the other day in some other chat I think was actually an Andy stream someone asked about the MX 400 and said is it how does it compare to the 500 and I have no idea because I don't know of either of those so like are the is the MX 100 one5 and 200 is two fifths you know up to the 500 and do they make an MX 600 or 800 I don't know uh anyway all right let's do something else Let's uh change the tempo actually I'm going to bring the tempo up let's bring it up to 111 111 and let's [Music] do all right so I'm going to do muscle memory I'm going to do some licks and just lay down on a Groove here we'll do four bars [Music] [Applause] [Music] Long we'll put a little little base under it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's see questions are those the last boxed modules in the background of your studio uh no those those are the last oscillators so those five oscillators I'm trying to sell but I'm not trying real hard so um behind this computer in the closet is um a whole bunch of other boxes that I'm waiting to sell [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that sucked let's try that again [Music] oh yeah all right here's I've talked about Bas reharmonization before everything here is basically playing on E flat all the patterns and stuff we were all rolling around E flat right hi I sing The Body Electric how's it going but if I change the bass [Music] note still works it's in key but it forms new chords with the stuff happening in the background [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so our Baseline here [Applause] is basically reharmonizing the chords of the of the bed that's running right it's a nice technique the problem with doing that is when you do Global transpositions it doesn't always work like it starts shifting things into a dissonant space let's try bringing this up a third and see what happens [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's not bad quick it back to E flat [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's the dissonant one [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there we go so not so bad uh let's see C to phonics thanks man uh do I use record quantization yes yes I do and it is 16s usually just depends when the tempo goes way way down um I'll change it to eths sometimes you know um I don't always use Tempo quantisation because if I do a really fast run so or if you do a Trill um like a that will turn into mud when you quantize it it'll just go right [Music] um like the little embellishment that will get quantized into nastiness so not always when I'm playing with other people I generally do because it's more important to be on the clock um on the click right locked into the grid to just provide because you're especially if I'm doing bass if I'm doing bass I want it to be absolutely on the grid um you know it's okay if pads are soft and they come in late that's okay um you can then I turn quantise off because I actually want to start playing a little early in anticipation of it fading in so like if you're playing a soft pad like this right I hit it I may be hitting it on the grid but it doesn't it fades in so everything will sound late so I'll turn off quantise and then play it early um but you can get bit if you're looping an Ableton um and you start uh say a four bar clip recording and you're playing a soft pad a slow fade in pad like this if you play Early in anticipation of fading the pad in at the start of the clip it will quantize the first note to the beginning of the clip no matter what um and then it'll sound off so what I usually will do is let a loop record through once and start playing as it's about to restart at the beginning so any notes that I play Early in anticipation get recorded get captured like at the end of the loop so when the loop comes around it it still works right the note plays early at the end of the loop but because it loops around and it's sustained across it'll it's okay I hope that made sense so do I quantize yes unless the sound has a soft uh attack in which case I'll turn off quantise right um the other thing is you can turn record quantise off and just play and if you're if it's good enough leave it and if you need it to be fixed just tap quanti to just do it intentionally so uh let's see uh is there a shortcut to turn on off record quantization uh on on a track by track basis yeah on the current uh on a track by track basis no but it's really easy to turn there there may be I don't know of one on a track BYT track basis um what I generally do is you long press quantise and then just one tap here right so uh is that showing up here yeah so you long press and then right here this button is record quantise and you can just turn it on and off right uh and you can set your record quantise to be a different grid from the standard manual quantise right so if record quantise is off and I'm doing my stuff and I end up flubbing the timing and I want to fix it I'll just tap quantise and it's good to go but I generally leave record quantise on at 16 so um yeah quantize button so all right where were we 252 winding down trying to think what else is there that I wanted to talk about uh someone was asking is there a way um in session view um to have multiple songs in a set and yeah you can uh you just build the clips down and you can change meter and Tempo and things like that and key even as you're moving down through the scenes uh and I'm going to make a video that illustrates that I just haven't done it yet so it's coming let's bring the tempo back down flubbing the timing flubbing it's a good [Music] word uh let's see let's play something here I am on Garden [Music] Duty so there I flub the timing up real good so and what I'll do then is I'll literally so this is why I like the Daw I could do this on the push but it's so easy for me to just reach over and fix the timing so I'm sorry call me a bad a bad Hardware synth guy but it's just so much easier let's put too much Reverb on this organ [Music] sound like old like doors [Music] and let's copy this pattern let's copy it twice [Music] oh that was [Music] terrible I'm sorry Audrey but there's just a little too much sub here Audrey is the keeper of all things low [Music] all right screwed up the length of that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] whoop I accidentally deleted an entire track that's what undue is [Music] for I forgot I added all that Reverb for fact let's take some of that that out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] see where I can go with this [Music] [Applause] [Music] just sort of wallowing around in Melody not doing anything I'm not repeating anything to try and legitimize it I'm literally just sort of musically masturbating [Music] yeah an only fan [Music] stream it's terrible I'm over my hour too so I should wrap it [Music] up the second hour is the hour where I take my clothes off oh I'm so sorry all right let's see all right let's bring it all [Music] down frogue after dark yes I got to eat the mic be like welcome to syn Seeker after dark [Laughter] [Music] [Music] there we [Music] go this organ someone said Chris Squire earlier I'm totally a prag head as well and this [Music] organ is uh definitely influenced by close to the edge and [Music] or anyway so need some Hot five4 Licks that redefines licks right no no no no no no no please no uh all right I like my prog I do uh let's see we're doing another yeah we're doing another just a reminder we're doing another um jam taba group groove on the 26th it's going to be uh one hour before this time slot here so that hour and then in this normal time slot next Sunday is the decompression like party so come along if you want uh and you don't have to watch the show the the jam from here uh synchrotron is 50/50 on whether he's going to contribute um we all would love him to but animotion music uh and Jeff Hopkins myself maybe Garen M maybe a few others perhaps Raider rich I don't know uh I can't I don't remember whether there was a thumbs up or thumbs down from him but he's in the chat so pressure Raider Rich to um take part next Sunday uh Hey Joe Johnston um let's see just noticed that you're the one who brought the hot five4 wicks in thank you Joe uh helico coil thanks have fun um be good um so play nice uh and really that's about it so I am going to uh log off and then go hang out in our Discord server because I think we're going to try and like practice for next week or at least make a little noise we'll see what happens uh but thank you everyone I appreciate you hanging out uh and coming and putting up with all this stuff um Joe you missed it uh earlier I mentioned that the esq1 is behaving strangely and uh it may be on its last legs so we'll see it's actually having tuning issues for a digital for a digital synth with if it's got tuning issues something's very strange going on but uh anyway so thank you everyone let me find which window has the close out the stream stuff and uh everyone have fun I will see you around be good see you

Channel: Synth Seeker

Views: 406

Keywords: synth seeker, berlin school, synthesizers, prog rock, music production, Luke Stark, space music, composing, krautrock, cosmic music

Id: JfkDfeTboGQ

Length: 70min 30sec (4230 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024