The ARP 2500 at Willem Twee Studios - an introduction

hi i'm heinberg it's good to have you back earlier this year i visited one of the most exciting studios i've ever been to wilhelm tree in denbosch in the netherlands william twist studio one is based on test equipment music and it's like the wall behind me here only much bigger and much nicer kept i made a video with hans and rickett who were kind enough to show me around their beautiful studio and you can watch that here but i didn't show you studio 2 and for some of you that might be even more interesting because studio 2 features a wealth of vintage and rare synthesizers and it's crowned by an arp 2005 i used to have an arb myself i worked with it for 25 years i'm quite familiar with the with the system two dual oscillators with one output only this is an oscillator which you can also make a mix of several waveforms so for controllable it's great this is a complete voice with an oscillator you can take out individually but it's also patched directly into a low-pass filter and a vca with both with their own envelopes well to noise and slow random so let's say heavily low pass filtered noise these are great which are actually the voltage control versions of the one eight nine eg g yeah yeah yeah z1 the designer of arp dennis colin he states in an in an article from audio engineering journal that it was derived on an analog computer model the link from analog computing to modular synthesis is really there this is the field amp it's basically a four input mixer with a low pass filter and an amplifier we use these as the let's say the end stage before it goes to the mixer okay because it's handy you know you can mix things together do a little bit of coloring and the uh you have direct control on the levels all those rows are connected you just put a signal and output with an input signal on one of these lines and then yeah you can put it in somewhere so we take out the the signal from these on line 19 and 20 which are left and right on the disk okay actually well this is a mixed sequencer it's it is a mixer like four one four one or eight two both but it also contains a sequencer it's like a sequential switch so you could uh switch over between the several output lines from the sequencer for instance to make longer rows these are four envelope generators with two which have a delay which is kind of cute sample holes and those are really versatile 10 step sequences by taking an uh position gate to the reset you can make yeah different lengths six or five or whatever there is a switchable ring modulator actually a balanced balance modulator which is kind of different with an extra vca so let me reset oh because then it gets a bit more shall i also reset you said yeah yeah yeah yes okay so this is like okay yeah these are the sliders i thought so now all my life is always pins yeah yeah no these are just matrix sliders yeah this is different yeah it's really different and um must it not be like this seems like a super hassle like for like introdu like to service seems crazy uh yeah actually this one is from the from 1970 yeah and uh um it's wearing out you know it's starting it already has a lot of cross cross stock when you get into more complex patching mm-hmm lines tend to go full and then you're limited okay okay so it's not just like like the the the banana where you can ever forever forever go on and make the most crazy things that it yeah you have to think a bit different but when you go quite complex then then yeah at some point it ends so that's the downside what you have to watch are the arrows so these are the inputs and that is an output okay see and in some way the colors match with the knobs so everything has an attenuator an input detainer which is really cool um so let's take four what's pink when you match the output so now we have signals on the first four lines of the matrix well let's take them into the output module directly just to have some sound see now you have four oscillators with level control and overall filter so that's fast i just do something you can make some sort of tuning indeed and that is really terrible yeah that messes you up yeah yeah you actually always turn a bit higher and then go yeah some finger speed see so now we have it on left and right that's rich so what we now could do is have some control on the filters let's say we take 9 and 10 take the output of this one here put it online and the output of this one let's say this one with the delay here right then we only need a pulsing trigger yeah to fire the envelopes let's first use a clock from the sequencer now it's firing yep okay now you just send it to there okay see there's this one because this is the attenuator yeah okay so would you turn down the amplifier again down because no this is going to the filter right yeah if you wanted to go also to the amplifier then you should put that on the same line for instance and it will on okay exponential mode it's so punchy really punchy the classic but then with a bit of delay oh i see yeah yeah yeah oh well but we could also say yeah but we could also say we have now the the main clock on this one but we could also say okay let's have the main clock for only for this one and we take another clock pulse let's say only the first of this one to fire that one let me see and then see i i now take the first position gate of the sequencer yeah he's kind of uh well well and then of course you can use some of the so now i look for a free line and let's do some sequencing of the frequencies let's see if there's something i put this row to the gray row [Music] it's such a beautiful it's classic but [Music] also see this is site one of your new dance records but yeah these are really snappy yeah [Music] there's nothing worse than not snappy envelopes yeah i think in synth world if you have non-slappy apollos that's it's [Music] it's slappy so this is really a simple patch now right [Music] you could also take these pulses and let's say put it as an input for the ringing filters just as audio and we take out the bandpass output just like we do with the with the egg for number four where do you see the bandpass how do you know yeah because of this okay yeah this is low pass band pass high pass [Music] it does sound like the eg g it sounds it's the same it's the same uh uh design yeah it sounds exactly like it has that but you have more control or resonance not stepped yes [Music] see yeah sounds like we are over there yes that's so good so this is just just uh some simple simple it's really fast principle i wouldn't thought it was so fast to patch others it's really fast yeah so you could add another control uh for the filters and use these extras because you have two separate control inputs [Music] [Music] etc so what's the master speed it's like it's over here right oh what you can also send it at audio rate and yeah yeah use it as a waveform yeah yeah yeah heavy well that's the lowest it will go no ah okay we now only use uh this one and this one so one one and three one and three so i would try to make the attack really low long yeah and the sustain really in the final decay will like everything really probably we knew we need a wider pulse [Music] width and then the envelope is able to uh make the full cycle [Music] yeah that's the tv i'm here what's modulating so fast what do you think it sounds like this audio rate modulation going on or something yeah that's what i did here uh by taking the audio out to control this one on audio speed see okay but i want less modulation from this to this oh then uh you have to hit okay [Music] sounds nice that's quite hard now because it's also controlled by the sequence voltage so tuning should be done [Music] yeah at the very first okay so if i were to know you can't like okay can't can you stop the sequencer sure [Music] it's terrible good you have to go a bit more and then leave it loose [Music] yeah it's cool yeah yeah okay okay all right oh yeah yeah we're slightly distorted that's [Music] good yeah like a you know it's like a makes like a procession almost done [Music] yeah but what's that i take off so now we have a little good it's good [Music] oh yes ah seagulls maybe make them a bit tinier because now they are like screeching dinosaurs yeah if they're like the nice picture there's a screeching bird and dinosaurs it's so nice to hear all these sounds that you know real from records and then you see how they are being made and how much they influenced everything [Music] [Applause] [Music] so thank you hanson rickett for having me this was one of the best learning experiences i made all of my life you can find the arp 2500 sounds from this video on the patreon to use in your music as you like as well as the track we played in the end and hans will be back because i'll be doing an episode on using analog computers for music it will be a live stream together with professor brent ullmann who basically wrote the book on analog computers so that's it for this video if you have any questions do leave in the comments below or visit the subreddit and thank you all for watching i'll be seeing you in the next one [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: HAINBACH

Views: 90,405

Rating: 4.9061623 out of 5

Keywords: synthesizer, modular synthesizer, arp 2500, willem twee

Id: FgLoZ0XxZ18

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Hainbach]

Earlier this year I got to visit Willem Twee studios in the Netherlands. After a day spend in Studio 1, which is test equipment music focused, they asked me if I wanted to look at Studio 2 which I almost declined because I blew my brain out with raw frequencies in studio 1. Luckily I set yes.

Studio 2 is dominated by an ARP 2500 and Hans Kulk gave me a rundown of the utterly classic and rich sounding machine. It’s the only “patch of scratch” video on this synth around as far as I am aware of.

Enjoy some dinosaur seagulls by the beach!

[u/Palmegruppen]

I'm glad you're doing a video on the ARP 2500, /u/Hainbach!

Also if anyone has not seen it yet, the master of ARP 2500 was (in my opinion) Elaine Radigue, here's a video of her using it.

[u/SPS-Barbarossa]

The internal distortion of that synth sounds so lovely, as does that singing filter. Does anyone happen to know how similar the 2500 VCF is to the 2600 VCF?