Take that fandroids. Stop throwing rocks at the throne
This it what it sounds like after messing with it for a few minutes. I’m sure I can take it much much farther.

So whats next? Korg MonoPoly?

I wish I bought the keyboard version.

This baby sounds very bright to my ears. Is this because all I’ve played in the last 2 years is the Polar? I keep reaching for the hi eq knob and cranking it all the way to the left.

Nice variety of effects but not as cool as the triton’s or the m3′s

The interface is much more intuitive than the Virus’ even though they seem very similar superficially

I don’t get the ring of lights around the knobs. I always assumed it worked like the encoder rings on the Nord lead 3

Has step and mod sequencers that the Virus lacks. Virus 4 added the arp to matrix feature but you have to fire up Virus Control for that

Vocoder sounds more musical to me then the Polar’s but maybe I need to spend more time with the Virus vocoder. Headband mic is a nice plus. Actually i won’t waste time trying out the Polar’s vocoder. I had it for 2 years and it wasn’t inviting enough for me to use until recently. I’m so satisfied with the vocoder that I might not have bothered getting my rocktron talkbox if I had heard it first.

The exposed rack ears are annoying and make the Radias look like a pos

Presets suck so i had no problem wiping out the first few banks. I don’t get this. Korg has some of the best programmers in the world so why the sucky presets? MS2000 patches I downloaded didn’t sound like I remembered them. The artist banks sucked as well to me

I love being able to switch between timbres so quickly and edit them in the context of the Combi as a whole. Again Virus’ multi implementation isn’t as inviting albeit more flexible

Either I’m old and need glasses or the UI on the Radias editor software sucks biiig time. Virus control wins here

Filters sound brittle to my ears. Virus just sounds so smooth

Different enough from the Virus. I was able to recognize the Radias’ sound on an album after the first day of playing with it. Something I have yet to do on a Virus.Other people claim the Virus sticks out like a sore thumb but I just never notice it.

Then again there hasn’t been anything remarkable on the synth front. Micron SE seems to be just a color job, motif XF was a joke of an upgrade and I’m not even interested in looking at the DSI Mopho keyboard. Is it just me or do the Dave Smith synths have a bit of a basement workshop fit and finish? Sorry but its not just about the sound to me. A synth has to look the part. The blofeld keyboard is out of the question as well because as much as it rocks spec wise, my experience with waldorf synths hasn’t been great. I find them frustratingly buggy.

Reaktor 5.5 seems like a worthwhile upgrade but will I ever have the time to use it . I get the sense that native instruments is tightening up the reliability of their line up. I’ll give battery another chance. Maybe 3.1 isn’t as crash prone as 3.0.x.

Looks like Korg dropped the price from $999 to $699 on the Radias-r. Should I bite? That is one fine synth and I’ve had my eyes on its knobs for a loooong time. Hmm maybe not. The time thing again. Maybe I’ll just get a Korg monotron instead and see if all of the noise about analog synths actually hold water. It can’t be bad for $60.

http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/maschine/?content=1194&page=1420

Take a midi packet with 3 bytes in hexadecimal notation such as 99 3C 64. This stream encapsulates the following instructions:

Play middle C on channel 10 at velocity 100. Now lets strip it down to nibbles & bits.

9 -> Note on message. (Examples of other status messages are: 0xB for controller change, 0x C for program change & 0xE for pitch-bend)

9 -> Middle channel 10. (Range 0 -15)

3C ->Middle C -> Note 60

64 -> 100 in decimal

Determining if a stream begins with a status byte.

A set high-bit on the first byte identifies the byte as a status message. This can be accomplished visually by converting 99 from hex to binary 10011001,  and seeing if the first bit is 1. This can be tested mathematically with the following condtion:

0×99 > 0x7F

Once you have determined that the byte actually sets a status, you need to identify the actual status that is set. Some examples of status messages are: 0xB for controller change, 0xC for program change & 0xE for pitch-bend. To get the value of the left nibble, you can use the following expression.

0×99 >> 4 (Shift the 4 places) or 0×99 / 0×10

Determining the midi transmission channel.

The second nibble (99) of the first byte in the stream, represents the midi transmission channel. Channels are 0 indexed so they range from 0-F in hex or 0-15 in decimal. So we can tell quite easily that the transmission channel in our stream is 10 just by adding 1 to the second nibble. We can extract the 2nd nibble using the following expression:

0×99 % 0×10 (% = modulo)

and get the midi channel by adding 1 to the result

(0×99 % 0×10) + 1

Determining the note number and velocity.

These are pretty simple. Just convert the Hex values to a decimal values

0x3c = 60

0×64 = 100

I’ll post my parser here when I’m done with it this weekend.

The imminent  os 4 upgrade will offer a mod matrix feature on all Virus TIs. The feature allows you to use an arpeggiator pattern as a source in the modulation matrix. To those of you not familiar with a mod matrix, I would describe it as a non random, tempo synced, sample and hold LFO. In other words, its a sample and hold LFO that allows you to set the wave level at each individual step(up to 32 steps in the viruses case). A few enhancements have been made to the arp editor in Virus control to facilitate this feature. Firstly, The arp has gained an “Arp matrix mode”. In this new mode, the arpeggiator does not trigger new notes after the first step of the pattern while keys are held down. This allows you to play a sustained sound and have for instance, filter cutoff modulated cyclically by the matrix.

This new addition to the Virus Os has made it a bit easier to put of getting a Korg Radias. Now I can wait till I find a truly crack head deal. The virus’ implementation has a long way to go to match the Radias’ 3 independent sequencers and 16 physical knobs but it is a decent start.

In a future point upgrade, it would be cool to be able to set the modulation destination as an attribute on the arp itself, in addition to setting them in the mod matrix. The TI’s LFOs currently work like this so I don’t believe this will be difficult to implement. The reason this would be cool is that, it would make it possible to switch the range of modulation levels to one that makes sense for the destination being modulated. Take a scenario where you want to modulate the index of a wavetable oscillator with the matrix. If the selected wavetable only has 24 waves, does it really make sense to be able to set the modulation level to 127? All together class “NO”. The EXB-Radias expansion available for the Korg m3 workstations, work this way. The modulation step level settings are also presented in a bipolar fashion so it is clear to the user that they are modulating an attribute either up or down relative to the the attributes current value.

Other goodies slated for the release include comb and vowel filters which are available in the effects block rather than the filter block. 6 spice(curry, saffron, chilli, onion, pepper & mint) themed stomp box overdrive effects are also on the menu. I suspect that the colors of the spices they have chosen to name the overdrives after, is a clue to the identities of the stomp boxes the access engineers based their models on.

I’m still happy I chose the Virus Polar even though I still have an outstanding mortgage on it . The new comb filter will fill a void left by by recently departed waldorf blofeld and the vowel filters will bring back to life, the one feature I missed dearly on my E-mu 6400 Ultra sampler.

Not a bad upgrade at all. Bravo chaps!!! The released demos sound good to these ears but have a listen for yourself at Virus OS4.

I love it!!!

First, a bit of my background with beat machines/workstations. I’ve owned Akai mpc 1000/2000xl,  Yamaha Rm1x/RS7000/Motif Classic/ES/XS, e-mu MP7, Roland MV-8000, Korg Triton/M3.

I liked the MV8000. Very easy to use, great elastic audio, greate effects but it was too big, preset management was a bit quirky as well and saving took too much time.

I could never really get into the MPC series except for the quick pitch, filter, level modes. The 1000 was slightly bearable but they aren’t deep as far as synthesis. I hated the fact that the pads weren’t laid out chromatically. Lame effects. I’ve never used a 3000 but I’ve been told its a different beast so no flaming please.

The korg work stations are great for programing but I hated the sequencer because there wasn’t a way to drop in and out of record on the fly. Sampling improved in the m3 but not enough to have me hold on.

RS7000 was great but I traded up to a motif so I could have it all in one.

Not long after i got the Maschine, I sold the Motif XS on eBay. I loved working on the motif but I never used it to sample because it was such a chore. Most of the music I did on it, stayed on it. I just don’t have enough hours in my life right now to solo a pair of tracks at a time and dump them to Logic. Now, If I start something on the Maschine and I decide to finish it, I just open up Logic, load up Maschine in there and just record my scene changes as MIDI notes in realtime. That ish is a truck load of fun.

Maschine is the easiest of the bunch to use. The hardware/software combo fits me like a glove. The Maschine was made for my workflow.

I was rather hesitant at first to check the beast out because I’ve owned Kore 2 for a while but I’ve never really gotten into it and i didn’t want to spend the money on another paper weight. Anyway, I decided to drop into my local guitar center on a slow day to give it a go. As usual, no one in the store had a clue about the unit nor knew where the manual was. I fire up the software, the unit lights up and in about 10 minutes, I cooked up some heat using sounds from thestock  5gb sound library. I must have spent less than 2 out of the 10 minutes with my eyes on the monitor. If I remember correctly, 10 minutes is less than the time it takes to located samples on you computer, transfer them to your MPC and load them up.

I have never been one to sample records as I’m in the middle of making a beat. I prefer to have sampling/programming sessions that can last for months at a time. I basically go thru records, cds, iTunes etc, sample stuff i find interesting and then build a library of programs in Kontakt, Battery & Logic. I then rely on these sample forever So Maschine’s tagging and browsing features are totally awesome for this way of working.

A Maschine project is laid out in the following hierachy

Pad – This is the most basic unit in the project. A pad is analogous to a track in most other sequencers. A pad can have a sample, multi sampled – instrument or midi output assigned to it. You can toggle a pad’s mode that allows you to either just trigger the root note of a sample or play the sample/instrument chromatically using all 16 pads in the grid. You can transpose the by either an octave or semitone at a time using one of the soft knobs on the right lcd screen. By holding down a pad, you can change its volume and root pitch using the volume and tempo knobs respectively. By using the left and right arrows located at the top left of the Maschine, you can step thru 8 attributes of the selected pad at a time. These attributes are laid out on the 2 lcd screens and they each have a corresponding soft know assigned to them. The attributes available include but are not limited to the following: Volume, tune, filter type(LP, LP2, HP, BP, BR), filter cutoff & resonance, LFO settings, Trigger mode(Oneshot, ADSR, AHD), Sample start & end, bit depth, fx1 & fx2. The Maschine does an amzing job of not overwhelming you with all these attributes. You just step thru with the arrow keys. You can also solo and mute individual pads on the fly

Group – Each of the 8 groups holds 16 pads and up to 64 patterns associated with those pads. You can actually save the entire group as a unit. Groups also have their own pair of insert effects and they can be routed to independent outs puts. Each project has 8 groups and you can think of them as kits. You can have drums in one groups, chopped up sample in another, vocal samples in yet another and synths in yet another. Just like the pads, groups can be muted and soloed on the fly. So not only can you mute you hi-hats, you can mute your entire drum kit with a touch. You select a group using one of the blue buttons labeled A-H above the transport controls. The button for the active group glows a little brighter so you always know where you are.

Scenes – Allow you to layer group patterns. eg You could pick pattern-1 from group-1, pattern-5 from group-2 and pattern-2 from group-3. The scene inherits the length of its longest pattern and plays in an endless loop until you select another scene. While a scene is looping, you can switch the pattern for the the active group just by hitting the “Pattern” button and then simply tapping the pad that corresponds to the pattern you want to insert into the scene. Scenes may be switched on the fly as well and the switching may be quantized to the 1/64, 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/2, bar, beat and scene length. A very cool option that can be set for scene switching is scene sync. This is how it works: If you switch scenes on the 2rd beat of the 3rd bar for example; and you have quantize set to a quarter note, you end up on the 3rd beat of the 3rd bar on the destination scene. Pretty sweeeet!!!.

Project - A project saves the entire memory of the maschine include a chain of scenes that make up a “song”.

I’m a bit sleepy now so I’ll fast forward to a list of the good, the bad & the ugly.

The Good

1. Fun, fun, fun
2. Filtered browsing for samples and instruments within supplied library as well as user created library.
3. Simple well laid out controls.
4. Very legible screens.
5. Tiny footprint. This thing has a smaller footprint than a 12 inch record and is light as a feather.
6. Very simple and cohesive interface.
7. Ability to undo recordings one note at a time.
8. Ability to record automation even in playback mode.
9. Great feeling Pads, buttons and knobs.
10. Great collection of filters, effects and modulators per PAD!!!
11. Insanely easy song creation using scenes.
12. Pretty good bundled library.
13. Ability to drop in and out of record at anytime with a single button push.
14. Quantize/Undo Quantize on the fly.
15. Luminescent pads are extremely useful in a million different ways. Shows you which pads, patterns, steps are assigned or active.
16. Software can run in full screen mode on my OSX. Might do on windows as well.
17. Virtually mouse-less/screen-less  operation.
18. Very stable, no crash so far. Touch wood

The Bad

1. As of version 1.5, The sequencer does not record pitch bend nor midi CC from a midi controller but you can still automate pitch as well as other parameters using the Maschine’s knobs. This functionality is slated for an upcoming release I hear.

The Ugly

1. I haven’t figured out how to move slice points after I auto chop a loop. So I either stick with the choices that the Maschine makes(which haven’t been bad) or export each slice to a different track.

Good night. I’ll catch you in the morning.

As a performance synth, the m3 wins. It has karma, drum pads, drum track, xy pad, chord memory.
Motif has an arp.

As a sequencer, Motif wins. Motif has pattern based sequencing as well as a linear song mode. Each pattern has 16 different sections. Recorded phrases have independent lengths, and phrases can be reused on different tracks effortlessly. The first 8 tracks, sound exactly as they sound in program mode because all the efx are retained. Easy to solo and mute tracks. Seamless switching between patterns. The killer feature is being able to drop in and out of record and change active track as your pattern loops. Recording arps to the sequencer is also much simpler than on the m3. Only cool thing m3 has over motif is the ease with which you can bounce a sequence to an audio file and save it to a USB device.

As a sampler, M3 slaughters the motif xs. You have single click access to sampling from any mode so resampling a program, combi or sequence is a easy as pi 3.14. Creating a sample based program is easy on the m3 as well. Switching zones and making edits is pretty straight forward. Sampler has a bit of a tacked on feel on the XS and the interface suggests it can be only accessed from sequencer mode but you can actually get to it from program mode. Sampler nomenclature on the XS is confusing if you have ever used another sampler. Waveform maps to instrument, keybank is a sample with zone attributes as well. The M3 screen is brighter and has better contrast so sample waveform editing is easier on the eyes.

As a synth, m3 gives you a lot more options and wins in the fantasy sound creation arena. The motif has better samples in my opinion and excels in recreating acoustic instruments and layered sounds. The m3 can create great layers in combi mode but the main handicap of that mode is that you cannot create your layers in context. You have to create individual programs and them layer them in combi mode. If the source programs change, so do the combis. A standard motif xs program has 8 elements and each of these elements can be triggered in a variety of ways: key on, key up, delayed, cycled etc. Modulation routes tend to be fixed on the motif so for example you get dedicated envelopes and LFOs for pitch, filter and amp. There are only 6 realtime control routes on the motif. The realtime controllers available for use in the routes are mod wheel, pitch wheel, breath controller, 2 assignable knobs, 2 assignable switches, ribbon, footswitch and foot control.

The m3 has an xy touch screen, value slider, ribbon, 4 axis joystick, expression pedal, 8 pads, 2 switches, multiple banks of 8 sliders.
An M3 program has access to 5 insert effects with presets, 2 master effects and a master effect. This is great in program mode but the same 5+2+1 effects have to be shared in combi and sequencer mode. Sucks big time. XS programs have 2 inserts, a chorus and a reverb. Not much compared to the m3 but in sequencer mode, the first 8 tracks retain their insert effects. Thats sweeeet!
The m3 also has the radias expansion but the motif has logic control. A lot more on that later.
Sorry i have to ran now. 2 B continued.

I have 32 hours of flying coming up so i guess thats a perfect opportunity to catch on my posts. Write in the air, post on the ground or the Hudson.

One cool thing I discovered as I was preparing for this post was that, the knobs always send a MIDI cc based on the context you use them in. As straight forward as this may be, a few synths I have had do not exhibit this behavior. This is pretty cool because you can record the entire journey it took you to arrive at particular sound. At this point I’ve noticed that even though everything gets recorded, the blofeld doesn’t necessarily respond to every control that I play back from Logic. Osc shape choice, osc octave setting and osc filter balance get updated but changes made to filter type do not.

I like the sound of the saw wave. Compared to the saw on my radias card, the blofeld is ever so slightly darker and has a slower attack as well. The difference in attack is barely discernible when compared to an initialized radias saw, however, push the punch level parameter on the radias to 127 and the difference is quite significant. I’m partial to softer sounds anyway so this isn’t a problem for me.

The Oscillator Octave parameter takes values ranging from 128 feet – 1/2 feet and even at 128 feet, you can still tune the pitch lower by another octave using the semitone parameter. Tuning by octaves isn’t as wonderful as the continuous tuning on the Virus but its fun nonetheless.

Unison allows the stacking of up to 6 voices per note and when the voices are detuned, the blofeld sounds a bit “Princey” or “Oberheimy” which I rather like. As I mentioned in a previous post, I likes me some glide. The blo doesn’t disappoint here with fingered and non fingered versions of portamento and glissando. In the fingered variations, you need to trigger the second note during the release phase of the first note in order to hear the gliss. There is no mention of this in the manual but that is how it sounds to me. You should note that the glide rate parameter is inversely proportional to the time it takes to glide between the notes. It isn’t a misnomer but it is still confusing anyway. I just wish all the synth manufactures would take a quick look at the Alesis micron get us out of 8-bit hell. If I ever see 0-127 again…. The micron uses real meaningful units for its parameters. You set attack & release times in milliseconds/seconds, filter frequency, resonance and lfo speed in Hertz etc.

Next up is FM. You can set the FM source to any of the oscillators, LFOs, envelopes and noise. Only benefit really is that you save your modulations slots. I’ve never been a big fun of FM but I must admit that setting the source to noise and the amount to about 20 adds a nice touch of “dirt” to the saw. Self modulation sounds a bit nasty and isn’t my cup of tea but for the industrial types out there, FM and filter distortion may just make you jizz in your pants. BTW I found a bug. Changing the filter’s drive curve doesn’t always work as it should. You get to see the new setting on the screen but the sound is never updated. This happens usually when you change the setting quickly.

I’ll be back with more soon so stay tuned.

This solution will only work for keyboard players. The basis for my method is the assumption that all the notes in the key that the song is in, will sound fine when played alongside the piece.

All I do is transpose my keyboard a semitone at a time and then run my finger across the white keys on the keyboard. If the gliss sounds good, then chances are that you are in the right key if it doesn’t sit very well then transpose and gliss again. Once I find a transpose setting that works, I can then determine whether the piece is major/minor based on its mood or just by noodling on the major/minor scales to see which fits better.

If you have an EXB radias expansion or any synth with a mod sequencer, then there is an even easier approach. What you can do is create a radias patch and then create a mod sequence that steps thru the 8 notes of a scale. In my case, I really only care about major and minor scales. Instead of transposing and glissing, you just need to hold done a single key to loop through the notes of a scale rooted in the held key.

It is amazing what you discover once you play along to a song and you are aware which key you are playing in. So much gets demystified because it becomes so much clearer what progression is being used. What you once thought were ingenious melodies get unravelled as mere scalar runs etc.

I think this will perhaps make up for my lack of ear training and will also get me more milage out of the practice I’ve done in C maj/A minor.

It turns out these arrogant monkeys have been right all along. Consider the scenario I’m about to layout and judge which is the more pragmatic approach.

You need a sound that goes wheeeeeewiooooweooowhipweooo in your arrangement. You have a pulse and a $100,000 credit line, your god given right as a living American. So naturally, your studio is fully decked out with a workstation or 2, a vintage analog, a couple of VAs and a gang of soft synths. 

As a preset user, the first problem you encounter is the overwhelming choice of 10,000+ patches at your disposal. Oops thats just the electric pianos. But you can filter by category you say and you are indeed correct but how does one categorize whe*****? It isn’t a bloody piano is it?

Second problem: Lets say your chosen synth happens to have a category full of wheey presets. When you start auditioning them, what invariably happens is that you stumble across some wheeyish presets that sound wonderful so you spend eons just noodling on the keyboard. There is nothing wrong with noodling, but it does distract you from your original task. Oh and you are not guaranteed to find anything remotely close to whe***** in the end. 

Being a programmer helps focus you on the task at hand. You get an approximation of whe***** and then move on to other parts of the arrangement. You can then come back to refine it to perfection. By programming more, you gain a more intimate knowledge of your gear and when you do decide to browse for presets on occasion, you’ll know which synth is most likely to have a preset close to what you are looking for. You’ll know to focus on the virus/blofeld for a wavetable sweep or focus on the radias for step modulated sound. It is pretty clear that wheeeeeewiooooweooowhipweooo has five distinct stages, so you’d increase your chances by looking on the blofeld because the envelopes on there have an ADSDSR mode in addition to the more common 4 stage ADSR. The anal would point out that we would also need formant/vowel filters like on e-mus or kontakt. To them I say go out and get a pumpkin spice latte you anorak!

Looking back, I now realize that I didn’t have to buy all those synths. Once you start programming, you no longer have to use presets as the main buying criterion. You begin to buy fewer synths on the basis of their architecture and usability, keep them longer and as an added bonus, have enough cash left to support your drug habit. This is a good thing unless you own eBay stock.

After a couple of weeks and a few soft synth crashes, my kore honeymoon comes to a screeching halt. So of I go looking on eBay and what do I find? A minty fresh reboxed blofeld for $575. nb: mail in $50 rebate forms.

First Impressions.

The blofeld has a certain austere elegance about it. It has 8 endless rotary knobs, 5 buttons, a very legible silk screened facia and a generous 6 line display. It is great to get visual feedback when you modify envelope or filter parameters. The rear sports a power input, stereo outs, headphone jack and a USB port. That is it. The unit ships with a power supply, a quick start manual and a coaster with the customary pdf manual and system backups. My second unit also had the Waldorf Edition LE bundle; a rather pleasant surprise if you ask me. Missing though, is a software editor. I’ve been informed by a Waldorfian that they have one planned for early next year. I’m also working OCTOPUSSY, my own OSX based editor. I don’t think it will be a wasted effort considering it presents an opportunity for me to sharpen my OSX development chops.

Presets

The blo comes with 8 banks of 128 presets. Not too shabby by any standard. You navigate the presets just by turning the knob to the immediate left of the screen. The left knob under the screen is for switching banks and the second is used to filter the presets by category. I’m yet to find out if the list of categories is editable.

My first run through all the presets left me rather disappointed. I enjoyed a few solo leads but overall, the sounds were reminiscent of a mediocre general MIDI rompler from a bygone era albeit with a glossy sheen. I owned a blue MicroQ eons ago and I recall a decent set of presets well you know what they say about expectations.

I get the sense that the sound designers were rushed because imho, a lot of the presets don’t take advantage of what the synth engine has to offer. It could also be that the part of my brain that determines how good a preset is, has been infected by the access Virus presets and has sustained irreversible damage.

I’ll tell you one good thing about bad presets, I didn’t hesitate when it came to saving my own patches. I felt free to experiment and overwrite all that crap. The blofeld is a wonderful synth indeed if you do not judge it by its presets.

Programming

This thing is a breeze to program. It feels like stepping into a soft pair of slightly worn Clarks. The matrix style interface is so effective and stays out of ones way. I find it much quicker to navigate the blofeld with 8 knobs than the Virus Polar with 32 knobs. My only gripe with the encoders is that they lag a bit. So what do you get to twiddle with these glorious knobs?

Oscillators

You get 3 oscillators, a noise generator with variable color and a ring mod. All 3 oscillators offer the standard regimen of saw, pulse, triangle and sine. The first 2 also add a staggering 68 wavetables with 64 waves per table. That is a lot of sonic variation and that is what makes the blofeld a Waldorf. The specs state that you get the Alt1 & Alt2 tables from the Waldorf Q and all the tables from the Microwave Series. I haven’t had any experience with those synths but I’m still planning to compare them based on their specs in a later post.

These tables aren’t like the DWGS tables you would find on a Korg synth like the ms2000, microKorg or Radias. Sweeping DWGS tables sound like changing radio stations to me but the waldorf tables tend to have crossfaded waves so sweeping them with a modulator like an envelope or an lfo can yield some really cool sounding transitions. The tables range from electric piano waves to formant vocal sweeps. Imagine what lies in between.

All 3 oscillators can be frequency modulated by each other, LFOS, envelopes and noise. Oscillator 2 can also be synchronized to the third oscillator.

One cool feature that I like about the oscillators is that you can set independent pitch bend range and direction for each one. Sounds cool to bend one oscillator up an fifth and another down a third at the same time. In addition to standard portamento and fingered portamento modes, the common glide setting for all oscillators also has glissando modes. Glissando is a huge deal for me and I’m surprised no one seems to talk about it. My micron had it but both the m3+radias and the Virus are missing this feature. I’m yet to figure out how to approximate glissando on the Virus. It is somewhat doable on the m3 by overlaying the pitch bend with a stepping modifier.

Next post, I’ll go into how the oscillators sound and maybe even post some sounds. I’ll also cover the filters and the modulators. The blofeld is one cunning kitty and packs a lot behind that unassuming facade.

To be continued…

I’m a musician/photographer/software developer. You shouldn’t need any additional info to diagnose my attention deficit disorder. This blog is to chronicle my quest to escape the ghast mediocrity I currently find myself in.

So lets talk about synthesizers but first, my Kanye moment.

<kanye>My mayonnaise hued trinity of the Virus TI Polar, Waldorf Blofeld, Korg m3( w/ radias exb) is the bestest ever setup. It will be remembered as the setup of a generation. Kurzweil doesn’t like black people.</kanye>.

This isn’t safe sex with your wife, this is a bloody sunday orgy if you ask me. Did I say how hard this collection makes me?

The not so holy trinity is complemented by Logic 8, N.I Komplete, Kore 2, Korg Legacy Bundle, Arturia Analog Factory & Prophet V. As you would imagine, the plugins don’t get much use lately.

In the next couple of days, I’ll be posting pretty extensive reviews of all 3 synths. My good friend refers to the blofeld as a poor man’s Virus but I think the little German kitten has some tricks up her sleeve that would melt the T.I snow. I guess a Virus, Blofeld, Radias shootout is in order so prepare for some white on white crime.

Read my reviews knowing that my perspective has been shaped by past dalliances with …

ALESIS:

• Micron – Gr8 sounding but the Blofeld covered a lot of the same ground.
• QS6 – This had a Wurly that I really loved. I traded this in towards a Nord Lead

CLAVIA

• Nord Lead – This synth was the San Grail to me for quite a long time. I remember walking into Turnkey’s in London during the Chronic/Doggystyle era and being blown away because I could play those Dr Dre synth leads. Plus the nord looks sexy as hell. When I finally got one years later, I didn’t do much with it. I was disappointed by the lack of effects and strangely enough, I didn’t really program it much. Must have been the first synth I sold on eBay. I remember dropping it of to the guy that won the auction at an Ikea parking lot. Hmm what did I do with the money? Dime bars, dime bars, lindenberry sauce over meat balls biatch.

KORG

• Triton Classic/Extreme w/MOSS – Classic -> Extreme -> M3
• Z1 – Replaced with MOSS, I miss some features but I generally don’t care for physical modelling
• MS-2000 – Loved it but I wasn’t much of a programmer when I had it so let it go.

E-MU

• E6400 Ultra – This is the first sampler/synth that got me programming. Loved the Z filter and the simple modulation matrix. Who uses hardware samplers any more? Replaced by Kontakt 3. Kontakt doesn’t have a replacement for all the Z filters but makes up for it with a lot more.
• Proteus 2000 - I went gaga for this when it first came out. EP Roller, Wormy Lead, Guitar sound D’angelo and Sean Paul used. It was also the first synth I used that had an audition feature. I didn’t really program it.
• ESI-4000 -Another cool sampler. For me, the E-mu samplers always played Mac to Akais PC.
• MP7 Command Station – Cool sequencer with a gang of knobs. Great combo with the 6400 but there is something about emu presets that make them grow old so fast.

YAMAHA

• Motif ES-Not the most intuitive interface but the best sounding rompler I’ve owned. Synth architecture was nothing to sniff at though but I never really programmed it. At one point, it was cheaper to buy the AN200 & DX200 loopfactory groove boxes than it was to buy the PLG expansion boards so I bought the pair ad transplanted the PLG boards to the Motif. The boards sounded great but the interface was not happening
• A4000 – Another great sampler but with a quirky program/zone/sample hierarchy. Great efx really cool interface with some intuitive shortcuts.
• Rmx-1 – This unit was the bomb. So simple with flash memory and so immediate. Brilliant combo with the E6400. I sampled a single note of the Subsonic bass patch from this bad boy and I still use it today in Kontakt.
• RS7000 – A combination of the Rmx-1 and the Motif. Not too shabby. Dope grid record mode(Head banger, head banger. EPMD).
• FB01, TX81Z – Yamaha FM crap boxes. Decent bass but definitely a crack head move on my part to pick those up. Great for those early 90′s swing beat sounds though.
• PSR *** – I don’t remember the exact model number but it had a built in sequencer, drum pads and an orange lcd. Got this from the music store on Cold Habour lane in Brixton way back in the day. The dudes in there were so old school. They referred to sound modules as “expanders”. Thats the same store that had the Alesis SR16 in the window.

ROLAND

• VP-9000 – Interesting unit but I’m not really into loops plus the way I trigger my samples when I do hip-hop doesn’t really require time stretching. That is one of the few limitations that yields creative results I think.
• MV-8000 – Wonderful beatbox. Head and shoulders above MPC 1k, 2k, 2500. Wonderful feeling pads, very quick workflow with nothing more than a couple of button presses away.

In the end, what matters is the music and this journey through programming, is really just another way to find a distinct voice. I’ve been procrastinating for a decade partly because I only wanted to be a producer rather than an an artist but now I feel like I have a great album or 2 within me .

I’ll keep you posted on that as well. The alias is Alternegro and the working title is Chupacabra’s Revenge.