EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 35, Issue 02 This issue's topics: BirdSound (3 messages) Hardware Dreams (4 messages) Your EMUSIC-L Digest moderator is Joe McMahon . You may subscribe to EMUSIC-L by sending mail to listserv@american.edu with the line "SUB EMUSIC-L your name" as the text. The EMUSIC-L archive is a service of SunSite (sunsite.unc.edu) at the University of North Carolina. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1991 17:29:46 EDT From: "Pete H." Subject: BirdSound Happy Thanksgiving! Can anyone give me an idea on how to go about creating a Bird/Chirping sound such as the one at the begining of Close to the Edge (YES) on an Analog Synth?? Thanks in advance! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1991 09:27:50 EST From: eric Subject: Re: BirdSound the best (easiest) way to achieve a bird sound is to find a fully resonant lopass filter. most analog synths don't have sinewave sources available, and that's the starting point for yer basic bird. with the filter ringing, keyboard control of the filter's cutoff point determines starting pitch for the whistle. an envelope applied to the filter then executes the characteristic pitch sweep. attenuate the enevlope's control of the filter (reduce the 'envelope amount' on the filter controls), so that the pitch sweep isn't too outrageous, otherwise you'll get laser shots. it also helps if you have two envelope generators available, or are at least able to invert the envelope that controls the filter. if not, you'll be pretty much limited to birds that pitch downwards in the whistle, since you need a fairly sharp (quick attack, no sustain, rapid-to-moderate decay) envelope for the amplitude. if you have separate or invertable envelopes, then you can have more variation. one good bird, for instance, is where the pitch drops quickly and then rises quickly, while the amplitude goes through a standard trajectory, for a sort of DOOoo-weeT sound. -------------------< Cognitive Dissonance is an Art Form >--------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1991 10:43:19 +0000 From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: BirdSound >Happy Thanksgiving! Happy what? > Can anyone give me an idea on how to go about creating a Bird/Chirping >sound such as the one at the begining of Close to the Edge (YES) on an >Analog Synth?? I don't have CLOSE TO THE EDGE, but, really, chirping noises are SOOO easy to do on analogue gear. Sweep a resonant filter's cutoff with a short-decay envelope. That's all. Or is this noise special in some way? Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1991 11:02:00 CST From: greg@IHLPM.ATT.COM Subject: Re: Hardware Dreams Jon (and all), > This is not my area of expertise, but at some risk of electronic ridicule, > I had two questions/suggestions to share: 1) given all the discussion of how > key resonant filters are (I agree), couldn't that capability be built into > an effects type unit to use after the fact? Not as versatile, and would > apply to entire patch, not elements, but would still be of interest. Or does > someone already do this? I think this is a great idea. I suppose it would need a MIDI input as well as an audio input so it could respond to NOTE-ON/NOTE-OFF events for triggering the filter, and maybe some controller events as well (aftertouch, pitch/modulation wheel, velocity, ...), if desired. If such a unit is available I'd like to know about it as well. If not, it sounds like a potential market opportunity. -- Greg Youngdahl AT&T Bell Laboratories Naperville, IL greg@ihlpm.att.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1991 09:56:25 EST From: Jon Crystal Subject: Hardware Dreams This is not my area of expertise, but at some risk of electronic ridicule, I had two questions/suggestions to share: 1) given all the discussion of how key resonant filters are (I agree), couldn't that capability be built into an effec ts type unit to use after the fact? Not as versatile, and would apply to entire patch, not elements, but would still be of interest. Or does someone already do this? 2) Could someone design a programmable sampler-type interface to allow writing of new sample/waveforms to RAM cards in varying formats to allow us to add new basic building blocks to those synths which don't accept sample dumps? To be worth the effort and cost, it would have to be capable of saving in the format required for many different synths, and this may be proprietary data, but is there a work-around? Jon ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1991 12:40:21 EST From: Eirikur Hallgrimsson 13-Dec-1991 1233 Subject: Re: Hardware Dreams $295.00 That's what an Akai VX-600 costs. You can replace the VCO with an external audio source on two of the voices, and then you have three envelopes and two LFOs, a VCF and a VCA. It's velocity sensing and has MIDI controllers 0-31 as direct inputs to its modulation matrix. It's unfortunately not a rack module. It's a three-octave keyboard. The real problem with filters in an outboard processor is that they are monophonic. Say you plug a keyboard's output into your filter box. Presto, you have a Poly-800 effect because there is only one filter for all the keys that you hold down. Pressing a new key either does not re-articulate (re-attack) the filter, or it does do so, causing all the other notes to re-attack, too. Believe me, I've thought about this a lot. I used to design poly instruments back when replicating the VCO-VCF-VCA chain was too expensive to implement. That brings up a major gripe of mine: Why does every synth in the world (almost) hardwire the VCO-VCF-VCA signal path? On my VX-600, and MKS units I would like to bypass the filter sometimes Eirikur ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1991 19:02:13 MET From: d1gunnar@DTEK.CHALMERS.SE Subject: Re: Hardware Dreams > > key resonant filters are (I agree), couldn't that capability be built into > > an effects type unit to use after the fact? Not as versatile, and would > > apply to entire patch, not elements, but would still be of interest. > > I think this is a great idea. I suppose it would need a MIDI input > as well as an audio input so it could respond to NOTE-ON/NOTE-OFF events for > triggering the filter, and maybe some controller events as well (aftertouch, > pitch/modulation wheel, velocity, ...), if desired. Yup, I've been thinking a lot about doing something like that myself. There are a lot of cheap synths out there with a good basic sound but they lack the effects to really make them compete with more advanced products. I've been considering this for my K1m because it's so dull-sounding but still it has a lot of potential and is easy to program. I figure I won't get too much for it if I sell it anyway so why not make it useful instead? Any other electronics-lovers out there who would like to give an opinion on this? Gunnar Andersson -- d1gunnar@dtek.chalmers.se Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************