Melohman Makeover...for Oddity?

[jcn7]

To Gmedia and Ohmforce...a request for a Melohman makeover for your wonderful Oddity.

[electro]

I wouldn't mind Melohman, but what I really want to get on Oddity is PPC.

[b2d]

PPC? if you mean the octave thingy on the minimonsta it was pretty kewl infact, very expressive. wouldn't mind that on the oddity i suppose. but no update at all would also be

that way it would always feel fresh to install it straight from the box

[portobellovcs3]

Yeah, the Oddity is fantastic. It's a masterpiece. I would love polyphony and a few more features.

Polyphony please Gforce!

[electro]

No Polyphony for Oddity. It is a bad Idea.

[John Vulich]

No Polyphony for Oddity. It is a bad Idea.

Why not? Most VA VSTis that Ive seen, that allow polyphony of monophonic synths, let you turn it off and choose monophonic if you want.

[Mr Arkadin]

Why not?

Because the entire architecture would have to be changed. Prodyssey for the CreamWare SCOPE cards is polyphonic and they had to change quite a few features to make it polyphonic. You also lose the screaming duophonic mode. That's why even though i love my SCOPE (yay MiniMax)i opted for Oddity.

Some things are just best left alone.

Mr A

PS i find a ribbon controller makes a good PPC impersonation.

[Mad Jack]

Why not?

Because the entire architecture would have to be changed.........Some things are just best left alone.

Couldn't they add a separate polyphonic mode? What I mean is a way to add polyphony without wrecking the normal operation of it. I understand that it would go against the purity of the original synth, but it would be such a useful feature. And most, if not all, other monophonic emulations have added polyphony. And I suspect all the dance-heads would be interested in a unison mode!


Added effects would be nice.

The Melohman octave feature would be very nice. No more: "this patch-morphing is a nice idea, but how am I supposed to make use of it?!" kind of thoughts...
To be honest, I find selecting patches on the Oddity to be a real chore; and the patch-morphing feature just makes it more confusing. -- No such problems on the new Minimonsta' though. I found patch selection on this new beasty to be a 'piece of cake'.

Other than that, I'd still like the Oddity to receive an authentic 'laggy' portamento. The standard one it has just doesn't sound right. Although I guess fixing this now would cause problems in peoples' existing mixes.

Finally, I don't see the point of having an on-screen keyboard only to make it incredibly annoying to use by leaving dead zones between the keys! -- Hmm.. I see the new Minimonsta' suffers from the same problem. Nice to see they listened to my previous complaint about this...

[Mr Arkadin]

Couldn't they add a separate polyphonic mode?

No. i asked the CreamWare guys do this (in reverse as it were, to regain Duophonic mode) but the answer was pretty much you'd need another synth. So unless GMedia essentially code a completely different synth it can't happen - you'd have to have two synths under the bonnet, not impossible but not likely.

The things that changed due to polyphony on the Prodyssey as i recall were the way the repeat function worked, the Ring mod has to be modified and of course you lose the duophonic mode (it's not just a case of two-note polyphony as i sadly found out), and there were some other things too. i tested them side by side and couldn't get them to sound remotelt alike, so in a way GMedia would be better off doing emulating one of the polyphonic ARPs than making Oddity polyphonic and losing the character.

As an aside, impOSCar can attain polyphony without losing the character because the duophonic mode on the OSCar didn't behave in the way that Odyssey's does (there's freq interaction or something going on)

Anyway, mono synths are nice, there's plenty of polyphonic synths out there, let your Oddity do leads, basses and weird effects and learn to embrace the power of single line writing (heed your signature from the great Billy Currie - he did wonders with just mono Odyssey).

Mr A

PS. i agree with you about the portamento, and the M:M Meta would allow PPC style pacthes to be set-up too.

[b2d]

To be honest, I find selecting patches on the Oddity to be a real chore; and the patch-morphing feature just makes it more confusing. -- No such problems on the new Minimonsta' though. I found patch selection on this new beasty to be a 'piece of cake'.

have to agree with you on that, otoh i always start from the presets in bank a and tweak from there, it's fun to makes sounds with the oddity so i think it's good to have this limitation or else i might just use other peoples presets all the time, nothing wrong with that ofcourse. i am a total preset whore myself but i'm trying not to be.

saving my own presets is always done with the song so...

[original flipper]

HI

I don't really think that G-Media are into this up-date bullshit, I think it is a good idea to produce a synth, get it as good as you can and just move on.

IMO I don't see the point in playing into the hands of a market that wants to 'force' you into forever up-dating a product - if its not broke don't fix it.

With the emulations of hardware synths that G-Media seem to veer towards they don't really need to go back on a product if they got it right in the first place and TBH they would start to go into a much more competitive area if they started to do total overhauls on their products.

I think they are better of leaving their synths as they are - they could or will probably continue to produce high quality emu's of vintage synths - which is what they are good at.

Flipper.

[b2d]

HI

I don't really think that G-Media are into this up-date bullshit, I think it is a good idea to produce a synth, get it as good as you can and just move on.

IMO I don't see the point in playing into the hands of a market that wants to 'force' you into forever up-dating a product - if its not broke don't fix it.

With the emulations of hardware synths that G-Media seem to veer towards they don't really need to go back on a product if they got it right in the first place and TBH they would start to go into a much more competitive area if they started to do total overhauls on their products.

I think they are better of leaving their synths as they are - they could or will probably continue to produce high quality emu's of vintage synths - which is what they are good at.

Flipper.

amen

[electro]

HI

I don't really think that G-Media are into this up-date bullshit, I think it is a good idea to produce a synth, get it as good as you can and just move on.

IMO I don't see the point in playing into the hands of a market that wants to 'force' you into forever up-dating a product - if its not broke don't fix it.

With the emulations of hardware synths that G-Media seem to veer towards they don't really need to go back on a product if they got it right in the first place and TBH they would start to go into a much more competitive area if they started to do total overhauls on their products.

I think they are better of leaving their synths as they are - they could or will probably continue to produce high quality emu's of vintage synths - which is what they are good at.

Flipper.

The only reason to update an emulation is to improve authenticity of the emulation (Better Oscilators, filter improvements, closer emulation of the originals parameters etc.) And there has to be a legacy mode for all who have used the original version in their mixes already. There are very few improvements to be made to Oddity. I want PPC, but everything else seems fine. Things like optional oversampling would be welcome is an update though.

[Meffy]

I could do without polyphony. But I think Melohmanizing the Oddity wouldn't detract from the original, and that the result would likely be useful and exciting.

I see Melohman as the natural extension of the reverse-color preset keys at the left end of each of the Hammond B3's keyboards. On a Hammond each key in that octave calls up a preset voice for that keyboard, instead of whatever you've set on the drawbars. (IIRC the bottom ones also set the pedal voice). When you press one, the change in tone takes effect right away. NI's B4 organ behaves the same way.

The Melohman octave is like this, but it adds velocity sensitivity. Playing normal keys on just about any synth lets you trigger sounds and vary their sound using key velocity. Playing the Melohman octave's keys lets you play the knobs instead of the notes. Again, you get velocity sensitivity, missing from the Hammond's note-playing and its voice change.

Being able to vary the rate of patch morphing using key velocity is one of those simple "now why didn't I think of that?" ideas that, once you've seen it in action, seems blindingly right.

And I happen to like the Oddity rather a lot. :-) So put me down on the "hoping for another monsta" side of the ledger.

Dr. Frankenstein, is there room on your operating table for another... victim? Heh heh heh...

Igor
oops, I mean
Meffy

[Dave Blakely]

The Morphing in Oddity works in a completely different way to the Melohman products, Dave Spiers has already gone over this in a previous thread, the plug would have to be rewritten to incorporate this, also polyphony is a bad idea, the Oddity is a lead synth, for playing lead lines and bass etc much better to do an Arp/Rhodes Chroma emulation

As for Proportion Pitch Control, how?, why?, in which fashion?, PPC was 3 rubber pads on the Oddysey that were used as controllers, they operated by pressure, are you proposing they could be mapped to keys or something, maybe i'm being thick, i dont get it.... then again i've a massive hangover