u-he

Xenos · Post by **Xenos** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:01 pm

I had an idea and thought I'd run it past the Zebra owners. Would a set of semi-realistic ethnic bells, fantasy bowed instruments, imaginary lutes, reeds, mallets, flutes, ethnic/fantasy rattles, drums and other percussion be something y'all would be interested in? I'm not talking orchestral instruments and keyboards, as we already have sample libraries for that, but imaginary acoustic instruments that don't exist in real life.

The big sellers out there are always EDM sounds, 70s/80s stuff and hip hop sounds, but I have a lot of love for semi-realistic imaginary instruments. Zebra is a powerful enough synth with enough available features to provide a creative outlet for that. I'm gonna go ahead and do this project anyway, but just wondering what kind of market there is for stuff like that in preset banks.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 9:19 pm

Sure, I'm all for it. Big fan here of Corin Neff's Zebra Orchestra soundbank, as well as Botanica, Little Rain Forest, etc.!

rockin1 · Post by **rockin1** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 9:37 pm

Sounds pretty great to me!

tremolounge · Post by **tremolounge** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 12:18 am

Yep, I'd definitely be interested in a bank or banks of these types of sounds.

evilantal · Post by **evilantal** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 10:54 am

I'm with you guys on this one!

Xenos · Post by **Xenos** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:57 pm

Heeeyyy

. Glad to see a good response to this idea. Already started working on this about a week ago. It's a challenge trying to get a "realistic" quality using a synth - especially with bowed instruments, blown reeds and flutes. Using Zebra's multiple output layers is key in avoiding that "synthy" character. Reminds me somewhat of making sounds on the Roland D, JV and XP series synths.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 9:51 pm

...plus, Zebra's comb modules are excellent

Shiek927 · Post by **Shiek927** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 11:26 pm

Xenos wrote:Heeeyyy . Glad to see a good response to this idea. Already started working on this about a week ago. It's a challenge trying to get a "realistic" quality using a synth - especially with bowed instruments, blown reeds and flutes. Using Zebra's multiple output layers is key in avoiding that "synthy" character. Reminds me somewhat of making sounds on the Roland D, JV and XP series synths.

You wouldn't happen to know a soft-synth that can pull off those kinds of sounds?

Yeah yeah, unrelated question :p. Diva obviously has an excellent JP-8000, but I'm not finding much luck in JP-990, JV-1080, or those other vintage Roland synths. Whilst I'm head over heels for Hive, I find myself coming back to listen to the classic JV-1080 lately. I never knew so many classic records, games and pretty much everything under the sun was made with that thing.

Xenos · Post by **Xenos** » Wed Apr 22, 2015 7:36 pm

Shiek927 wrote:
Xenos wrote:Heeeyyy . Glad to see a good response to this idea. Already started working on this about a week ago. It's a challenge trying to get a "realistic" quality using a synth - especially with bowed instruments, blown reeds and flutes. Using Zebra's multiple output layers is key in avoiding that "synthy" character. Reminds me somewhat of making sounds on the Roland D, JV and XP series synths.
You wouldn't happen to know a soft-synth that can pull off those kinds of sounds?

Yeah yeah, unrelated question :p. Diva obviously has an excellent JP-8000, but I'm not finding much luck in JP-990, JV-1080, or those other vintage Roland synths. Whilst I'm head over heels for Hive, I find myself coming back to listen to the classic JV-1080 lately. I never knew so many classic records, games and pretty much everything under the sun was made with that thing.

Wusikstation...but only IF you create similar samples that sound like the JV-1080 waveroms, or rip them directly from your JV-1080 and save them as wav files to be inserted into Wusik. Programming Wusikstation reminded me a lot of my Roland hardware, which is why I bought it back in the day. I didn't bother with trying to make sound-alikes of the Roland waveroms, though...had too much fun just making my own "waveroms" entirely, which was how the "Tesseract" set for Wusik was born. That's what I always liked about the D, JV, and XP series synths - getting that "big" sound using very small samples and a layered programming approach

. I love Wusik, but never bothered with any of the included samples. The fun lies in creating your own samples and then using Wusik's synthesis features as if it were Roland hardware.

Shiek927 · Post by **Shiek927** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 2:14 am

Xenos wrote:
Shiek927 wrote:
Xenos wrote:Heeeyyy . Glad to see a good response to this idea. Already started working on this about a week ago. It's a challenge trying to get a "realistic" quality using a synth - especially with bowed instruments, blown reeds and flutes. Using Zebra's multiple output layers is key in avoiding that "synthy" character. Reminds me somewhat of making sounds on the Roland D, JV and XP series synths.
You wouldn't happen to know a soft-synth that can pull off those kinds of sounds?

Yeah yeah, unrelated question :p. Diva obviously has an excellent JP-8000, but I'm not finding much luck in JP-990, JV-1080, or those other vintage Roland synths. Whilst I'm head over heels for Hive, I find myself coming back to listen to the classic JV-1080 lately. I never knew so many classic records, games and pretty much everything under the sun was made with that thing.
Wusikstation...but only IF you create similar samples that sound like the JV-1080 waveroms, or rip them directly from your JV-1080 and save them as wav files to be inserted into Wusik. Programming Wusikstation reminded me a lot of my Roland hardware, which is why I bought it back in the day. I didn't bother with trying to make sound-alikes of the Roland waveroms, though...had too much fun just making my own "waveroms" entirely, which was how the "Tesseract" set for Wusik was born. That's what I always liked about the D, JV, and XP series synths - getting that "big" sound using very small samples and a layered programming approach . I love Wusik, but never bothered with any of the included samples. The fun lies in creating your own samples and then using Wusik's synthesis features as if it were Roland hardware.

Thank you very much!!!

Hive, of course, will remain my go-to synth. Though Spire has a bigger feature-set (at the moment), Hive's sound is the best I've ever heard out of a softsynth. Curiously though, I seem to be joining the many many people who have a little affection for vintage synths

.

Xenos · Post by **Xenos** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:20 pm

Shiek927 wrote:
Hive, of course, will remain my go-to synth. Though Spire has a bigger feature-set (at the moment), Hive's sound is the best I've ever heard out of a softsynth. Curiously though, I seem to be joining the many many people who have a little affection for vintage synths .

I bolded the interesting part above...It's great to see a more liberal attitude toward analog vs digital. I think you might be right, particularly so with the younger crowd. I was first introduced to synthesizers in the early digital age - the Yamaha FM synths, the D-50, the Ensoniq synths...and I was just a child back then. By the time I played an analog synth for the first time, I was already heavily into FM synthesis, and the cold, metallic sound of FM synthesis was all I really understood or knew from a sound design perspective. Analog and virtual analog synths had "that" sound on many radio hits I tried to copy with my FM synth, but simply could not do very well. I was amazed by the cozy, warm sound of subractive/analog synthesis, and the minimal amount of programming needed to get that beautiful sound. With a few knob tweaks, I got tone colors that took an hour of frustrating work to even get close to on my DX synth. It was an amazing experience.

Personally, I don't favor either the digital or analog sound. Both of them are powerful and beautiful in their own specific ways, and I gotta have them both

.

Arrested Developer · Post by **Arrested Developer** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 11:15 am

Xenos wrote:Would a set of semi-realistic ethnic bells, fantasy bowed instruments, imaginary lutes, reeds, mallets, flutes, ethnic/fantasy rattles, drums and other percussion be something y'all would be interested in?

Yes, totally...
I think that's one of the tasks Zebra is fantastic at.

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:14 am

EvilDragon wrote:...plus, Zebra's comb modules are excellent

+1 ... there's lots of 'semi-realistic' mileage in those Combs!

Xenos · Post by **Xenos** » Wed May 06, 2015 5:17 pm

Howard wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:...plus, Zebra's comb modules are excellent
+1 ... there's lots of 'semi-realistic' mileage in those Combs!

Absolutely

. I'm having a good time experimenting and trying out unusual ways to use/route them. Not every experiment results in a good sound, so I have to dump out certain ideas, but other routing ideas are real keepers

. This project is taking a similar approach I used with Madrona Labs' Aalto synth - instead of having a specific sound in mind and dialing it in, it's a journey of sonic exploration. "Playing" instead of "working".

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Fri May 08, 2015 12:34 pm

+ 1 to the topic in general:

I also find this kind of patches more interesting since there are too much EDM sounds out there. Zebra 2 can create such beautiful overtones and "extraterrestrial" organic sounds. Go for it!

u-he

KVR Audio

A set of fantasy semi-realistic instruments for Zebra?