One Synth Challenge #112: Synth1 by Ichiro Toda (Photonic Wins!)

[schiing]

Absolutely agree. I painted with too broad a brush there - there are lots of exceptions, and everything depends on the style.

[baalisoda]

One of my all time favt soft synth and a regular staple on all my projects (in some form).

Hopefully this time around, I should be able to come up with something before the deadline.

[Guenon]

Absolutely agree. I painted with too broad a brush there - there are lots of exceptions, and everything depends on the style.

I think the main point of allowing effects (within reason, not obfuscating the actual synth) is indeed being able to have such a variety of styles in the OSC

If everything was always mixed completely dry, straight out of the synth, also with no dynamic control of any kind, etc etc... then the outcome of this challenge would be stylistically very different, and it would be aesthetically even more niche as it is now. It would also usually mean no "actual modern album release" sounding mixes/styles/tracks attempted at all. Or even "actual not-so-modern album release" ...

(No disrespect for the retro chip music stuff at all either , anyone who knows me here knows I'm nuts for that stuff and general experimental hippology.)

[Taron]

Uh, Synth1 again? Wow, feels like yesterday that I fell in love with this one, haha!
Great...well... oh, can't be quiet on the topic of naked chiptunes: PURE FREAKING MUSIC! ...love it! But the thing was, making really a chip tune was to go deep and control as much of the sound as possible (which wasn't much anyway, hehe). If you wanted to go as deep with something like synth1, you'd literally implode from the pressure at that depth! (insert popping emoticon here!)

So, yeah, we may very well be utterly jaded here at the OSC, because by now virtually everyone creates music that one might never guess came from using one synth. But we'd fall into a awfully deep hole, if even one single round would not permit for such masterpieces to be created, I'm sure!
I would love to think up a synth that would be bone-dry, no effects or stereo gimmicks, but with enough control over the character of the sound to pull of a Dead-Dry-Round, or so. This would be by far the most challenging OSC there ever was, I'm sure.

[EscapeControl]

With such a powerful and well known synth for this osc the entries are going to be even more amazing
Time to give it another go!
(I'd love to be able to vote on the entries from previous osc, some are amazing. Don't have enough posts yet though )

[Taron]

Well, then let's have a quick conversation here!

[Hanz Meyzer]

This was the synth I started my first KVR OSC with!

Info for Mac users: The filter inside the 64 bit version of synth1 is buggy. Make sure you run the 32 bit version, by stripping off the 64 bit part of the vst or running your DAW in 32 bit mode:

Code: Select all

cd path/to/Synth1.vst/Contents/MacOS/
lipo -remove x86_64 ./Synth1 -output ./Synth1new
mv Synth1 Synth1orig
mv Synth1new Synth1

[doctorbob]

This was the synth I started my first KVR OSC with!

OSC #68 or OSC #94 ??

I also used Synth1 for OSC #98 as well! So 4th time for me ...
dB

[Guenon]

So, yeah, we may very well be utterly jaded here at the OSC, because by now virtually everyone creates music that one might never guess came from using one synth. But we'd fall into a awfully deep hole, if even one single round would not permit for such masterpieces to be created, I'm sure!

Right on! The level of skill on display here is the OSC's biggest blessing and a curse, bwahah!

Okay okay, just saying that in jest, but yeah, there's a tiny bit of truth in it as well. I think it's absolutely great OSC is at the level it is, of course . It's amaaziinng.

It's just that, when there are other time constrains -- as I've had during the present months -- I usually don't even consider entering. And then I'm generally just absent, sigh. As I know the envelope OSC keeps pushing means... it'll be the deep end for me, no matter what, if I enter . Really difficult for me to stop crafting and experimenting after I decide to start. It's not just in a challenge like this, it's something in my nature, heh.

And oh oohhh, Royosho: welcome! And remember, if you feel like challenging yourself more, there are a lot of tweakers here who really appreciate that sort of stuff and see the magic involved. Trust me. What I mean is, nothing stops you from inflicting strict rules upon yourself and trying to get the best result within a voluntarily more challenging framework.

Sometimes I'm in that state of mind, like last holiday season when I did the "Lab of 1968" thing with a single instance of FB-3100. In hindsight, that's something I'm really happy about. However, as that was the general mindset ("this time, I'll do something really restricting!"), I was thinking of other types of restrictions first. Initially I considered exactly what is now being discussed here, a completely dry entry, not adding reverb etc.

It mutated and ended up with also trying to do a room emulation with only FB-3100, haha, before settling on the alternative idea of using just a single instance . It was supposed to be this really crappy sounding live gig thing with arcadey retro type of keyboard sounds and percussion being played in a distinctively "live" sounding room, sloppy corner bar bootleg style.

A general sound test, before scrapping it and moving on to the single instance retro thing. All audio from FB-3100, no additional reverb / space emulation plugins used:

https://soundcloud.com/guenooni/fb-3100 ... on/s-FUR9l

The horror of it without the emulation trickery:

https://soundcloud.com/guenooni/fb-3100 ... om/s-mnUzx

(Pardon the actual musical content )

[ontrackp]

This was the synth I started my first KVR OSC with!

Info for Mac users: The filter inside the 64 bit version of synth1 is buggy. Make sure you run the 32 bit version, by stripping off the 64 bit part of the vst or running your DAW in 32 bit mode:

Code: Select all

cd path/to/Synth1.vst/Contents/MacOS/
lipo -remove x86_64 ./Synth1 -output ./Synth1new
mv Synth1 Synth1orig
mv Synth1new Synth1

Thanks Hanz -- can you explain in a little more detail how to execute this code? Is it just typed into Terminal?

- Steve (ontrackp)

[schiing]

As I know the envelope OSC keeps pushing means... it'll be the deep end for me, no matter what, if I enter . Really difficult for me to stop crafting and experimenting after I decide to start. It's not just in a challenge like this, it's something in my nature, heh.

This is oh so familiar in every aspect. So far I've tried to complete my tracks during the first two weeks of the month to give myself a break and keep my obsessiveness in check. Or rather, leave some room to obsess over all the other stuff.

[Guenon]

This is oh so familiar in every aspect. So far I've tried to complete my tracks during the first two weeks of the month to give myself a break and keep my obsessiveness in check. Or rather, leave some room to obsess over all the other stuff.

Also... the main reason I've never dared to try Minecraft.



(Like, I did try Terraria once, as the 2D retro action style is more my thing, and.. "maybe I'll build just a little", boom, one hundred hours later, a system of multi-tiered zombie defense mechanisms. Ehhm hnngghh.)

[schiing]

Also... the main reason I've never dared to try Minecraft.



(Like, I did try Terraria once, as the 2D retro action style is more my thing, and.. "maybe I'll build just a little", boom, one hundred hours later, a system of multi-tiered zombie defense mechanisms. Ehhm hnngghh.)

That's so funny, when I wrote that I was just thinking about when I played Civilization with my mates back in the day. I always spent all my time building these perfect microsocieties in a limited space where I could control every aspect of the development.

Of course, Civ was geared towards warfare and expansion, and by the time I was ready to build an army to protect and expand my happy, tiny agricultural civilization, a gigantic warlord with a dysfunctional society and a starving population would appear and kill me off in an instant.

These days I try to contain my affinity for detail to stuff that's at least potentially productive and/or artistic.

[Guenon]

Haha, Schiing oh man, given these musings and mentioning that sort of games, I just have to link this classic here, I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you haven't seen it... And then I'll promise to hold back the off topic hahh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU

Moving towards synths: exactly, channeling these sorts of borderline obsessive approaches directly into synths/music (or anything creative/constructive, in the long run) is a working solution. I have to admit, when taken to absurd extremes like in that video, in the end, I still have mad respect for someone building/trying something of that magnitude in a game. It's like a concept art piece in its own right ... But yeah. Back to Synth1 tweakage!

[schiing]

Haha, Schiing oh man, given these musings and mentioning that sort of games, I just have to link this classic here, I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you haven't seen it... And then I'll promise to hold back the off topic hahh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU

Moving towards synths: exactly, channeling these sorts of borderline obsessive approaches directly into synths/music (or anything creative/constructive, in the long run) is a working solution. I have to admit, when taken to absurd extremes like in that video, in the end, I still have mad respect for someone building/trying something of that magnitude in a game. It's like a concept art piece in its own right ... But yeah. Back to Synth1 tweakage!

You're hitting the nail on the head here. I can not watch stuff like that - ideas instantly start shaping in my head. My urban planning education was probably the best and the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

And yeah, now back to channeling my graticular ideas through Synth 1!