u-he

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:00 pm

FWIW, I just *love* using Zebra 2 for some loops as well. Here's 2 patches:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/2_Z2 ... atches.zip
(need to be put into C:\program files\u-he\Presets\Zebra2, no idea about the proper Mac location)
Set up something around 80BPM, load the "Funky" groove, then call up another Z2 instance and use the "Jungly" groove for some doubletime fills...
As you may notice, the jungly groove is essentially the same as the funky one, just the MSEGs are twice as fast (a matter of a few seconds to double their tempo, using the "half size" function) and a few bits of filter/tune stuff have been changed.
Make sure to use the ModWheel and XY controller on both.
Oh, and there's some weird "bonus" patch in there... some auto melody thing that I just made fooling around with the MSEGs for arp/melodic stuff. Nothing really useful but I found it interesting to see how far you can go with melodic stuff - and the "true" arpeggiator isn't even there yet.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:15 pm

spaceman wrote:if the latter, does it calculate 100 steps betwean 2 waveforms? So if you let's say use a value of 6.80 for the envelope controling the waves, does that mean that it doesn't get to 7 completeley?

In the "Morph" waveforms the nodes are interpolated seamlessly between two waveforms. In the "Blend" modes they're just faded in volume. It's actually a resolution of 19 bits, that's 524288 steps inbetween.

Btw. 16 is a bug. It should be 15, because 1 + 15 = 16.

Cheers,

Urs

spaceman · Post by **spaceman** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:19 pm

cheers Urs!

this thing has really blown me away

whatever I can think of I can do already or the functionality is in the pipeline for the final version

an absolute joy to use

spaceman · Post by **spaceman** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:20 pm

I've got nothing to do today in the office so I've had a lot of time to explore

Foxglove · Post by **Foxglove** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 9:54 am

Man, this has to be one of the most amazing synths I've ever gotten my hands on. Serious stuff. I strangely got sick yesterday, and had to call my boss and tell him I wasn't able to go in today.

One thing that I would love to see implemented, would be to be able to sync the delay in the LFO's to tempo. That would be just grand.

Huge Congrats Urs, You've created something amazingly special, that's an absolute joy to work with. The money's already put aside

PS, can't wait to see the ringmods in action

:):)

Dunc · Post by **Dunc** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 9:55 am

Just bought into the dream...

Looking forward to the further refinements that will take forever to get my head round. Makes for a refreshing sound pallette every day when you havn't got a clue what you're doing.

This is not the fault of Zebra, it's just I'm stoopid...

Thanks for the reality of the dream Urs.

Dunc

spaceman · Post by **spaceman** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 10:24 am

damn you Urs

I got three hours of sleep yesterday.. THREE HOURS!!!

I'm setting myself the task to program at least 16 presets for the beast

kmonkey · Post by **kmonkey** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:04 am

Just got zebra 2 demo. Yes its good. I like some presets. But in my opinion it cant touch VAZ Modular sound (well at least i was thinking that it will )

Not even close. Dont know what kind of voodoohism STL staff built in to that VAZ beast but in sonic fields nothing (i mean sw synths) cant touch it. Again IMO.

GUI is realy good. VAZ is not so intuitive. But sound is what i hear/search for

Still IMO in zebra2 many will find very very useable sounds.

lnikj · Post by **lnikj** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:12 am

Having had a good chance of a play now (though only scratched the surface), I have to say that this is a simply stunning piece of work. Even though I am a newbie at this music game, I can tell quality when I see it.

Urs - I suspect that you suffer from something that has been the bane of my life - perfectionism. With what is there already, and what is already planned, you appear to have covered just about every possibility I can think of.

Both aesthetically and functionally, it is overwhelmingly impressive. It is so rare for a great programmer to also be brilliant at UI design.

Oops .... I'm sorry if that sounded too gushing, but I cannot think of a better way to spend a hundred quid.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:13 am

Foxglove wrote:Man, this has to be one of the most amazing synths I've ever gotten my hands on. Serious stuff. I strangely got sick yesterday, and had to call my boss and tell him I wasn't able to go in today.

One thing that I would love to see implemented, would be to be able to sync the delay in the LFO's to tempo. That would be just grand.

Huge Congrats Urs, You've created something amazingly special, that's an absolute joy to work with. The money's already put aside

PS, can't wait to see the ringmods in action :):)

Thanks man!

MINITUTORIAL: Syncing LFO delay to host tempo

As the name of the tutorial implies, here's a solution for something that was considered too "special interest" to make it into Zebra2's feature set. But it can easily be achieved by a simple workaround:

Just use an unused Envelope to control the LFO Amplitude.

Choose "Env4" by right-clicking the knob next to LFO Amplitude. Boom, Envelope4 will appear in the rack. If it's not next to the LFO, just click in the space between modules to exchange them until Env4 sits next to the LFO in the Rack.

Set you LFO to the desired settings, set Amplitude to 100 as well as the Env4 intensity. Set LFO Delay to 0.

Now comes the voodoo part.

Set Env4's *timebase* to "1/1". That's the little field next to the envelope name. Now, all envelope times correspond to the percentage of the duration of a full note, syncing to host tempo.

Next, choose "Delay" as an option for the knob left of the Attack time. This adds a delay stage to the envelope.

Now, set Env4 Delay to 50.00 for a 1/2 note delay and Attack to 25.00 for a quarter note fade in time. Bingo!

To finish this, set the Envelope mode to "linear" for a linear fade and Release to 100.00 so that the LFO doesn't fade out audibly during the Release stage.

Note: A little bug, the LFO gets sometimes initialized by some state if it's not set to Restart by Gate. So, adding a little Delay within the LFO isn't a bad idea for now.

To go a little further, you can also control the delay time by Velocity. Just click "+" in the tiny "+|-" box in the envelope. Squeek, a bunch of knobs appear below Env4. Each of these knobs controls the influence of Velocity (upper row) and Keyfollow (lower row) on any of the envelope parameters. Turn the top left knob to see how Velocity now effects the duration of the LFO delay.

Cheers,

Urs

spaceman · Post by **spaceman** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:24 am

kmonkey wrote:Just got zebra 2 demo. Yes its good. I like some presets. But in my opinion it cant touch VAZ Modular sound (well at least i was thinking that it will )

Not even close. Dont know what kind of voodoohism STL staff built in to that VAZ beast but in sonic fields nothing (i mean sw synths) cant touch it. Again IMO.

GUI is realy good. VAZ is not so intuitive. But sound is what i hear/search for

it doesn't sound like my washing machine either but you won't see me posting about it on the Zanussi user forum

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:30 am

kmonkey wrote:Just got zebra 2 demo. Yes its good. I like some presets. But in my opinion it cant touch VAZ Modular sound (well at least i was thinking that it will )

Hmmm, isn't VAZ intended to be analog sounding? Zebra definately isn't. Thus if you are searching for analogesque sounds in Z2, it isn't for you. If you're searching for sculpturesque sounds, or for DX/PPG/Ensoniq style sounds, then you might want to check out Z2.

Cheers,

Urs

Dunc · Post by **Dunc** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:48 am

Some people are stuck in an Analog Squelchy Farty world I'm afraid. I've grown to embrace any software that cut's the mustard in any musical landscape.

Cube 2 is the dogs in it's own realm as far as I'm concerned. Vertigo 2 is the dogs in it's realm and now Zebra is definitively the leader in it's realm.

If you want software to sound like something you already have, what's the point of looking at anything else other than what's already in front of you.

Of course people differ as to what floats their boat but, hey, each to their own, even if they are wrong...

Dunc

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:57 am

lnikj wrote:Both aesthetically and functionally, it is overwhelmingly impressive. It is so rare for a great programmer to also be brilliant at UI design.

Thanks man!

Just to clear things up: I've studied Industrial Design, so I'm a Photoshop/user interface guy in the first place. It just happened to be one of these oddities in life that I found myself developing audio software instead of becoming a 3D modeling drone in the automobile industry (which is the typical career of an industrial designer in Germany if he wants to get a job)

Cheers,

Urs

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 12:04 pm

launch sequence

1x Zebra2 + filterscape,filterscapeq6 and orion delays.

just a chilled noodle thanks for listening