One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread

[photonic]

Hi all,

Thirst I want to thank crimsonwarlock for his very kind words about my playing and style. You made my day, bro!

I think it is no surprise that I will vote (and I allready have voted) for "no sampling". Even the kick is not so importand for my sytle as for EDM, I love to try create a quite realistic drum sound. I allways work hard on kick, snare, hats and crash and - luckily - most of the time I was satisfied with the results. Similar as crimsonwarlock, I see the variations or the inconsistencies of the drum sounds a s part of the "realism". On the other hand, I have no experience with sampling - so maybe I am just afraid to use it

"real performance-style tracks are pretty rare in the OSC ": yes and no. In nearly every OSC I found some tracks which are not EDM-oriented. Listen to Bzur, Skyzone or Irion, just to name a few. Personally I would like to hear more performance-style tracks, but I like the style-mix here in OSC as it is. Different styles needs different sounds. And I am allways surprised what kind of sounds I can hear each month in other tracks. It allways proofes me to be wrong, thinking, that I know what the synth can do!

[crimsonwarlock]

Thirst I want to thank crimsonwarlock for his very kind words about my playing and style. You made my day, bro!

Well, it's no secret I'm a fan of your OSC tracks. Secretly I'm hoping we can do a colab one day

I think it is no surprise that I will vote (and I allready have voted) for "no sampling". Even the kick is not so importand for my sytle as for EDM, I love to try create a quite realistic drum sound. I allways work hard on kick, snare, hats and crash and - luckily - most of the time I was satisfied with the results. Similar as crimsonwarlock, I see the variations or the inconsistencies of the drum sounds a s part of the "realism".

Using sampling for the drums would indeed bring another challenge; how to have a nice live-sounding drumtrack instead of just 'hammering that one sound' Besides that, using a sample does not mean that it will be easy to get a good kick-sound in the first place. After all, what I suggest is just a rendition of the synth patch, nothing more.

On the other hand, I have no experience with sampling - so maybe I am just afraid to use it

I'm pretty sure that's it

"real performance-style tracks are pretty rare in the OSC ": yes and no. In nearly every OSC I found some tracks which are not EDM-oriented. Listen to Bzur, Skyzone or Irion, just to name a few. Personally I would like to hear more performance-style tracks, but I like the style-mix here in OSC as it is. Different styles needs different sounds. And I am allways surprised what kind of sounds I can hear each month in other tracks. It allways proofes me to be wrong, thinking, that I know what the synth can do!

By 'real performance tracks' I obviously did not mean 'non-EDM', there have been some very impressive orchestral and movie-score like tracks. I obviously meant styles that are normally played as a band-performance; jazz, rock (especially progrock), blues, etc. I think we can all agree that those styles are extremely rare in the OSC. So far the only tracks with clear jazz(rock) influences I can point out are by you I'm sure I've missed some made by others, but not being able to recall those directly actually underlines my point.

[V'ger]

In today's world of DAWs and plugins, you'll be hard pressed to find competitions that's not dominated by hand writing, quantization etc and not the old-style 'performance-to-tape', especially on sites like here.

And not sure EDM dominates so much in OSC. In my opinion it's mostly the ambient/chillout tracks that do the best. But I agree that musical style is a big factor in voting, but it's natural and many don't hide that fact either. Maybe it's a bit the same for yourself too when it comes down to it.

Sometimes it's a bit painful to watch top (imo) tracks not get what they deserve due to unpopular styles like for example IIRS with Dubstep in OSC 35 Diva, or QuadrupleA chip tune in OSC 56 Mono/Fury etc, but generally I would still say the best tracks generally rise to the top.

But a bit ironic that you strive to keep things organic and live and are forced to use a sampler instead of the original instrument in real time. Hopefully a computer upgrade is not far away.

[V'ger]

By the way, all have a look at the stunning number of plays the Diva tracks have by going to its track page at Archive.org and check the download number in the lower right corner. It's currently at 7,151 downloads (either downloads or plays) which is incredible. Add to that 2000-3000 plays which were on the counter before it was reset due to track renaming during the player upgrade, and even the number of plays the tracks had when they were at SoundCloud before they were moved to archive so it's quite impressive overall.

Other OSCs don't have quite the same number of plays as the Diva one, but still in the thousands generally so there are a lot of people checking out the tracks which is nice to know. Neither the site nor the Archive.org page have any sort of statistical gathering so I have no clue how many unique visitors there are or whatever but you get some idea by the number of plays like that.

[crimsonwarlock]

In today's world of DAWs and plugins, you'll be hard pressed to find competitions that's not dominated by hand writing, quantization etc and not the old-style 'performance-to-tape', especially on sites like here.

Well, there are a lot of musicians who are actually playing instruments and use a DAW for recording and producing. We just don't see those much here, as the VST-scene is dominated by mouse-jockeys in general. Mind you, I regard composers that are using their mouse as their instrument still musicians. But we should not forget that there are also people (like me) that hate mousing and enjoy playing their music on keys, drum-pads and the like (I also play a WX5 ).

And not sure EDM dominates so much in OSC. In my opinion it's mostly the ambient/chillout tracks that do the best.

I agree, both EDM and 'dance-related' are bad monikers for what I meant to say. I think it's clear by now what I actually meant.

But I agree that musical style is a big factor in voting, but it's natural and many don't hide that fact either. Maybe it's a bit the same for yourself too when it comes down to it.

I did say it's not a secret I'm biased myself as well. However, I tend to rate based on composition, sound design and production, regardless of style.

But a bit ironic that you strive to keep things organic and live and are forced to use a sampler instead of the original instrument in real time.

Well, possibly ironic, but at the same time based on my setup with a drum-pad controller (and pretty soon a sticks-based drum-bed setup).

Hopefully a computer upgrade is not far away.

I could get a much more powerful computer right now. It's the whole song and dance of actually moving all my hardware-controllers (CME UF5, Roland RD-150, Alesis Vortex, Yamaha WX5, Kort padKontrol, Tascam US-2400) onto a new system. I'm also contemplating to move to Linux for my DAW when I jump to a new system, and that doesn't make this a quick fix in any scenario

[crimsonwarlock]

Neither the site nor the Archive.org page have any sort of statistical gathering so I have no clue how many unique visitors there are or whatever but you get some idea by the number of plays like that.

I tend to post a link to a particular OSC when we are discussing a certain synth in my freeware topic on the reaper forum

[bjporter]

By the way, all have a look at the stunning number of plays the Diva tracks have by going to its track page at Archive.org and check the download number in the lower right corner. It's currently at 7,151 downloads (either downloads or plays) which is incredible. Add to that 2000-3000 plays which were on the counter before it was reset due to track renaming during the player upgrade, and even the number of plays the tracks had when they were at SoundCloud before they were moved to archive so it's quite impressive overall.

Other OSCs don't have quite the same number of plays as the Diva one, but still in the thousands generally so there are a lot of people checking out the tracks which is nice to know. Neither the site nor the Archive.org page have any sort of statistical gathering so I have no clue how many unique visitors there are or whatever but you get some idea by the number of plays like that.

That's wonderful.

[tonedef71]

I submitted my votes for the latest rules polls, and for the most part, I like the rules the way they already are. I did have a few comments to add to the discussion.

[1] More prizes based on the number of participants (still enforcing the one entry per participant/team rule); this is of course, provided that there are enough prizes available to award:

# of participating entries => # of prizes
0-1 => 0 (obviously)
2-4 => 1
5-9 => 2
10-14 => 3
15-19 => 4
20-39 => 5
40-59 => 6
60-79 => 7
80-99 => 8
100+ => 10

I'm not sure if the prize donors would still be as generous month-to-month, if this became the new prize policy. Some winners forego their prizes altogether, so it is hard to know what the impact would truly be.
---
[2] I think we should continue to disallow cover tunes, but we should only disallow original songs that have been included in a vote for a previous KVR OSC. If an original song was re-tracted before the voting began for an OSC (e.g. to meet the one entry per participant/team rule), I think it is eligible to be re-worked and re-entered into a new OSC.
---
[3] One way to level the playing field is to take a more purist approach to the OSC by prohibiting the use of all external effects (including those built-in or bundled with a DAW). All previously allowed external effects such as delay, chorus, formant filters, distortion, saturation, etc. are not allowed unless they are built-in to the synth of the month. Leveling the playing field this way would help to distinguish the excellent synth preset programming part of sound design from post-processing wizardry.

One compromise to this rule would be to allow the use of a few effects for mixing and mastering: a reverb, a multi-band EQ, and a compressor/limiter should do it. These three allowed mixing/mastering effects would have to be voted on and endorsed by the KVR OSC community. These three allowed mixing/mastering plugins must be freely available and usable by all. Cross-platform, multi-format plugins would be ideal, but this is probably not always possible, so we would have to select the eligible plug-ins for every combination: 32-bit/64-bit/VST/AAX/RTAS/Direct-X/Windows/OS-X/Linux/etc. This is probably easier said, than done, I would suspect.

NOTE: An even-more equalizing rule would be to require everyone to use the same free DAW (e.g. Reaper). However, I think this rule would be a bit too much to ask of folks: learning how to use an unfamiliar set of free effect plug-ins is, at the very least, inconvenient; learning the workflow for an unfamiliar DAW can be quite burdensome.

[ThePresent]

Reaper is not "free"

[tonedef71]

Reaper is not "free"

True, but Reaper is "free to try" for 60 days, and that's just long enough to participate in a KVR OSC (I suppose a less-than-scrupulous person could evaluate each new release of Reaper for another 60 days).

Similarly, a commercial VSTi (Spectral) was recently allowed as the synth of the month because the trial period was just long enough to cover the December contest.

[bjporter]

[1] More prizes ... [Do challenges normally give out beyond 3rd place? I think having top 5 is already quite generous, no?]
[2] I think we should continue to disallow cover tunes, but we should only disallow original songs that have been included in a vote for a previous KVR OSC....[Has anyone re-done a song in a previous OSC?]
[3] One way to level the playing field is to take a more purist approach to the OSC by prohibiting the use of all external effects ...[This rule would be like a coup de tat, it'll receive very strong opposition I think. OSC is already quite difficult, and with this restriction it will limit the quality of the songs? I am one of the people who do a fair amount of processing, and that's why I like the OSC - it's a bit of everything - like a triathlon. With just the synth, I may not even like the entries coming out either.]

One compromise to this rule would be to allow the use of a few effects for mixing and mastering: a reverb, a multi-band EQ, and a compressor/limiter should do it....[Like SDCOMPO sortof right? I guess this is one of the things that sets OSC apart from SDCOMPO besides the tracker rule.]



NOTE: An even-more equalizing rule would be to require everyone to use the same free DAW (e.g. Reaper)... [AGREED - a bit too much to ask for]

[Aiynzahev]

No external effects - No, as said it's already challenging enough.
use free DAW - Absolutely not. Repear is not free, even if it were I cannot get on with it. This would kill the OSC.

[V'ger]

Cheers for the pointers tonedef71. The number of prizes are already according to number of entries but limited to 5 as you know, so it's a logical step to go beyond that and at almost necessary at some point if the number of entires should be extremely high. Or maybe is already, not sure..

About cover tunes I would like to allow them, always have. (as long as they are not violating any copyright rules of course)

Limiting external effect is a common topic so know well where you are coming from, but voted down when it's been in a poll as it's just not been the view of the majority so far. Would make for dry tracks is my fear..

[idfpower]

I have nothing against re-entering an unfinished song in a future OSC, but I'll be honest about it: chances for that song to get a good mark from me are very, very slim - 'cause you know what: if you haven't finished the darn song, why the heck are you submitting it?

Regarding no external effects allowed, feel free to listen to my "Synth Demo Sessions" songs on Soundcloud and remove in you mind the drums (which are samples) - that's exactly how OSC songs will sound without external effects Truth be told, all software based music is heavily relying on effects - without them, everything will sound tiny, crude and "bedroom studio" quality - just like my tracks

As for covers: again - hell no. For the record: you are not allowed to modify someone else's song without the author's ok. The only exception (afaik) is that if your cover is exactly the same as the original - so you don't change a note/beat. Thus in the first case it would be (kind of) illegal to submit modified cover songs, and in the other case it would be pointless - what are you actually doing? Getting the song in MIDI format and then just replacing the instruments/tracks with the OSC synth's sounds? Where's the skill in that?

My 2 cents, anyway I know these kind of comments are not going to make me popular around here, but I prefer to be honest and speak my mind I sleep better this way

[V'ger]

I think all copyrights go away as soon as the author has been dead 70 years or something like that. So not much music you can cover from recent times, but from the classical and folk scene etc the selection is already huge..

Remember one of the first (the very first?) synth albums (and surely first one synth only) was in fact "Switched-On Bach", covering Bach's classics with a Moog modular by Walter Carlos in 1969, so covering oldies with a synth is sort of fitting in my opinion.