One Synth Challenge #75: PG-8X (Jasinski Wins!)

[wagtunes]

I just bought the Akai mpk88, which is my first ever midi controller after literally 26 years of using my trusty old Korg M1.
Setting it up for MuLab took some digging, but it's actually super easy, once you know. But you need to know a few things about your keyboard. For example, if you have transport controls, which can switch modes from MIDI/MCC to Ctrl, you have to switch those to Ctrl in order for MuLab to pick those up as shortcuts, which is where you link up your transport control (rewind, forward, play/stop, rec). After having figured that out there were no problems at all and it's kinda magical to me still.

Sliders and knobs are setup via a midi learn solution in Mulab that is also quite brilliant. It's all under Map Midi controller. Only slightly weird thing is that if you want to control a whole mixer strip, you have to do that in the "Project > Edit Project Midi input Controller Mapping". I'm not aware of any automatic mapping for keyboards, but somebody else might jump on that.
Let's just say, there's no trouble of hooking up all your keyboard features as far as I can tell. I also love that you can automatically tell the value range you want a controller to handle.

Thanks for the response. I had no problem getting Axiom and even UR28M to work.

I am slowly working my way through the demo and all the copy, paste, yada, yada, yada, housekeeping stuff and it's slowly coming.

What puzzles me, of all things, is the metronome.

There is no first beat accent as in Cubase. Is there any way to add one? I see that you can change the metronome sound itself but that doesn't solve the first beat accent problem.

This may not seem like a big deal but for the coordinated challenged like myself, who can just about keep time as it is, this is a biggie.

I posted about this at the forum but if there is something you can help me with, that would be great.

The stock metronome is ghastly. LOL.

[Taron]

...yeah, you know, I never noticed, or I forgot about it, but that is truly funny. I don't exactly see any immediate way of addressing the first beat accent, but that should be a ridiculously easy fix for Jo.

I don't mind the default tick. The audio bug tick of other sequencers normally gives me nightmares. But you can easily change it to anything you wish it to be.

[wagtunes]

Okay, I decided to remix my track for this month because the first mix was too loud and the kick was obnoxious.

The only change was taking the Limiter6 on the output buss and cranking it down about 8 db and also putting a Limiter6 on the kick itself.

The problem I am having is that the track doesn't seem to want to process on my account. Is this because there is one already there with the same name? If so, do I have to delete the old one?

[mehum]

Okay, I decided to remix my track for this month because the first mix was too loud and the kick was obnoxious.

The only change was taking the Limiter6 on the output buss and cranking it down about 8 db and also putting a Limiter6 on the kick itself.

The problem I am having is that the track doesn't seem to want to process on my account. Is this because there is one already there with the same name? If so, do I have to delete the old one?

Hm, I had this problem as well last month but I don't really know what I did to get around it... I was at a slow internet connection so figured that had something to do with it. Might have been a name issue then. I know I did rename my original track but don't know if that made it suddenly work...

[wagtunes]

Okay, I decided to remix my track for this month because the first mix was too loud and the kick was obnoxious.

The only change was taking the Limiter6 on the output buss and cranking it down about 8 db and also putting a Limiter6 on the kick itself.

The problem I am having is that the track doesn't seem to want to process on my account. Is this because there is one already there with the same name? If so, do I have to delete the old one?

Hm, I had this problem as well last month but I don't really know what I did to get around it... I was at a slow internet connection so figured that had something to do with it. Might have been a name issue then. I know I did rename my original track but don't know if that made it suddenly work...

I renamed the old track and that did it. I guess after this one is approved I can delete the old one.

[mehum]

Okay, I decided to remix my track for this month because the first mix was too loud and the kick was obnoxious.

The only change was taking the Limiter6 on the output buss and cranking it down about 8 db and also putting a Limiter6 on the kick itself.

The problem I am having is that the track doesn't seem to want to process on my account. Is this because there is one already there with the same name? If so, do I have to delete the old one?

Hm, I had this problem as well last month but I don't really know what I did to get around it... I was at a slow internet connection so figured that had something to do with it. Might have been a name issue then. I know I did rename my original track but don't know if that made it suddenly work...

I renamed the old track and that did it. I guess after this one is approved I can delete the old one.

Yeah, that's what I did

[wagtunes]

Okay, I decided to remix my track for this month because the first mix was too loud and the kick was obnoxious.

The only change was taking the Limiter6 on the output buss and cranking it down about 8 db and also putting a Limiter6 on the kick itself.

The problem I am having is that the track doesn't seem to want to process on my account. Is this because there is one already there with the same name? If so, do I have to delete the old one?

Hm, I had this problem as well last month but I don't really know what I did to get around it... I was at a slow internet connection so figured that had something to do with it. Might have been a name issue then. I know I did rename my original track but don't know if that made it suddenly work...

I renamed the old track and that did it. I guess after this one is approved I can delete the old one.

Yeah, that's what I did

Will I have to contact BJ to have him look at my resubmission or is that something that automatically gets cued up for him to check?

[mehum]

Just add the new track to the group, I think...
And perhaps write another announcement here with the link and everything. Or edit the old one, I guess.

[wagtunes]

Hopefully, I'm doing this right.

Here is the link for my updated track for OSC 75.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... ack-osc-76

The site renamed the file name from 75 to 76 but the actual name of the track shows 75. Don't know if that matters.

Again, only changes were...

1) Adding Limiter6 plugin to the kick drum track.

2) Dropping the volume of the Limiter6 on the output buss.

Everything else is the same as the initial submission. Levels are much better now.

[Mojo42]

Good luck and great to see happy ending to this story!

Thanks Good luck to you too. Concerning the happy end of the story....hm I still can get a creative blockade
Or other horrible things might happen, but I hope that nothing bad will happen and that I can finish my track this month. At least one thing is for sure a happy end: No automatically incidentally track muting anymore and hopefully no stuttering anymore.

Hm, Reaper is almost twice the price of Mulab from what I see

Reaper has two price tiers:

$225: full commercial license.
$60: discounted license.

You may use the discounted license if any of the following is true:

You are an individual, using REAPER only for personal use.
You are an individual or business, using REAPER for commercial use, and the yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000.
You are an educational or non-profit organization.


So actually, Reaper is cheaper than MuLAB. And it can also be installed portable and ran from USB stick, too.

Yep I know. I already looked up all this informations. But the main problem here (for me) is: I had already very huge problems in using this damned complicated Cubase. I`m a beginner and partially it was really like hell the last months to simply get anything worked in Cubase. I always had to watch video tutorials the whole day long for to understand how I can make anything at all there. When I started to check out Reaper I have read that the routing is even more complicated than in Cubase. Well I had no idea that this could actually be possible but it seems that it is possible. And that was the reason why I chose Mulab and not Reaper.

Reaper is something I could deal with later with more off time. But for the moment Mulab makes a quick change possible and that was the main thing.

Do you need more information?

No, that's perfect! Your laptop certainly has plenty of might, so that should have no troubles at all. Your PC is probably somewhat in trouble, but when I started using MuLab my machine wasn't even that strong, so.... I shouldn't be surprised that you're having a good time now!

I'm very happy for you and am looking very much forward to your OSC song!

Ah that`s good to know, I mean that you pc even was worse and that you neverthless could work with Mulab. Cool
For the case that I get problems I could still switch to my laptop, that should work for sure.

Today I made a break from song production because of all this writing here and via pm and email and such *lol*. But tomorrow I will be silent and working again

@Wagtunes: I suppose your questions are all answered so far. I didn`t listen your new version of your track. I actually found it already very well when I listened it first time.

I will listen and comment the OSC tracks mostlikely first when I will have finished my own track because each minute counts up from now for me

[actioncat]

Okay I will have to make my experiances now with my brandnew DAW ( ) and hope that everything will run smooth up from now. There is enough time left for finishing my track if no new problems will appear.

Hey that's awesome! Glad you managed to figure everything out and still have time for a song

Mulab looks pretty interesting, I looked it up last night after all this talk of it. I might give it a try myself sometime...

[mehum]

Name: Not Quite PG-13

The story:
Last month I made a rather lengthy track with quite a lot of components so this time I wanted to go a simpler route.
I set the goal at ~20 instances (ha!) and to have very few musical components and more "air".
The first four bar idea, consisting of a beat, bass line (later reduced), melody and chord stabs, was made with Caustic3 on the bus from work.
In my comments for DX7 I occasionally beat down on reverb use and gimicky effects. My track this month uses lots of reverb and a few gimicky effects
I have not so much relied on EQ to shape the sounds (cymbals is one big exception though...) but rather quite a lot of layering.
I found PG-8X quite fun to work with, especially exploring the SYNC modes. Didn't have a single crash and CPU was never a problem. ~25-30% hit at the end after making 8 patches of piano.
My original goals were not quite met, much because of layering, but I think I've made a much simpler track this time. I obsessed a bit about mixing and piano noise but in the end I'm quite happy with the result.

Many thanks to Taron and Mojo42 for listening and giving very valuable advice as well as motivation!

As usual my mastering is not very deep. I'm a loudness war protester
This means you might want to use the volume knob. DR:8 and RMS -10DbFS according to Algorithmix.

I hope you enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/neophile/not-quite-pg-13

DAW: Reaper 4.78 (+ Caustic3 on Android on which I made the original four bar idea)
PG-8X instances: 37

Other plugins:
ReaComp, ReaEQ, A1StereoControl, IVGI, Voxengo SPAN, SPAN, SPAN, SPAN, SPAN, MuVerb, epicVerb, Sanford Delay, ReaDelay, SPAN, SlickEQ, Kotelnikov, SPAN, SPAN and Limiter No6.
Oh, and SPAN.

Automation: Lots... Volume automation for reverb and delay sends, VCF Freg and Resonance automations, EQ automations, Pitch automations for SYNC:ed oscillators, master level automations for tracks and sends, pan automations... Maybe something else. Reaper track list is a mess...

Patches: Mostly my own creations except one layer of the snares (mostly heard as fills) which is a modified version of Mojo42:s brush snare.
The piano patches which originated from the Sound on Sound article but has been slightly altered.
Cymbal patches also from theories explained in SOS.
Both from SOS articles in the excellent Synth Secret series ( http://www.soundonsound.com/search?url= ... ummary=Yes ).

Things that may be of interest:
The Cymbal (which is almost Gong-like) has 4 layers of X-MODded oscillators but needs EQ automation to really work decently. Perhaps it's a little bit outside the spirit of the rules
I had quite a bit of noise problems with my piano. With only 12 voices and a considerable release time there were all sorts of problems so I had to split my MIDI in four and duplicate my piano tracks to get it to work. So piano is actually 8 instances of PG-8X (each piano is 2 layers) which basically make the voice count 48...
Almost everything is programmed this time around. I suck at playing shuffle I actually think I only played one part which barely survived in the end, and I recorded it at half speed...

Project file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ws3hx84kzyrvr ... 3.RPP?dl=0

Final note: For various reasons I will not keep up my Soundcloud commenting this month. I will gladly give you hateful and/or helpful comments via PM for anyone interested.

EDIT: Screwed up the track name on Soundcloud, now fixed...

[EvilDragon]

When I started to check out Reaper I have read that the routing is even more complicated than in Cubase. Well I had no idea that this could actually be possible but it seems that it is possible. And that was the reason why I chose Mulab and not Reaper.

Routing in Reaper is actually easier IMHO than in Cubase. It's also way more flexible, since there are no track types. MuLAB is basically modular, so its routing is au pair with Reaper, except it's a different workflow (patch cables and stuff in MUX, pin matrix in Reaper).

[mehum]

When I started to check out Reaper I have read that the routing is even more complicated than in Cubase. Well I had no idea that this could actually be possible but it seems that it is possible. And that was the reason why I chose Mulab and not Reaper.

Routing in Reaper is actually easier IMHO than in Cubase. It's also way more flexible, since there are no track types. MuLAB is basically modular, so its routing is au pair with Reaper, except it's a different workflow (patch cables and stuff in MUX, pin matrix in Reaper).

Agreed, Reaper routing is advanced, not complicated. And still, I rarely use the matrix. I just drag from the track send in the mixer to a track. Very easy.

[Taron]

In MuLab routing is actually extremely easy and open without any hoops to jump through. You just add a mixing rack when you want and it's universal. You can use it as instrument channel, add your effects into it, or you can use it as bus with effects only, without having to declare a thing. If you want a rack with an instrument to send to an effects rack, you just choose Send to your effects rack. No cables, no weird steps or hidden procedures and no searching around, really.
In the beginning that was weird to me, because I was so used to a predefined mixer unit, limited to specific bus channels and so forth. Now I'd go crazy without that freedom it offers!
On top of that you can go nuts with the MUX stuff, going straight into the belly of the beast and design its internal workflow yourself, if you like. Essentially, where you're normally running into walls, you can just walk right in and make things happen according to your imagination and ingenuity. But normally you really don't have to. It's fun, though!

@mehum
I absolutely love your song! Such a bouncy and relaxing start with all that complicated mayhem buzzing around it. It does have a certain classic synth-demo feel to it, but after 2:40 it totally goes stellar! Feels a wee bit submerged in reverbs, but it clears them beautifully, especially at 3:40... fantastic splash!