One Synth Challenge #86: Sinnah by NUSofting (Penguinfromdeep wins!)

[DruMunkey]

Okey Dokey, here goes... This one is a little weird...

1) First,be gentle... I'm new at this. I installed Reaper like 2 months ago. This is the first time I've ever actually recorded anything...
2) This is a live, improv, unedited performance... OK, so that's different... But it gets better/weirder...
3) This was played on my e-drums... Yea, I'm going to be a huge hit at parties with this... Combining the best parts of what people love about never-ending drum solos AND synth solos... Basically what you have here is the output of my crazy idea of building a synth interface based around percussion. Imagine if when Mr. Moog built his synth, and all those people were telling him not to put a keyboard on it, and Herb Deutsch came along and was a drummer and not a keyboard player... So there's no "sequences" in this. The sticks never leave my hands. All the transitions, etc. are all done via midi crap that triggered with the drums... So yea, I'm growing an ulcer farm trying to build my own Ableton Push / Launchpad but using drums... Eventually I want to get to the point where I can move to analog hardware and do live improve modular synth techno, but with no knob twiddling or button pushing... The entire man/machine interface will be where humans started making music... Beating on shit with sticks.
4) Reaper is really not the right tool for this, but it's servin' it's purpose in how flexible it is... Eventually I'll be moving to something Usine...

https://soundcloud.com/drumunkey/drumunkey-flungpoo-1

Details (there's a lot, butif you listen to the whole thing, you'll have time... ):

Windows 10-64
Reaper 5
Like 9 live instances of Sinnah
A Piz's MidiNote repeater (because I don't have a prehensile tail per my nom-de-forum)
FX/EQ/Stuff (I mostly saw what other people were using and copied them.. There's some cool free stuff out there!
* camelCrusher
* XFER's: Dimension Expander, OTT (no idea what this is doing, but it's kinda cool),
* Reaper's: JSExciter,Louderizer,ReaDelay, a crap-load of other JS stuff to do the Mighty CC Morphing Power Ranger stuff, etc. etc.
* OldSkoolVerb
* ReaComp
* RoughRider
* Again, LinPlug's RMV, but just to play the recorded Sinnah voices with my drums... No pitching or envelop work was done in LinPlug (or anywhere else per the rules, just lots and lots of EQ/Compression/filtering which all seems to be Kosher
A few "interesting" points...

* The lead/solo synth voice is actually morphing (i.e. all Sinnah's parameters are constantly changing) between the voices that are used for the other parts, including the drums... Stick around until the end (I know...) and there's a little outtro solo where you can actually here the drum sounds (or at least the basics thereof before they were EQ'd/comped/filtered all to hell to actually sound more like drums)
* Because I'm using my crap onboard audio card, AND I need low latency (because playing midi drums with lag is not fun), and because there's a shit-load of CC's flying around, I needed to be "creative" with the drums... Not that this is going to come close to winning anything, but the rules say you can freeze tracks to save CPU, so I did that with the drum sounds then I used LinPlu RMV to actually trigger them. But they are EXACTLY how they would have been coming out of Sinnah... After like 10 layers of processing which I think everyone else is doing, sooooo... Cool?
* while I said there are no pre-built sequences, or midi loops, I want to be a little more clear... There's an arpeggio plugin here or there, and for the lead solo parts, there are sequences of notes assigned to pads on my OctaPad (old SKOOL!!!) but all the rhythm is done by my playing...
* Changes, chords, filter sweeps, stoner pleasing reverbs, etc. are all triggered or controlled by my playing the drums... Sometimes play faster, CC moves faster, etc.

Anyhoo...

P.S. Is there a boobie prize for the longest entry?

[RuediRena]

Just uploaded after some extended debugging of one obstinate hanging note. Problem solved after changing one of the snare sounds from mono to poly.

Here it is. Expecting to come out last so ...

https://soundcloud.com/ruedirena/popsid ... -spoon-mix

DAW: Reaper under Ubuntu Studio/Wine
Sinnah: 14 instances
FX: ReaEQ, TDR Nova EQ, Kjaerhus Classic Compressor, Bitsonic Violent Delay, TAL Dub II Delay (No modulation!), U-HE Protoverb, TAL Reverb II, JS Transient Driven Autopan, Maxwell Smart Limiter, Nick Crow Lab Tube Driver

[bjporter]

My OSC86 track is a small cinematic track for Polynaut



Polynaut - An Adventure Game With Three Possible Endings + the OSC Soundtrack

I decided to do a last minute game jam to motivate me to finish my song... however... as it turns out I didn't have time to work on the song, as I was polishing the game. It worked out overall... the tune adds a touching tone to the game.




More info about the game + Game Download

The game was made using blender, gimp, and a 3D game engine. I made the trees, shrubbery, island / terrain. The game is meant to be finished in a few minutes, and hopefully is an interesting / strange journey. I spent a long time tweaking the visual fidelity, and adding subtle, or interesting effects that fit into one cohesive style (sans the crappy top layer of terrain).

Downloads:
Mac 64bit download
Windows 64bit download

Soundtrack (Made 100% with Sinnah):
https://soundcloud.com/bjporter/bjporte ... uff-part-1

[Taron]

Hahaha, BJ, that's such a surprise to me! ...very funny somehow, that you get pulled into making a little game and then post it here, too, and post no info on your song (?!). I had no idea you'd do such a thing. But making a little game compo would be fun, too, hehehehehe. One of these days I'll go for it, maybe at ludum dare or gamejam.

Anyway, looks pretty! ...not sure what to do, other than walking around and finding "those damn electrons?!?", hahaha. But the atmosphere is very unique!

[bjporter]

Anyway, looks pretty! ...not sure what to do, other than walking around and finding "those damn electrons?!?", hahaha. But the atmosphere is very unique!

Hehe, not much to talk about with the sinnah sountrack... just violin and bass string sections? hehe.

But really, can you find the other 2 endings of the game?????

EDIT: Hold down shift to run!!!!! really helps

[Taron]

Oh yes, I found that out right away...guess I'm too much of a gamer for too long!
(running to the "First Ending" also has "The third ending" overlapping in text...guess that's mildly a bug of sorts!?)

[Ridan]

@bjporter
Loving this game so far. The music fits well with it. Convincing strings too. Kudos for being able to grasp Unity lol. I've tried making games with it multiple times but got way too frustrated and had to stop before i punched my screen. Have anymore games by any chance?

[doctorbob]

Hey Brian!

I used to use Terragen for making nice landscapes with good clouds, water, etc ... I found it great for creating fly throughs as well to get a good feel of the generated terrains. Very much before the later generations came out though, so used lots of add-in utilites etc at the time.

http://planetside.co.uk/

Did one animation for a 360 degree by 270 degree "immersive system". Basically a projection INTO what looked like a very large satellite dish - I forget the name now. Need 4 images per frame which had to be transformed and glued ... was also playing with haptics at the same time for "feeling" 3D archaeological artefacts (3D VR stuff!).

Also built myself a small render farm from a dozen old discarded PC's and a hub!

dB

PS Check the image gallery and be blown away http://planetside.co.uk/galleries/terragen-gallery

[bjporter]

@bjporter
Loving this game so far. The music fits well with it. Convincing strings too. Kudos for being able to grasp Unity lol. I've tried making games with it multiple times but got way too frustrated and had to stop before i punched my screen. Have anymore games by any chance?

Hey there, and thanku.

What about it was frustrating? It was terrible for me until I found a hack to force it to use OpenGL. Before that it was slow as molasses in the editor. I can give you some pointers.

-The trees / shrubbery in the game I made by following this course (the photo is deceptive, it's not a green tree he makes): https://www.udemy.com/make-a-low-poly-a ... /learn/v4/
-Repetition is a good way to learn (course to make 6 games): https://www.udemy.com/make-mobile-games ... /learn/v4/
-Aand this one: https://www.udemy.com/unity-professiona ... 4/overview

I haven't used too many game engines, usually just frameworks. My only games are ones I'm learning... UNLESS you wanna play the obnoxious Meow Breaker (brick breaker game). I sorta made for a game jam.

[bjporter]

Did one animation for a 360 degree by 270 degree "immersive system". Basically a projection INTO what looked like a very large satellite dish - I forget the name now. Need 4 images per frame which had to be transformed and glued ... was also playing with haptics at the same time for "feeling" 3D archaeological artefacts (3D VR stuff!).

Also built myself a small render farm from a dozen old discarded PC's and a hub!

dB

PS Check the image gallery and be blown away http://planetside.co.uk/galleries/terragen-gallery

I think i said it before - you need to write your story. You've done some cool stuff Doc!

Terragen looks nice and there's a free version . I'm curious how to handle level of detail LOD, and other optimization gizmos. Thanks for the info.

[doctorbob]

One day Brian, one day I'll write up the cool stuff. Do I start with doing recordings of single sensory nerve cells. Used different strength of stimulus and analysed the nerve spike trains to work out what a transfer function would look like as that info was processed by the CNS to make decisions. Early neural network stuff I suppose, but with real nerves - in um .. 1971! Had to build electronics, write programs etc to make it all work. Had the FET stage on a micromanipulator, and the input was linked directly to the electrode inside a micropipette - tip diameter too small to see - getting fluid inside meant boiling at near vacuum for 24 hours to overcome surface tension fx etc. Also made the pipettes myself as well - had a neat puller gizmo.

Oh well, back to the more mundane, but also fun .... voting!!!!!!!!!!

Oh yes, give terragen a go ... even if only for fun and making cool graphics for your OSC entries! of course, another York Uni grad made good!

dB

[actioncat]

damn April must've grew another day when I wasn't looking or something...
I could've sworn there was no 30th when I submitted my track at like 5.30 am the night of the 29th/morning of (what I thought was) the 1st...

that's why I said "I hope it's not too late" lol
or maybe I thought it was the 30tth when it was the 29th.
I could've used another day to clean up a few last minute things too. ha wtf

[bjporter]

damn April must've grew another day when I wasn't looking or something...
I could've sworn there was no 30th when I submitted my track at like 5.30 am the night of the 29th/morning of (what I thought was) the 1st...

that's why I said "I hope it's not too late" lol
or maybe I thought it was the 30tth when it was the 29th.
I could've used another day to clean up a few last minute things too. ha wtf

Ah crud, i shoulda said someting. At least you're in though!

[liqih]

One day Brian, one day I'll write up the cool stuff. Do I start with doing recordings of single sensory nerve cells. Used different strength of stimulus and analysed the nerve spike trains to work out what a transfer function would look like as that info was processed by the CNS to make decisions. Early neural network stuff I suppose, but with real nerves - in um .. 1971! Had to build electronics, write programs etc to make it all work. Had the FET stage on a micromanipulator, and the input was linked directly to the electrode inside a micropipette - tip diameter too small to see - getting fluid inside meant boiling at near vacuum for 24 hours to overcome surface tension fx etc. Also made the pipettes myself as well - had a neat puller gizmo.

dB

Hey db, what's this sci-fi kind of stuff!? You got me terribly curious, <wink>
BTW I also used Terragen for fun years ago, to make weird landscapes and put objects in,
those made with TrueSpace 3D.

(BTW ok for the vibrato, previous message)

[actioncat]

Ah crud, i shoulda said someting. At least you're in though!

lol it's okay, at least I'm in indeed

And hey what a cool month of people doing interesting things, with your video game and DruMunky's song improv'd entirely on a crazy drumkit setup

Sinnah seems to have inspired everyone to do some really cool stuff all around, I love it!