Bazille - most misunderstood synth?

[zenophilix]

That total 30K is from 15 plugins, so not an apples to apples ratio
with one Synthmaster. I don't own Synthmaster, but the player presets
seem to include a higher-than-average percentage of interesting/useful
musical sounds. I'll probably buy it in 2018 or so.

If brevity is the essence of wit, there is something to be said for
quality over quantity. I'm not a sound designer, just minor
modifications, and it does take time sorting out the best ones.
Cheers

Ohhh, right, misunderstood what you meant when you said u-he folders.

[ghettosynth]

No, it's not that I haven't programmed FM synths much. It's that I grew up with them. I owned a DX7 for close to 30 years before I sold it. I don't see FM as being difficult

I didn't say that you saw it as difficult, I said that many people do, and at that, simply that it's more difficult than typical subtractive synthesis or other straightforward forms of source generation. I really have no idea what is so difficult to understand about this idea.

This is the most absurd argument ever on KVR. This isn't even my argument, the same discussion has been going around for decades and if you had a DX7 for that long then you'd know that. I'm simply stating what has been well understood. I wonder how much time you've actually spent talking to typical musicians?

I feel like these discussions, and not just here, are about people wanting to assert that they're up to the task, that it's not above them. That they somehow feel insulted that someone else might be thinking that something is hard for them to do.

Virtually every article on FM synthesis talks about how to wrap your head around how the spectrum changes as you change the modulation frequency and level. There has been article after article on how to "simplify" fm programming. There are posts on KVR, on Gearslutz, even on Reddit about trying to understand FM synthesis. The equivalent explanation about the spectrum of traditional analog oscillators are typically explained in a sentence or two.

The Bazille manual does an ok job of explaining PD and FM as they relate to the Bazille oscillators, but, it's not done in a few sentences.

Let's see how Gordon Reid explains the sawtooth wave in, wait for it, part one of his synth secrets series.

So let's apply these ideas to a synthesizer. Look at the waveform in Figure 6. You would never get this from a plucked string, but you'll find an approximation to it on almost every synthesizer ever built. It's an ideal 'sawtooth' wave, so named because of its shape.

This waveform has a simple harmonic relationship, expressed as follows:

Every harmonic is present, and the amplitude of the nth harmonic is 1/n times that of the fundamental.

In fact, wag, we don't have to look far on KVR to find a comment from you about how you feel about FM synths.

For certain sounds, like bells, certain types of keys, etc. yes. But for the most part, no. I find the FM sound too harsh and/or sterile. I almost never go for an FM pad over an analog one. Leads? Sometimes, but not often.

Basically, not an FM fan, which is why I have only one FM based plugin (FM8) and have never made a library for an FM synth.

I'm thinking that you don't actually understand FM as well as you want everyone to believe.
I use FM for pads all the time. It's one of the best ways to get complex evolving spectra with few modulation sources. It's rather a cliche to claim that FM is harsh/sterile. It's rather easy to breath live into an FM patch because of the complex relationships between input parameters and timbre. Modern FM synths, FM8 and certainly Bazille, have filters. In the case of Bazille, the filter is rather high quality. Of course, FM8, not so much. The value of filters on FM synths is huge, in fact because it allows you to tame the extremes.

The editors at sound on sound referred to the math involved as "scary"

https://web.archive.org/web/20160404062 ... /synth.htm

Last month, we examined the frankly scary maths allowing you to predict the audible effects of Frequency Modulation.

Well, personally, I don't think the maths are all that scary, however, many people do. In fact, we can make a reasonable argument that most people are intimidated by math at this level. If you have any exposure at all to college curriculum then you would know this as well.

But, don't take my word for it, let me quote Gordon Reid, who, by the way, spent an entire article on talking about the math and an entire second article talking about how to use the math.

At this point, you might be thinking that there's nothing too complicated about this FM malarkey (apart from maybe the maths), but like most things in life, it's not as straightforward as it might appear. The integer C:M ratios are relatively straightforward because they produce harmonic waveforms with the fundamental (which, by the way, may not be the loudest component) at the Carrier frequency. But these are special cases, and there is an infinite range of non-integer ratios from which to choose. I'll leave it to you to work out the spectrum of, for example, a 1:1.2138754 C:M ratio but, clearly, the resulting sound will be completely enharmonic. Not only that, but the Carrier will no longer be the lowest frequency in the spectrum.

So, Gordon Reid is telling you that it's not straightforward to determine the spectrum of a single FM operator with non integer ratios and we haven't even started talking about what is the spectrum of chains of operators or operators with feedback.

Of course, musicians just use synths and there is always some compromise between deeply understanding synthesis and just developing intuition, but, that's all that I'm saying here. That developing intuition about FM synthesis is more difficult than it is for other forms precisely because of the complex relationship between inputs and spectrum. For samples, the spectrum is whatever the sample is, we are done. For additive synths, we determine the spectrum with linear mixing, musicians grok that fairly easily. For analog oscillators, the spectrum is well defined.

There you go, Gordon Reid explains the harmonic content of the sawtooth in a few sentences but takes two entire articles, mostly centered about math, where he gives you some answers to the spectrum of an FM operator but leaves the rest as a homework assignment.

This isn't about me, nor is it about you, but, if you think that those two ideas are equally difficult then you are either dishonest or you simply don't understand one or both of them to begin with.

If what I'm saying isn't obvious to you, then you are misinterpreting what I'm saying.

[wagtunes]

Snip

If what I'm saying isn't obvious to you, then you are misinterpreting what I'm saying.

No, I get it. And that's the last I'm going to comment on this subject because, quite honestly, it's just not worth anymore of my time.

[ghettosynth]

Snip

If what I'm saying isn't obvious to you, then you are misinterpreting what I'm saying.

No, I get it. And that's the last I'm going to comment on this subject because, quite honestly, it's just not worth anymore of my time.

Is it really so hard to admit that I have a point? Cmon, I can't believe that you don't remember how people were talking about how counterintuitive FM programming was in the DX days.

[urosh]

If you treat Bazille like any other modular, they you're going to frustrated and disappointed.

I treat Bazzile mostly as substractive modular, and it's damn easy and fast in that role. It's magnificent percussion/drum synth as well, beside typical FM duties. It does has narrow sweet spot, but I can live with that.

It's not as easy to get nice crisp harmonically rich standard waveforms out of Bazille as it is, say ACE.

Don't know, Ace is like, run-of-the-mill sounding VA. Bazzile can go to far out pseudo-analog places, for my liking at least
(here's quick demo, no external or internal FX, mostly showing how far the filter can go).

https://soundcloud.com/x-uros-x/causticbazzile

[spunkmuffin]

I am seeing several Zebras in the market too, lately

They'll bite their own ass soon enough

They'll have to be really flexible.

[Ah_Dziz]

All four oscillators in Bazille can make a normal subtractive waveform with a single knob turn. Then it can be treated as a plain modular subtractive synth if one doesn't want to delve into the modulation of the pm/ pd features of the oscillators. I never found it very hard to wrap my head around it, but I'm a big fan of FM8 along with the old Yamaha synths and also had a CZ-1 as part of my first music rig. I would personally give the most misunderstood title to alchemy or maybe harmor.

JJ

[wagtunes]

Cycle has Alchemy and Harmor beat stone cold dead. It's the only synth I've ever got my hands on that I just flat gave up on. Of course the fact that it's so buggy that it won't even render in Cubase doesn't help. Only synth I've regretted getting. I'd sell it if I could find a person on this planet who'd buy it. Unfortunately, nobody is that stupid but me.

[exmatproton]

Cycle has Alchemy and Harmor beat stone cold dead. It's the only synth I've ever got my hands on that I just flat gave up on. Of course the fact that it's so buggy that it won't even render in Cubase doesn't help. Only synth I've regretted getting. I'd sell it if I could find a person on this planet who'd buy it. Unfortunately, nobody is that stupid but me.

?

I love Harmor. Use it on almost all my albums a few times. The possibilities and execution are really something different, compared to the normal VA's, FM's, AT's and WT's. Awesome synth + stable as f*ck (FL Studio, Reaper, Ableton, ReNoise on Windows 10 x64)

I even did an album with ONLY (not 1 single other synth) harmor synths;

https://fourteentwentysix.bandcamp.com/ ... use-effect

[4damind]

I don't like the overall sound of Bazille and was a bit disappointed after playing the first time with this synth. I expected something like "ACE on steroid" but Bazille has not so much in common with Ace.
I would not say that's the worst synth U-he ever made but my interest was so low, I never tried it again.

[Silaris]

Of all of the u-he synths I own (Ace, Bazille, Diva, Hive, and RePro-1), Bazille is by far my favorite option.

[ghettosynth]

All four oscillators in Bazille can make a normal subtractive waveform with a single knob turn

Nope, they don't. They make an an approximation. This is exactly my point. You will not get a solid sawtooth with just a "single knob turn." You will not get a triangle with just one click like you do in ACE. The oscillators really require some effort to get the most out of them, and like other FM/PD synths, as soon as you start putting in that effort it's very easy to find yourself in noise territory. Even when you do obtain something that "looks" like a traditional waveform on the built in scope there will often be various unpleasant aliasing artifacts that you can't see on the scope, but you can certainly hear as well as see them on a spectrograph.

Really to get something approximating a strict sawtooth without resorting to FM (i.e., using a single oscillator) you need to use the tapmaps and their resolution limitations are going to lead to aliasing.

(from the Bazille manual)

TapMap1/2...one of the mapping generators as waveform – note that low notes can get
gritty due to the lower resolution, and high notes can alias more than Cosine

If you think that it makes a great sawtooth just by twisting a knob then I really don't know which knob you're twisting because there isn't one on Bazille's oscillators that will give you that. This is well known for PD synthesis but you don't need to do any math to get this, just use your ears, or use freely available tools to see it for yourself.

BTW: You can hear this in the relatively plain example given above, which, does not sound interesting at all from the point of view the very typical, and rather simple, subtractive sound that it's emulating.

I'm not saying that Bazille isn't a capable modular, but, if you go in expecting great modular sounds and then you can't quite figure out how to get that harmonics rich saw out of it, you'll probably be disappointed with it and think that it sounds dark.

So, I suspect that there are more than a few users with critical ears but less developed understanding of FM/PD who try Bazille and think, "yeah, it's ok, but I prefer the sound the oscillators in <insert traditional VA here>."

From this thread...

I don't like the overall sound of Bazille and was a bit disappointed after playing the first time with this synth. I expected something like "ACE on steroid" but Bazille has not so much in common with Ace.
I would not say that's the worst synth U-he ever made but my interest was so low, I never tried it again.

Exactly, Bazille is not a super ACE. For certain kinds of sounds, in fact, ACE is much more capable. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Bazille, it's awesome, but you have to approach it differently than you do a traditional analog/va modular.

As I have said, it's not as simple to get the straightforward harmonically rich sounds out of Bazille's oscillators as it is with other VA type synths. You have to resort to tricks and those tricks have side effects. That's all a part of her charm, but IMO, you aren't going to get good sounds out of Bazille unless you embrace PD and FM. It seems, so far, that the evidence in this thread bears this out.

[wagtunes]

Patch I made in Bazille. It's a random infinite drone. It will not repeat for as long as you play it.

Video is below as well as a link to Drop Box where you can download the patch (which is part of my Mega Bazille collection) to study, use, do whatever you want with it.

People need to stop making assumptions about one's skill or lack thereof based on a relatively small sample size of work. No, I don't normally spend hours on patches because it's just not worth that much time. I make patches that are usable. I don't make them to flex my muscles and show off. This patch, and two others like it in the collection, are the exceptions. They are not the rule. Not for me. So if you want to judge me because I don't want to spend 6 months, 12 hours a day, developing a library that's going to sell for 20 bucks and maybe sell 10 copies, well, whatever. Don't really give a crap.

Anyway, here's the video and the drop box link.



https://www.dropbox.com/s/i455e9topkcbq ... 1.h2p?dl=0

[ghettosynth]

People need to stop making assumptions about one's skill or lack thereof based on a relatively small sample size of work.

I'm pretty sure that people are making assumptions about your skill based on three things:

1) Your own words
2) Your entire library of published patch demos
3) Your responses in this thread

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so all I will say is that your patches aren't to my taste. However, the patch you just posted is just doing some fairly simple randomization of mixing and parameters based on the synth's intrinsic random LFO modulation. Of course it's going to be random, well, pseudorandom at any rate. It's not really a good demonstration of FM or PD.

[wagtunes]

People need to stop making assumptions about one's skill or lack thereof based on a relatively small sample size of work.

I'm pretty sure that people are making assumptions about your skill based on three things:

1) Your own words
2) Your entire library of published patch demos
3) Your responses in this thread

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so all I will say is that your patches aren't to my taste. However, the patch you just posted is just doing some fairly simple randomization of mixing and parameters based on the synth's intrinsic random LFO modulation. Of course it's going to be random, well, pseudorandom at any rate. It's not really a good demonstration of FM or PD.

Maybe you'd like me to make a video explaining this synth in detail.

Oh wait, you'll probably think I'm reading from a book.

Is it any wonder I totally detest this place?