One Synth Challenge #98: Any One Synth (Photonic Wins!)

[Daru925]

Its sad that every osc thread turns into this mess.
You'd think it would be a public place to talk about sound synthesis??? and learn tips and tricks, but it all gets buried in a mud that should be in general discussion? Every month same pattern

"Im back, I dont like this synth, now I like this synth, grrr I didn't win, meh system is broken, people should be free to vote the way i vote, no my way, meeeeeeh i quit forever." I bet if i hit that block button, this thread is going to shrink to 15 pages, instead of 40.

Hopefully lots of tracks are good and inspiring.
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Now back on topic:
@photonic: I'd appreciate any advice on how you created those horns in your track? I've created a few brass sounds with fm8 and massive but none of this quality yet (especially at 2:34, lovely grainy crescendo)

[ThePresent]

Its sad that every osc thread turns into this mess.
You'd think it would be a public place to talk about sound synthesis??? and learn tips and tricks, but it all gets buried in a mud that should be in general discussion? Every month same pattern

"Im back, I dont like this synth, now I like this synth, grrr I didn't win, meh system is broken, people should be free to vote the way i vote, no my way, meeeeeeh i quit forever." I bet if i hit that block button, this thread is going to shrink to 15 pages, instead of 40

Well said. But then again, when digested in small doses, all this quarreling can be an amusing process to watch, revealing human psyche to a degree that nobody believes until they actually read it for themselves. especially the "meeeeeh"-comments that you are referring to

[Taron]

Woops...accident!

[Taron]

And another accident...

[Taron]

How about a moderator's nightmare by offering an accompanying RANT thread to each OSC, rather than a general discussion thread, because things would pile up there out of context pretty quick, right?!

However, there should be a more prominent LINK to the general discussion thread anyway. In an impulse, people should be able to just find that link right away! Few would dare scour the forum for it in a rage...

OSC: GENERAL DISCUSSION(...for all voting concerns and other ranting!)

But here's the first quote you'll see:

This is a thread for general discussions or suggestions not related to individual competitions etc.

See what I mean?!

[574X]

"@photonic: I'd appreciate any advice on how you created those horns in your track? I've created a few brass sounds with fm8 and massive but none of this quality yet (especially at 2:34, lovely grainy crescendo)"

Great question!
Did you start with a multi-voice saw?

It would be great to reiterate that you're all invited to share what you feel contributed most to your successes here at the OSC 98.

Did you learn anything new?

Any of your experiences with synthesis and composition are a great thing to talk about!

[bluerobot]

Long live a proper American sandwich: GREAT IDEA, very sloppy doodle, BUT PLENTY OF POTENTIAL!

LOL. You kill me, Taron. I'm hungry for an American sandwich!

This is an interesting discussion. I will admit to being mostly in agreement with zarf.

The ratings are a simple scale, and some tracks stand out to me more than others. It doesn't mean to say that the 5's are going to sell a million records, and the 1's are bombs.

My scoring is based on the premise that everyone starts out as a '3' and that means "really good effort". Then if there are compositional, technical and/or personal aesthetic aspects that really make something stand out for me, they get an extra point. If there are two things, they get two extra points.

Same in reverse. Something might be 'good' but not feel fully complete technically, or just not appeal to me on a personal level. Doesn't mean it's not good, or that I don't appreciate the effort someone put into it, or that there aren't aspects that I might like.

As for comments, I tend to lean toward the positive side because I believe that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. It's just politeness, I guess. That seems weak, and I suppose I can appreciate the idea that some composers would like to see constructive criticism... and perhaps there's nothing impolite about offering that. But Medniex said it best... while there might be a platform that would be appropriate to offer that criticism, Soundcloud, being a public place where people are potentially trying to build careers, etc, doesn't seem like the right place for that. I'd rather just keep it generally positive. The mechanics of doing comments in one forum and voting in another sort of leads to that disconnect.

Perhaps there's also an element of "Who am I to say?" This is, after all, an extremely subjective thing.

[photonic]

"@photonic: I'd appreciate any advice on how you created those horns in your track? I've created a few brass sounds with fm8 and massive but none of this quality yet (especially at 2:34, lovely grainy crescendo)"

Great question!
Did you start with a multi-voice saw?

It would be great to reiterate that you're all invited to share what you feel contributed most to your successes here at the OSC 98.

Did you learn anything new?

Any of your experiences with synthesis and composition are a great thing to talk about!

Yes, no problem to tell you what I did for those horns (based on a patch I found sometimes anywhere, but modified to my taste).
There are two VCOs with saw tooth. No supersaw. Just a bit of detune of those VCOs. The sound nothing special. It is the filter, that makes most of the sound. Zebra has many different filters and here I used the XMF. This has an overload function you can use to make the sound more dirty.
And Zebra has a lot of possibilities to modify paramters. You can assign so much sources to many destinations. Here for the horns one ENV controlls and detunes the pitch of one VCO during the attack time (more realistic attack) and the aftertouch (or channel preassure on other synths) controlls filter cutoff and overload, detune and panorama of both VCOs and volume. So the harder I press the key, the brighter, more dirty, louder and wider gets the sounds!
And i addition to all of that, there is a lot of volume automation too.

What I learned in this round?
I did a mistake with mentioning the Batman vs Superman video from JunkieXL. This came later. It was the earlier video where he described how to make the strings more realistic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdHbWSYm3f0&t=11s
This is the best tip to mimic a better string sound! I do not have such a controller. I used the volume automation to change the volume of each note over time.
And I did what I often do with string sounds. Use different sounds for violas/violines and for chello/bass. Play all parts seperatly, double them, do not quantize them and detune the instances a bit. This brings the feeling of many people playing the instruments. Because the small variations in time, tune, panorma and volume expression are one essential element of an ensembe feeling.

I hope this helps!

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

Looks like the results were consistent with track quality. The winner disserved the spot.

I thought doctorbob and keith303 should have been a little higher but really the numbers were close.

We all truly win when we make to the end. It is a true accomplishment to compose, sound design, mix and get it out the door. Then listen and vote to qualify. All in 30 days. Congrats to all of you that made it. The collection of the tracks in OSC98 again make a great album of 68 tracks and YOU contributed.

[ontrackp]

Looks like the results were consistent with track quality. The winner disserved the spot.

I thought doctorbob and keith303 should have been a little higher but really the numbers were close.

We all truly win when we make to the end. It is a true accomplishment to compose, sound design, mix and get it out the door. Then listen and vote to qualify. All in 30 days. Congrats to all of you that made it. The collection of the tracks in OSC98 again make a great album of 68 tracks and YOU contributed.

+1

[574X]

Thanks Photonic!

It's refreshing to hear that you layered your unquantized performances. That's an impressive win, for sure!

Yeah, a couple well-filtered saws can be so useful for brass and strings. You got a really full sound with your detuning, layering and panning techniques for fullness, coupled with the volume automation for expressiveness.
Yeah, midi faders or encoders are handy for expressive volume automation, and for anybody who uses a keyboard without those, the modwheel is also excellent.

A fast pitch envelope for brass attack is something I will definitely experiment with. That's great that there are so many modulation targets for velocity. I'm inspired to translate that technique to more synthetic sounds.

One thing that helps is having a light pitch lfo for vibrato, and the depth can be modulated or simply increase over time, like Flux Pavilion often does.

TYVM for finally motivating me to dive into Zebralette's filters, which are actually really well optimized (one knob serves as hpf & lpf on the basic filter, and you can select things from the fx by typing in the first letter). A lot of the filter fx are naturally formant rich, too.

A couple other cool observations about Zebralette are that it appears to have a lpf always engaged, (which reduces the harshness of raw saws, for example), and the anti-aliasing is some of the best, which is relieving after constantly using much rougher synths.

[doctorbob]

... I thought doctorbob and keith303 should have been a little higher but really the numbers were close.

Thanks for the shout out (and ontrackp). Glad you appreciated the track and the work which went into it.

Maybe my "dirty, grungy" blues track in OSC #99 will gather up a few more points. Blues maybe easier to "digest" than jazz - people seem to have a love-hate relationship with jazz - (I tried to make it a pretty much run-of-the-mill and not too esoteric, which seems to have gotten a few more folk onboard!)

Anyways, thanks again kind people for all those votes and comments (I do listen and act on criticisms - my ears aren't that good these days - just too old).

Onwards (and maybe upwards to OSC 99)

dB

[] Peter:H []

How about a moderator's nightmare by offering an accompanying RANT thread to each OSC, rather than a general discussion thread, because things would pile up there out of context pretty quick, right?!

However, there should be a more prominent LINK to the general discussion thread anyway. In an impulse, people should be able to just find that link right away! Few would dare scour the forum for it in a rage...

OSC: GENERAL DISCUSSION(...for all voting concerns and other ranting!)

But here's the first quote you'll see:

This is a thread for general discussions or suggestions not related to individual competitions etc.

See what I mean?!

That's so hilarious my friend, because *you* started the "discussion" by silly unproven accusations/provocation calling people names in *this* thread!? And now You pretend to be the good guy? No need to say more...do I detect some cognitive dissonance here??? Yes I do...

[Taron]

Well, you certainly don't detect your private messages, where I had left you a message some days ago!
I did not complain about such discussions in this thread, but the post you're quoting is a reaction TO the complaints!
I can't ask you to grow up, because you so rudely took that wind out of my sails with your choice to behave. When I find myself having made baseless accusations, I apologize, but in your case I can only feel sorry about you. Now cut the crap, check your PM and see, if we can let you vent on me alone! How about that?

[wagtunes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_47KVJV8DU