One Synth Challenge #100: Lord of the Springs (Taron Wins!)

[Taron]

LotS is truly uniqe synth and what I really like is the natural/organic sound. Most synth even if they do it nice still sound artificially while this one can sound like it was sampled from an acoustic instrument .

Oh, man, , please, know just how happy you're making me for saying that, Trojak!

And, yeah, just at the end of it I realized: OMG, I almost forgot to show my favorite indulgence!?!
Somehow the video got offset for some reason...no idea what it was, but well...I'm afraid, few people will get to notice, hahaha...it's a little long.

Maybe I'll make some special little tutorials later today. Could be fun.

Again, thank you, T, for making my day!

[generaldiomedes]

My entry for OSC 100. Posting so I stop fiddling with it.

https://soundcloud.com/user-947450193/horizons

18 instances of Lord of the Springs

Effects
- Ableton native(Compressor, Limiter, Utility, EQ Eight, Delay, Arpeggiator)
- U-He Protoverb
- TAL Reverb 4
- Soundspot FAT filter
- Softube Saturation Knob
- Xfer Dimension Expander
- TDR VOS Slick EQ

LOTS of fun with this synth The physical modelling nature I found particularly interesting which provided for hours of knob twiddling exploration. Very good at marimba-style sounds. Saturation and bit crusher were also great - got a lot of mileage out of the bit crusher which I would describe as 'juicy'. The 2.02 changes to the noise parameters helped a lot for hihats.

I initially wanted to do some ambient horror movie soundtrack using Body based sounds, but that's too much automation work

Suggestions - Some VA style filters, and maybe a mod matrix with some general purpose LFOs

[Julian Ray]

My entry for OSC 100. Posting so I stop fiddling with it.

https://soundcloud.com/user-947450193/horizons

Nice tune with some Noir-like feeling... Sounds like a soundtrack to an old-school detective film

[] Peter:H []

] de:leted [

[sfiks]

Here is my entry with
4 instances of LOTS and 9 of Lord of the Springs in Reaper:

https://soundcloud.com/slava-fiks/waltz ... he-springs

Plugins: ReaEq, ReaVerb, and JS: Utility/limiter.
As much as possible , all notes, bends, dynamics,
textures changes, stereo movements etc. follow ball roller coaster ride in my animation movie vimeo.com/221098628

[TrojakEW]

Can't resist fiddling more with this gem. New version bring some interesting feature to spring B. LotS of fun . Regarding backward compatibillity - it was needed to reload all presets in project for all instances of synth in order to work/sounds correctly.

Best of all is resonance simulation of instrument body. The more you hit the more whole instrument "shake" or rather say all springs go crazy . Like in real life. But it is also same regarding taming this beast. You have to be careful not to hit it too hard or you destroy your toys. You simply cant hit drums with sledgehammer . So after playing more I find that global volume does not affect amplitude only but also resonance. So it is really hard to tame it and beast will bite back when you are not creful and especialy with decay settings of spring A on max for lead, pad sounds or rather say sustain intruments. So aditional envelope that affect only amplitude can be handy for this situations.

Settings for frequency resonance for noise is cool to quicky change tone for for perc instruments like snare. Presets browser with category is nice.

Working on new track that may be my real entry. Well Im not sure. Damn I tired I have played with LotS almost whole night and now cant sleep at WORK Hope to survive today because olny 2 hour sleep wasnt enough for me. Im beat but also pumped since got some interesting percs sounds out of LotS.

[Taron]

You're making me feel guilty and happy at the same time!
I'll start a proper tutorial series. Hopefully it will clear things up enough so you'll find it less challenging to tame little beasty. But, yeah, knowing what you are doing with it, Trojak, I totally understand the danger, but you're practically writing the expressions: No risk, no reward! No pain, no gain...haha....and some more of those.

I think, however, the more you understand about LotS, the less you run into big spikes.

As for backwards compatibility, I've added only one auto-conversion for all those, who had used NOISE before I added the filter. Other than that nothing had changed, BUT, depending on how your DAW works, it makes sense, if you have to reload presets, true. "VERSION" is part of the chunk data and only triggers a conversion during loading, not during setting a program. Hmmmm.... ....I could've done that instead, though, that would've been trickier. Anyway, we're there now. Thanks for reminding me!!! ...next time I'll consider that for sure.

[Taron]

Here's a new little tutorial video about making drums in LotS:


Hope you like it!

[Frostline]

@Taron
The video intro is quite cool, well done.

Don't be so shy with your voice though please. While I can 'almost' hear what you are saying clearly in this one I dearly wish your voice was a few dB louder. This one is an improvement over the long one though, so moving in the right direction. I had to resort to the auto-generated subtitles in the long video (and I don't think you were using as much profanity as the subtitles suggested ).

[Taron]

HAHA! Didn't even realize there were auto subs...has to be hilarious!
Yeah, I only have this shitty headset right now and my keyboard is so freaking loud. I'm practically eating the mic and if I boost the signal, well, my keyboard is about as loud as the DAW. I wished, I'd find a way to record into a separate channel or so. This would help a lot, of course, but I presently really don't have the means. ...something I'd invest in from donations for sure.

THANKS, though! I'll find my groove. Let me make a few more and hopefully I can balance it better! And send me a best-of-auto-subs!

[zarf]

Taron - still loving LOTS and having fun with it. I've watched the two videos that I've found, and I don't know if I have missed it, but I have a question...
What exactly does the mod-wheel do?
My apologies if you have described that somewhere I can't seem to find it

Thanks for the lovely instrument to play with

[Taron]

OH, I think, I've got a tiny moment in the big video about the mod wheel "bowing". It allows you to scrub the springs with a rough ribbon of sorts, creating a bowing type of effect. Bring Spring A decay down to under 0.5 to really appreciate what it does, but it can do wonders on anything, if you understand its performance. I made a tiny example song early on that showcases it quite well, but even the latest demo song has it on the bass.
What you do is you move the modwheel up and down as if bowing. Well... I guess, that came through by now?!
Later on I was planning on making a whole section in the GUI for it, where you can choose the type of ribbon, the speed, the release and so on. I likely will add choosing the midi controller and allowing more traditional use of the mod wheel again.... ...but, yeah.

You can make amazing rhythms with it, if you automate the mod wheel carefully. I would only advice to move the wheel before hitting the key for the first time. After that it's all good. I did hook up a little protection at startup, but you have to watch out not to have too large jumps between values (0.0 to 1.0 in 128th, for example, haha, or worse?!).

It's a powerful tool that's not to be underestimated for its novelty in composition/performance, but also for how much it my make people want to me!

I apologize for not having featured it more, yet. Maybe that's what I'll focus on for the next tutorial?!

THANK YOU, of course, I'm thrilled you like LotS thus far!

[zarf]

Thanks for the info! I have been playing with automating it (and yes, sudden leaps are *insane*) and really appreciating the results, and wanted to have a bit more understanding of what it might be doing. That's perfect, cheers!

[generaldiomedes]

I was able to get a kind of spinning glass bowl on a counter top sound by rapidly shifting the mod wheel. It's pretty subtle

[Taron]

Can't wait to hear it!
The neat thing about the bowing is that it actually does truly simulate the scrubbing of a noisy surface over the springs, making a difference whether you go up or down. This odd type of realism can add a great deal of nature into the sound, I found.