One Synth Challenge #117: ModulAir by Full Bucket (Rellik Wins!)

[z.prime]

I'm not sure if this is an attack on me or just interpretation of my ridiculous posts, which, as you seem to surmise were joking. So I'll take it as the latter. I mean no disrespect to Skrillex. Bangarang is still on my playlists. And I can't remember where these bullet points came from, but the likely point was if you equate Skrillex to dubstep, you're missing the best artists.

[574X]

Offering insight is not an attack, despite the reverse intolerance culture that is currently being fabricated.
Albeit, I'm no Socrates.

Thanks for the response, though concise, it somewhat distracts me from my woes.

That little vertical arrow in quotes links to the original post.

I basically agree about the digression into the communities and marketing tool that are genres. Even equating Skrillex to dubstep is kind of a joke among original dubstep artists (the great stuff that was minimal, with some wubs and some dub delay). Then that culture created the meme of saying that tracks are not even subgenres of this giant modernized version of it. Like that whole "not riddim" meme.

But the point of talking about it here was that we were just sharing stuff that was influencing our entries; musically and from a sound design perspective.

Plus you're a champion so all the tasty specific morsels you offer are worth practicing.

[Rellik]

Quick rules question - I know non-linear external effects like distortion/saturation/bitcrusher are allowed as long as they don’t change the fundamental character of the sound. How much is too much? Like as long as the dominant frequency range in the result is the same as the dominant frequency range in the original signal?

As an example, what about the common practice of driving a high-resonance filter sweep into a distortion to add a sync-like sound? Would that be against the spirit of the rules/competition?

[z.prime]

Spirit of the rules: if you could do it with wires, amps and guitar pedals, it's probably fine. Just no buffer effects, e.g. short sampling. Except delay. And reverb. And who knows what else...

[bjporter]

@TheNeverScene silly me, I was setting the attack too low.
0.22 wasn't low enough, moved it higher, and works much better.

Very nice patch btw

[functionform]

This month is going to be insane.

[schiing]

It is so easy to get lost in sound design that composing will be a challenge.

I feel this. Every patch is a project in its own right - next month we should do a challenge for "best single-patch ModulAir track"!

Luckily it's so easy on resources that we can "waste" as many tracks as we wish on b'n'b patches as well. But once I get started cross-wiring mods and adding modules, man... To a certain degree I always feel that every choice I make with my track also means a lot of missed opportunities - but rarely as acutely as with ModulAir.

Luxury problem, I know!

[TheNeverScene]

Is anyone else experiencing the issue that when you load up one or several instances of ModulAir, fill them with modules, play notes and record,etc... that everything works without issue? Something has to be wrong.

[ontrackp]

Hi - anyone having trouble with midi-learn on the mac? Using Logic Pro X and an Akai controller.
Thanks.

[schiing]

Is anyone else experiencing the issue that when you load up one or several instances of ModulAir, fill them with modules, play notes and record,etc... that everything works without issue? Something has to be wrong.

I know! My panic attacks are getting worse by the minute as trust grows and intervals between ctrl+s are getting longer. Nothing as scary as stability!

[TheNeverScene]

Is anyone else experiencing the issue that when you load up one or several instances of ModulAir, fill them with modules, play notes and record,etc... that everything works without issue? Something has to be wrong.

I know! My panic attacks are getting worse by the minute as trust grows and intervals between ctrl+s are getting longer. Nothing as scary as stability!

Ha! Looks like I spoke too soon for OnTrack....should have clarified "Windows"
This synth is most likely going to stay planted in my favs folder for a loooong time.

[TheNeverScene]

I just had a cool moment where one simple sound led me to revamp, rebuild and match tempo to it's swirly detuned FM pulsing. I guess that might be why some songs end up at 125.73549 bpm.

The attack phase on the envelope goes on for days (probably the other phases too). Love that.

[Rellik]

Hi - anyone having trouble with midi-learn on the mac? Using Logic Pro X and an Akai controller.
Thanks.

I couldn’t get it to work but then realized it just excludes mod wheel - could that be the issue for you?

[ontrackp]

Thanks but no. I can't get it to see any controllers using Midi Learn, and in Logic, if I pull up the list of parameters for track automation they all come up as N/A.

Everything else seems to work very well. The gate setting for the envelopes seems very, very important -- voice seems to work best -- I've also noticed that long releases will sometimes cause notes not to re-trigger with envelopes.

There is so much sound design capability here -- it's fantastic.....

[ontrackp]

Figured it out -- in the program section Midi CC has to be turned on and the controllers that you want to use have to be assigned in order for them to work. Working now.