One Synth Challenge #119: Waverazor 2 by Tracktion (Jasinski Wins!)

[exponent1]

- WIP deleted for avoiding ear fatigue -

[Taron]

AH, yeah, WIP sharing...I almost wished I didn't, because I'm worried this time that people will be sick of hearing it by the time the song is actually done, hehe...dang. Anyway, interesting one, exp! Find it a bit fatiguing with the "pseudo"(?) side-chain, and I sense you- like myself at the time- didn't quite exploit the particular weirdness of Waverazor. I'm working on it, too!

Anyway, SUSTAIN PEDAL weirdness! The name "sustain" pedal is sort of a hint for what this might do, relating to the Amp Envelope or any envelope for that matter. It's supposed to keep the "sustain" part of the envelope going, such as it would, if the key was kept down!!! In Waverazor, somehow that has gotten misunderstood, or I have not found the setting to let the sustain pedal actually act that way properly?! Maybe there's a switch somewhere? "SUSTAIN PEDAL NORMAL vs. WAVERAZOR SPECIAL IGNORE ENVELOPE MODE"? Just wondering...

Thing is, it's actually quite great to make key type sounds like piano, mallet type stuff or even plucked instruments, but the sustain pedal reveals quite obviously a mistake in the logic there or an unfortunate "uncommon" implementation. Can't yet tell under what circumstances the current behavior makes sense, but well...

I'm having fun right now, though, just by the way!

[ontrackp]

I'm afraid of this synth. But I'll try to make an entry. Something ambient.

It looks worse than it is. Learning curve and lots of mouse clicking.

[Taron]

I seem to have found a way around the sustain pedal weirdness. Looks like only the AMP ENV doesn't quite act as expected, but it also does more curious things, having me end up not quite knowing, if I'm doing the right thing. Anyway, I've added a voice mod ADSR to control the mixer stage of osc->flt for both oscs in my preset below. This appears to work ok. I'm far from confident, except when it comes to the unexpected behavior of the main AMP Envelope.

It's a weird preset...sort of a fantasy instrument between guitar, piano, something plucked and or hammered with a curious body of sorts (love me a good comb)... just a test, but interesting, I find.

[aluode]

Deleted..

[Stokely]

Holy whackamoly...as a decades-long preset surfer this might have been a bad choice for my first OSC Hell, I struggle enough with patience with patches for a "normal" subtractive synth...this thing is just overwhelming.

Of course I didn't read the manual.

All that said, I'm sure everyone has seen them but there are some basic presets under "template" that saved the day for me at least in terms of getting a few basic sounds going.

One thing I'm finding confusing is how the left-side dials change function from patch to patch, I'm sure that is in the manual

I also need to review the rules about what we can do as far as fx and automation. Right now just doing a bit of daw eq and 'verb, but also automating some of the waverazor params (I'll check if that is legal). Don't have a clue how to do that within the synth

[Leonard Bowman]

The left side is generally things that input into the selected pane, and the right side is where the middle pane is being routed.
ontrackp made a video (hope he doesn't mind me sharing this here) explaining some of the quirks: https://youtu.be/QC2EYAaF7NQ
Automation, EQ, and verb are all fine, as are all internal FX.
This is a beast of a synth to jump into, but if you have questions and want a somewhat quick response, I'd suggest joining the Slack Channel, linked somewhere in the first post.

I hope you stick it out and make a track for this OSC, Stokely. Waverazor is a beast, but one that can be trained to do some really neat tricks.

[Stokely]

Oh I've got a track brewing all right

Unfortunately--and this has nothing to do with Waverazor--my tune is already boring me and I just started last night That is nothing unusual for me, I start a lot of tunes and rarely stick with them (obviously not a pro doing this for a living!)

I'll certainly have questions but I tend to be a "let the sounds take me where they will" person rather than "I have a specific sound in mind, how do I get there" one. I envy the latter! So far I've been able to gain a handle on the wave-shaping area but still am pretty clueless on the rest and am fiddling knobs until something sounds good. The templates as I mentioned were very helpful as they start you from a basic position.

One area I'm extremely weak in is transitions and building up (with drums especially). Listening to past OSCs, that is where most of you guys raise the bar.

[Leonard Bowman]

Also, i'm taking a moment to be selfish and hog some forum space.
After realizing the potential of Waverazor, i've turned to a different plan, a bit of an about face from the previous.
If my earlier statement about waverazor was interesting, here is what i had in that direction: https://soundcloud.com/anotherbenjamin/ ... ed/s-QC9oW
it is quiet, raw, and needs a lot more time.
This is where the sound of Waverazor took me.

TL:DR; not my submission, not in progress anymore, just throwing an idea here for no reason. And expect something quite different from the actual submission.

[ontrackp]

Oh I've got a track brewing all right

Unfortunately--and this has nothing to do with Waverazor--my tune is already boring me and I just started last night That is nothing unusual for me, I start a lot of tunes and rarely stick with them (obviously not a pro doing this for a living!)

I'll certainly have questions but I tend to be a "let the sounds take me where they will" person rather than "I have a specific sound in mind, how do I get there" one. I envy the latter! So far I've been able to gain a handle on the wave-shaping area but still am pretty clueless on the rest and am fiddling knobs until something sounds good. The templates as I mentioned were very helpful as they start you from a basic position.

One area I'm extremely weak in is transitions and building up (with drums especially). Listening to past OSCs, that is where most of you guys raise the bar.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a good synth for "let sounds take me where they will". Because of the number of steps involved, sound design on WR is not intuitive and fluid. Randomly moving parameters around wave segments will yield unpredictable and sometimes really awesomer results, but it's kind of a crapshoot. The signal flow in the synth is actually very logical and making modulations is easy. Keeping track of everything is a bit of a challenge though. It's worth taking a couple of hours to sort thru the sound structure though -- it does keep sounding better and better for me.

[Stokely]

Gotcha.

Well, there aren't enough facepalms in the world...work is slow currently so I'm browsing the manual.

I played with Waverazor for two hours last night without realizing I could dive in further than the main performance page. I did not think to click the flowchart dealio shown in the manual (that I honestly don't remember from last night, but obviously it's there). Gee, there's the oscillators and LFOs and the rest!

I thought it was all handled via voodoo by the X-Y controls and just organic behind-the-scenes magic! (There are of course synths that do that sort of thing).

So now I can mess up the sounds in way more depth and detail

Honestly the basic waveforms in the templates sound nice and I could build something with those and tweaking the X/Y and other controls, but this is just hilarious.

[Taron]

There's way more to the complication than the gui itself, I must say, though. I've gotten used to how it works, but still have to get used the the quirky ways of how the synth acts with modulators, waveforms and so on. My current beef is with the ADSR, but I'm finding work-arounds.

I have a feeling, if Taiho, the developer, listens carefully and is as enthusiastic about the whole synth experience as he appears to be about the basic idea behind it (wave segment spliciousness, hehe! Don't try to pronounce this!), Waverazor then could get a fantastic facelift and could end up in great shape!

[ontrackp]

The envelopes need love.....

[z.prime]

The envelopes need love.....

BSE...

[Auplant]

I feel like Butthead toying around with the Vector and Shape controls while not fully knowing what I'm doing, uhuh This is.. Cool!