One Synth Challenge #123: The Qyooo By Full Bucket Music (TheNeverScene Wins!)

[Leonard Bowman]

Re: FM-
It's exponential, which is generally more useful for non-audio rate modulations. This way, a Bi-Polar modulation source will go up and down the same musical interval.
If you drive it at audio rate (with an LFO >20 Hz) you'll hear the overall pitch rise.
this describes things pretty effectively

Re: Banks & Patches
You can export and import banks like Björn said, but if you want to create a fresh bank of sounds, it may be worth looking into VPG (sorry, no Mac build). It plays nicely with all of the Full Bucket Synths, even ModulAir!

Once you've worked with the Full Bucket synths for a little bit the similarities become really useful.

Also: if anyone is looking for quick help with any OSC synth, check out our Slack Channel (usually linked in the first post of the thread).

[maxym.srpl]

Guys, do you know how to control filter frequency (BP) to get exact note frequency?
I tried it, setting frequency on 2 scenes to boundary frequencies and morphing them using Note. But cannot match proper frequencies for a scale. I want to create instrument built from noise shaped by frequencies matching notes.

thanks in advance

[objectman]

Hi Guys.
Haven't been here for a while. Here's a 1st Draft. I really love undercooked synths like this. A bit of compression brings out the magic. The modest simplicity reminded me of Majken's "Chimera". Took me right into a "Tangerine Dream" world (RIP Edgar). Not much to see but great depth under the bonnet (which I bnarely lifted).
https://soundcloud.com/deadeddy/qyooo-foo

Simply made with 4 x tracks
Ableton Live Reverb on Tk1 (pad) - where I use mouse to smush over the "scene morpher"
Lots of L/R panning and then basic reverb added to the tail of any longer burbling sounds
Mastered with "Broadcast" preset on Adobe Audition's 3-band compressor (Adobe Audition)

EDIT: Mastered with TDR Kotelnikov directly out of Live. Pretty much the same.

May tweak specific sounds for another draft, but I enjoyed the brevity of this.

All comments and feedback welcome. Be cruel if you like. I'll hate you for a day but you'll be my favourite teacher tomorrow (IMHO constructive feedback is the only way I can grow).

[basa333]

Sorry, I can't recognize any melody, it's too abstract for me.

[Tj Shredder]

Melodies are overrated! I really enjoyed it. A candidate for 5 points...
(Actually there are lots of tiny melodies in there, if you can’t hear them I feel sorry for you...)

[basa333]

ok, a melody is for me something, what I can keep in my mind. here I can't do it - as I say, it's too abstract for me. if you can whistle this melody, you are very musical.

[Tj Shredder]

If I can whistle a melody I can make a pop song. Though pop songs make 90% of the money, they only make less than 5% of the interesting music in this world...

[basa333]

ok, I will not dispute. I'm newbie and an old boy. no problem. have a nice day.

[Saffran]

Sorry, I can't recognize any melody, it's too abstract for me.

Don't worry, there is no melody.
This is one of the things you get when you can't come up with a melody.
And because it's f..ing hard to come up with a melody, me myself and a lot of others end up with songs in this style.
I've nearly never played synths before CbB was made free of charge and i found KVR and softsynths free of charge. But a year in playing with synths i've got used to this sort of sound.

[exponent1]

Melodies are overrated! I really enjoyed it. A candidate for 5 points...
(Actually there are lots of tiny melodies in there, if you can’t hear them I feel sorry for you...)

You feel "sorry" for him? Wow. You are so full of snobbery aren't you? I've heard your music, none of it is even produced well enough and you seem to be doing this for decades it seems. Just some patches put together in the most non-musical way I don't know who should feel sorry for whom.

(BTW, I know how you will retaliate, so go ahead, be my guest )

[Ranoka]

Mastered with "Broadcast" preset on Adobe Audition's 3-band compressor (Adobe Audition)

I think this is against the rules
"More Clarification: Audio must not be touched at all once it leaves the DAW (aka after bouncing a track or a stem). For example: One cannot master the audio in another software or service. Also, If you need more performance / CPU a workaround is to freeze all the tracks."

I think 2:30 is a good length for a track! I try to keep mine between 2:30 and 3:30, or less if it doesn't need to be longer.

What people want to get out of OSC is different for everyone, some people are in-it-to-win-it, and some people are just learning, or maybe focusing on sound design or a different aspect of production etc. Maybe experimenting with some ideas they wanted to try out, or challenging themselves in some way.

For me currently, making music and having fun in the process is the most important thing. The ranking and prises are a nice extra. I wouldn't take the results too seriously, because I don't think everyone takes the voting seriously...
If your track doesn't rank high, doesn't mean it's a bad track - it likely means it didn't wow people on a single listen... If you want to win I guess you need to trigger people's dopamine (part of the game of OSC is figuring out how to do that!)

There's quite range of ages, backgrounds and tastes in OSC. Best if everyone respects each other's choice in the style of music they're making

[schiing]

And because it's f..ing hard to come up with a melody, me myself and a lot of others end up with songs in this style.

It's funny - melodies generally come fairly easily to me, but I often try to avoid them to try to create something that sounds a bit more modern than my usual fare - at least in the pop idiom.

I guess I'm old school by default - so that's just part of my challenge, but as soon as I've got a strong melody, it's somehow a lot harder to make it sound like 2019 (or post-1989 in my case, if you will) - which sort of makes sense if you analyze how new music works.

Another thing I've noticed, which is specific to the OSC, is that I often get more creative with the synth sounds in and of themselves if I downplay the melody, which I suppose some of you will see as a plus, or maybe even a requirement, in this context.

But I've settled on the notion that both approaches have merit: It's an art to create experimental and/or mood-based soundscapes that work, but it's also an art to create functional, albeit simplistic in terms of programming, musical backdrops that underpin a broader musical context. So I certainly don't regard less melodic material as inferior in itself.

[functionform]

Melodies are nice, and so is experimentation. Phaedra is one of the greatest synth tracks ever made imo, and its melodies almost seem like an afterthought.

[basa333]

I think, melodies ("melodies" means for me a recognizable series of tones) must not be pop-melodies. I know, this is a hard challenge. Not everyone want make melodies, it's ok. In my opinion is the goal of this challenge a searching for new sounds and using this in tracks. With or without melodie is an another question, I'm probably an old-school boy, under influence of pink floyd, genesis, kraftwerk etc. This is for me electronic music (with melody ).

[MrKarolus]

Well there are no strict rules for making music, more of a guidelines. Melody is just one of the elements of piece of music, among others, like harmony or rhythmic beat. You can remove one of the elements and still have great piece of music. For, example ambient quite often doesn't have a melody and percussive part, but with great success utilizes extended pad harmonies and various drones for creating some type of mood and atmosphere. Or maybe various percussive musical genres with only tonal/atonal percussion instruments.

I personally do not see of not having a melody in your track as a minus, it can be even a plus. Maybe sometimes no melody is better than repetitive, cheesy and boring melody? I believe that every type of music has its place and function - whether it be to make people dance in a club or evoke catharsis or maybe it be just an atmospheric background. Every music has its place and maybe at a particular time we just don't know yet to what particular function attribute specific avant-garde track.