One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread

[z.prime]

I wonder who has done the most, and what their perspective is on variety in the criteria.

Surely Yeager has done the most but seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, sadly. doctorbob may be catching up slowly. I've done my fair share, and I'd proffer that the deadline given was the most important thing for me -- it forced completing tracks, forced learning new techniques, and forced learning how to program synths. These things can be some of the foundation for creating electronic music. That's what I find valuable.

[z.prime]

TIME SENSITIVE! Cherry Audio Voltage Modular FREE this month + song contest!

Hi all, again sorry for the cross-posting-spamalot but thought some of you may be interested in this one.

It came to my attention that Cherry Audio Voltage Modular is FREE until the end of the month. Unfortunately, that will probably mean it can’t be used for a O.S.C., since it won’t be freely available for all to get after this month. So @lempface and I thought it would be a great idea to run a contest concurrently following the basic spirit of the O.S.C.: create an original track with all sound originating from the synth. However, we’re allowing all effects - both free and commercial, sampling of the synth, and mangling afterwards. Basically do whatever you want, as long as all audio sources originate from the synth.

Rules

• All sounds must originate from Cherry Audio Voltage Modular Nucleus (no paid modules)
• Submit tracks by posting to the KVR thread before October 1, 2019
• Voting will run for 15 days afterwards
• Must vote to be ranked in the results
• You must be willing provide a DAW project file to admins upon request for rule validation purposes; it will be deleted after inspection
• Must be an original track (e.g. no covers)

Prizes

• Voltage Modular Core + Electro Drums (a $200 value)
• More incoming!

So go get Voltage Modular before the end of the month! You can get it easily from Cherry Audio or Plugin Boutique.

You can join the One Synth Challenge Slack workspace (here to sign up) and the KVR thread about this contest.

Hope to hear your tracks!

[strogon14]

Hi there, I want to keep the amount of non-OSC stuff here to a minumum, but since a few regular OSClers participated in our last year's FM Challenge, I hope it's appropriate to mention that we're doing a competition again this year and it starts the day after tomorrow:

Open Source Music Nexus Challenge

Discussion about the compo will probably take place on linuxmusicians.com. Hope to see a few of you again there!

[Tj Shredder]

Candidate for the next OSC:
Lith from http://sodadevices.com

[Music Bird]

A candidate should be any GTG synth, or maybe Elektrostudio synths or EFM ones. I’d also like to do an OBXD or any Full Bucket Synth as well.

[Tj Shredder]

A candidate should be any GTG synth, or maybe Elektrostudio synths or EFM ones. I’d also like to do an OBXD or any Full Bucket Synth as well.

Only OBXD and Full Bucket are cross platform, but had been done in the past already. I would prefer new synths. Listen to the presets of Lith and you will know it will be an epic round...

[functionform]

Wow Lith looks very concise and versatile!

edit: CHOOSE THIS SYNTH. Presets are amazing and the sound out of this is very lively. Very inspiring freebie, incredible. Kind of reminds me of Helm with regard to its brevity and sound options.

edit: 2, WOW well you pay for that sound quality in CPU. It's spiking to 12% on my reasonably beefy desktop. Still though very beautiful.

[Chris-S]

Typo on the kvrosc page:

End of Sumbissions

[RichardSemper]

Typo on the kvrosc page:

End of Sumbissions

Well spotted!

[basa333]

for me would be challenge the OSC with 1 instance of a concrete synth in a concrete music style - classic, jazz, rock etc. without other plugins (limiter, compressors etc)
I am laughing, if I see in one track 65 instances of one synth and 30 other plugins. where is the sense of this?

[exponent1]

for me would be challenge the OSC with 1 instance of a concrete synth in a concrete music style - classic, jazz, rock etc. without other plugins (limiter, compressors etc)
I am laughing, if I see in one track 65 instances of one synth and 30 other plugins. where is the sense of this?

By all means go ahead and produce a song with these restrictions.

Trojak did it last time and he did a fabulous job.

[Dirtgrain]

where is the sense of this?

Way more possibilities in sound design, composition, melody, harmony, intricacy. Still, I recall a blues guitarist, One String Sam. And Django Reinhardt used only three fingers to fret. Not too shabby.

[TrojakEW]

By all means go ahead and produce a song with these restrictions.

Trojak did it last time and he did a fabulous job.

Too bad it was not that fabulous.

for me would be challenge the OSC with 1 instance of a concrete synth in a concrete music style - classic, jazz, rock etc. without other plugins (limiter, compressors etc)
I am laughing, if I see in one track 65 instances of one synth and 30 other plugins. where is the sense of this?

There is nothing wrong about using 65 instances. You can set your own personal challenge like I did in #127, I just want to make something different. Using only one synth is real challenge for most of people and making it even harder will not make it better. I actually don't care how many instances track use. Important is the result. There is one user that is master in using just one instance of synth and that is Guenon. Check this track from OSC #106 - that is just one instance :
https://soundcloud.com/guenooni/guenon- ... nge-106-fb
Crazy crazy stuff!

[aciddose]

for me would be challenge the OSC with 1 instance of a concrete synth in a concrete music style - classic, jazz, rock etc. without other plugins (limiter, compressors etc)
I am laughing, if I see in one track 65 instances of one synth and 30 other plugins. where is the sense of this?

By all means go ahead and produce a song with these restrictions.

Trojak did it last time and he did a fabulous job.

It depends upon how you define "one instance" or "synth". Xhip for example is fully multi-timbral and supports up to 128 preset sounds running on up to 32 * 16 unison (512) voices in a single instance. I've never bothered to make this externally accessible via MIDI since MIDI maxes out at 16 channels anyway... but you could be sending messages to 16 internal "instances" with individual voice allocation and such that way if it were implemented. As it is currently it does support playing a "module" sequence file where notes/presets/settings are set on every voice "channel" individually. I'm not sure if I've limited the number of channels... if not you could directly control all 512 voices.

https://soundcloud.com/xhip/visit_by_luciferahx

Most of the tracks written this way are inherently "chiptune" style and very simplistic, since it's so much easier to compose without such limitations to a single instance. The difficulty ramps up in terms of practical application of the synthesizer rather than focusing on compositional, production and timbre related skills. So such a rule would be the same as "no mouse or controller, only raw PC keyboard input!"

So thinking in terms of "instances" just really doesn't make sense when it could be defeated so easily. It's a completely arbitrary and subjective concept... although most synthesizers are very limited in their flexibility those limitations are not inherent... they're part of the design of a particular synthesizer.

Since it's subjective, yes, you'd need to voluntarily limit yourself in whatever way you see most fit. There couldn't be a rule for such a limitation without limiting which synthesizers can be used and in which ways.

[aciddose]

There is one user that is master in using just one instance of synth and that is Guenon. Check this track from OSC #106 - that is just one instance :
Crazy crazy stuff!

That's a cool one! Atari (or PC speaker) style chiptunes can be very well done. It isn't always such a limitation to set your polyphony very low as components of the melody and rhythm don't happen at the same time except where harmony is a focus.

Honestly harmony is boring since our western music focuses so heavily upon it. Who would be entertained by thousands of tracks built of "G-major!!!" strumming over and over with a vocal arpeggiated between the same notes between octaves?

By limiting polyphony and switching parts in and out over time, the focus becomes more toward rhythm and melody rather than harmony.