One Synth Challenge #142: Vital by Matt Tytel (Jasinski Wins!)

[Leonard Bowman]

...Using one synthesizer for everything limitation makes this competition waay more interesting, I keep thinking "How the f**k did he make that sound?" on so many tracks.

If you're thinking it, why not ask folks how they got those sounds? A lot of the folks around here are happy to share patches and techniques if you show interest.
This environment where people share ideas and tricks is one of my favorite aspects of this competition and community. There's no magic plugins or processes, just novel ways of using the things we're familiar with.

[Sleepwalker]

Some of my comments on Soundcloud seems to be disappearing, and some seems to come back later, and I either loose my comments or I double post them for the same reason. :-/

Any tips to get around this?

Reloading the tab seem to delete the comment. Closing the tab seems to keep them but sometimes deletes them too..

[Aesaire]

...Using one synthesizer for everything limitation makes this competition waay more interesting, I keep thinking "How the f**k did he make that sound?" on so many tracks.

If you're thinking it, why not ask folks how they got those sounds? A lot of the folks around here are happy to share patches and techniques if you show interest.
This environment where people share ideas and tricks is one of my favorite aspects of this competition and community. There's no magic plugins or processes, just novel ways of using the things we're familiar with.

Haha, will do. The most impressive sound design for this OSC I've listened to so far is in track.

https://soundcloud.com/user-768555121/f ... c142-vital

Modeled a summer day with so many small details.

[SeBaer]

Some of my comments on Soundcloud seems to be disappearing, and some seems to come back later,...

I seem to be experiencing the exact same thing, not just with my own comments. I get a notification of a new comment, go there, and there is nothing. After a while they appear. I guess the only thing that helps is patience. Not my strongest trait...

[Aesaire]

Same problem with the comments. Servers could be stressed at the moment.

[Sleepwalker]

Soundcloud to me:

"We’ve noticed a high volume of commenting coming from your account and we would like to ask that you slow down.

If your account is performing many more actions when compared to most others, it loses the human touch. You can find out more about this policy in our help center.

Remember that there is a fine line between promoting yourself and bombarding other users with notifications. We want our community to remain a genuine, positive place for members to interact, so remember to stick to our Community Guidelines.

Please note if you keep getting these warnings, your commenting abilities will be blocked as outlined in our Terms of Use."


Ehhh..This sucks! I just want to give you guys honest feedback! Too much in a day with 60 tracks for Soundcloud it seems.

Just had 15 tracks left. Fine. I will do the rest tomorrow. Almost did all god dammit. Some folks coming over now anyway. BBL

[ELEX]

Some of my comments on Soundcloud seems to be disappearing, and some seems to come back later, and I either loose my comments or I double post them for the same reason. :-/

Any tips to get around this?

Reloading the tab seem to delete the comment. Closing the tab seems to keep them but sometimes deletes them too..

Comments are just really slow to appear sometimes. Or quick to seemingly disappear. AFAIK any comments you place will (re)appear, eventually. Patience seems the only solution ( a few minutes should be enough ) . That's progress, I guess. Just can't be stopped

This is really interesting, I don't think I can say much on other tracks with my level of knowledge and I'm having a hard time analyzing in genres I'm not used to but I'll try if anything comes to mind!
Wish I've had more time for this, and also just for the fun of crafting my own sounds instead of using free ones, but working under pressure was kinda fun and also I think really leaves my flaws wide opened, so I see what my go-to are and how I think by default. This pinpoints more than leaving tracks to marinate for too long and hoping you'll fix everything "later".
Back to listening!

Strictly speaking for myself: Please feel free to share any thoughts or feelings you get. Those need not necessarily be analytical or objective.

[AdamCadabra]

Okay, (61 tracks to analyze) x (who knows how long to compose) = a BUTT LOAD of net time and creativity deserving of patience and active listening. No way I can do justice to all the amazing work I see here. Paralyzed staring at the voting page, I spent the last two-ish days writing, hoping this would help me. In case anyone also felt the same anxiety about voting, I want to share this with you.

In order to break up the monumental task of fitting all of this wonderful art into an impossibly strict 1-5 score I made a grade sheet to filter each track though. 10 categories each ranked 1-10. Final score total divided by 20 to approximate 1-5 and rounded up to the nearest point (because just BEING here is awesome) <3
--------------------------------
Musicianship:
1.) Arrangement and Instrument design:
Appropriateness and Kick-ass-ness of instruments and voicing for composition.

2.) Composition Form and Interpretation:
Choice of style or genre, Emotional involvement, Phrasing, Tempo changes, Dynamics, Repetition, Contrast, Suspense, Tension, Build ups, Resolution, etc.

3.) Melody and Harmony:
Cool melodic themes, variety of interesting chords, cadences or similar resolution,

4.) Rhythm and Pulse:
Undeniable grooviness, Steadiness or intentional unsteadiness, Correctness of meter,

5.) Artistry / Madness (Are those different?): Individuality and Imagination, Boldness, ADVENTUROUSNESS
Vision and Creativity: You saw a frozen mountain peak, with no path bearing mercy to humankind, and you STILL dragged VITAL's sleeping insanity on a sled uphill and alone. I love you. You are a hero.

Engineering:
6.) Mixing / Mastering: Weapons Handling. Skillfully handled all tools used.
Are you and EQ samurai forged in the small village hills of "Man, I swear it sounded better on my speakers"? Hell yes. Got Neatness? Clarity?

7.) Sound design: Synth programming
Appropriateness, difficulty, and creativity. Vital is INSANE and would get nerfed if it was made by Blizzard, made evident by the WILD creations demonstrated here! Are Vital's strengths demonstrated by design within the instruments?

8.) Midi Programming and Automation Craftsmanship
Is that eternally looped hi hat born of laziness or by minimalist design? Midi Clips in the right spot? Quantized to the resolution intended? Un-quantized by design?

Meta shiz:
9.) Major Flex : Over all difficulty of piece. Demonstration of Producer’s maturity and abilities. Was it HELLA hard to make? Hell yes. Bury yourself in a cave, wrap your phone in foil to shut out the world to get it finished? That's what I like.

10.) Loop button please!?!: Personal preference for entire work as a whole. Can't help it, your song hit me like Chicxulub and I loved it.
---------------------------

I won't be giving out unsolicited negative criticism because this is fun and who am I to assume your vision, but I will certainly share any thoughts and ideas with anyone asking <3 As an official invitation, ALL criticism, hatred, curiosity and comments are welcome

[FrogsInPants]

Haha, will do. The most impressive sound design for this OSC I've listened to so far is in track.

Thanks so much. I'm happy to share. Patches here.

BugsAndStuff: Brown noise, fed through a band pass filter followed by a band spread comb filter with the cutoff turned way down and the band cut turned way up. I found this provides a nice raspy sound suggesting cicadas, frogs, and other critters. I used a sustained drone of two notes, plus various rhythmic patterns and individual notes for texture.

BirdsAndStuff: Almost the same patch, but with the BPF resonance cranked up, this makes a pretty good bird song. I turned the voices down, and discovered that the voice stealing could leave some of the old note's audio in the comb's buffer, which can introduce some birdlike warble - or horrible noise, so it was necessary to be selective with the takes. Played a little lower, it's also a weirdly chirpy flute.

FrogKetjak: Picks out a short section of a TTWT wavetable, and passes it through a formant filter for additional shaping. I played this in clusters, in unison for emphasis or with slightly offset start times for interlocking chant. I started making variants with different TTWT syllables, but ended up just using the formant filter to vary the sound.

CrumbKick, BambooPerc, FrameDrum: Percussive sounds, used in both upper and lower registers. FrameDrum uses two detuned band spread flange filters in parallel, to what I think is good effect.

Banjo: Physically modeled with a band spread flange for the string sustain, with a low-resonance band spread flange and a formant filter to shape the sound a bit more. Brightness is controlled by the flange filter's band cutoff. Turn it up for banjo, leave it down for more of a guitar sound. I put each string on a separate channel (not MPE), with slight differences in parameters to give each one a slightly different timbre. I found I had to tweak the formant filter a bit per note to avoid unpleasant resonances. (Come to think of it, I should probably switch the positions of the formant filter and the secondary flange, since the latter is completely static.)

JawHarp: Also a band spread flange through a formant filter. I found it hard to make this one really convincing. I'd probably use a wave table for the base sound if I started this one over from scratch.

Choir: This starts with a saw wave, fairly high unison detune, passed through a band spread flange (hmm, I'm noticing a theme) to de-emphasize the detuning, and passed through a formant filter. The wave table is modulated by note to be smoother for higher notes, for less harshness and greater realism. Formant spread and transpose are also modulated by note. Macro 4 performs a bunch of modulations to mutate and gradually filter the sound out of existence.

EchoFlutters: Pink noise through a flange filter and/or a modified saw wave through a LP/BP filter, then passed through a long reverb and very low static flange filter for an eerie echo.

A few people have said in the Vital release thread that Vital's filters are not so good. It depends on what you're looking for, I guess. I thought of using a TTWT of "great track but the filters are not so good" somewhere as a joke. Out of curiosity, I tried turning off all the filters in my piece just now, and it's mostly pulsing brown noise. Ha.

[FrogsInPants]

I won't be giving out unsolicited negative criticism because this is fun and who am I to assume your vision, but I will certainly share any thoughts and ideas with anyone asking

Yeah, hit me. Anything other than "it's too short," because I already know it's missing the entire middle half of what I would have liked to do if I'd buried myself in that cave a few days longer.

[Sleepwalker]

Okay, (61 tracks to analyze) x (who knows how long to compose) = a BUTT LOAD of net time and creativity deserving of patience and active listening. No way I can do justice to all the amazing work I see here. Paralyzed staring at the voting page, I spent the last two-ish days writing, hoping this would help me. In case anyone also felt the same anxiety about voting, I want to share this with you.

In order to break up the monumental task of fitting all of this wonderful art into an impossibly strict 1-5 score I made a grade sheet to filter each track though. 10 categories each ranked 1-10. Final score total divided by 20 to approximate 1-5 and rounded up to the nearest point (because just BEING here is awesome) <3
--------------------------------
Musicianship:
1.) Arrangement and Instrument design:
Appropriateness and Kick-ass-ness of instruments and voicing for composition.

2.) Composition Form and Interpretation:
Choice of style or genre, Emotional involvement, Phrasing, Tempo changes, Dynamics, Repetition, Contrast, Suspense, Tension, Build ups, Resolution, etc.

3.) Melody and Harmony:
Cool melodic themes, variety of interesting chords, cadences or similar resolution,

4.) Rhythm and Pulse:
Undeniable grooviness, Steadiness or intentional unsteadiness, Correctness of meter,

5.) Artistry / Madness (Are those different?): Individuality and Imagination, Boldness, ADVENTUROUSNESS
Vision and Creativity: You saw a frozen mountain peak, with no path bearing mercy to humankind, and you STILL dragged VITAL's sleeping insanity on a sled uphill and alone. I love you. You are a hero.

Engineering:
6.) Mixing / Mastering: Weapons Handling. Skillfully handled all tools used.
Are you and EQ samurai forged in the small village hills of "Man, I swear it sounded better on my speakers"? Hell yes. Got Neatness? Clarity?

7.) Sound design: Synth programming
Appropriateness, difficulty, and creativity. Vital is INSANE and would get nerfed if it was made by Blizzard, made evident by the WILD creations demonstrated here! Are Vital's strengths demonstrated by design within the instruments?

8.) Midi Programming and Automation Craftsmanship
Is that eternally looped hi hat born of laziness or by minimalist design? Midi Clips in the right spot? Quantized to the resolution intended? Un-quantized by design?

Meta shiz:
9.) Major Flex : Over all difficulty of piece. Demonstration of Producer’s maturity and abilities. Was it HELLA hard to make? Hell yes. Bury yourself in a cave, wrap your phone in foil to shut out the world to get it finished? That's what I like.

10.) Loop button please!?!: Personal preference for entire work as a whole. Can't help it, your song hit me like Chicxulub and I loved it.
---------------------------

I won't be giving out unsolicited negative criticism because this is fun and who am I to assume your vision, but I will certainly share any thoughts and ideas with anyone asking <3 As an official invitation, ALL criticism, hatred, curiosity and comments are welcome

Whoa! Maybe you are over analyzing this a bit?

I just rank from sound design alone. And how well the sound design parts work together. This is not a song competition after all, its a synth competition, so a song I don't like personally might still get top score.

I don't know if this is the right way.. At least its easy and somewhat logical.

the-way-this-is-meme.jpg

[doctorbob]

It's a challenge which includes all parts of making a track using a single synth as a sound source. So, composition, sound design (and use), mixing, mastering etc are all important features.

I try to rate each track on all these points objectively and also add in my own subjective rating.

In general I would use the scale 2-5, but this time round I will use 1-5. In the end, it goes,5 amazing, 4 excellent, 3 very good, 2 good, 1 ok. But using all the criteria above. I also try to comment on every track with my own feedback on the areas of the track I feel competent enough to say something.

dB

[PleaseAdvise]

Strictly speaking for myself: Please feel free to share any thoughts or feelings you get. Those need not necessarily be analytical or objective.

Will do! Yours was really something

I'm having such a hard (but good) time rating everything... I hope no hard feelings with lower notes, sometimes it's clean but just not my cuppa, I just don't resonate with everything and I'd rather be honest about my direct experience even if I'm trying measure everything in the context of the competition in a way (and hopefully people will do the same for me, I'd rather have honest 1s than charity 2s)

[Sleepwalker]

.. remember you must score all the tracks 1-5 or you will be disqualified, your own track goes into the 1 bin!

Seems we can put our own track anywhere though, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5!

[jasinski]

.. remember you must score all the tracks 1-5 or you will be disqualified, your own track goes into the 1 bin!

Seems we can put our own track anywhere though, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5!

It automatically gets sorted to 1.