One Synth Challenge #159: Surge XT (j5v Wins!)

[IV!]

I finally voted! It was exhausting because Surge is too diverse and the tracks are too good. I left comments almost everywhere, that is, where I could say something at least a little bit useful; with my knowledge here, it remains only to go and write "Great track!", "Fantastic sounds!", "Perfect mix!"...
There were a lot of very short tracks, one nutcase made almost a ten-minute track, the styles and sounds were amazing, so no matter how hard I tried to judge more strictly, I seem to have distributed almost everything between the top two scores again. Thanks to an empty field (deleted track, apparently) I'm not alone with 1 this time, I hope that was the way to do it.
Now the courage and endurance for all, if you haven't done it yet!

[dakkra]

Voted! Lots of awesome music! Glad to be surrounded by such creativity!

[Harry_HH]

Voted - many great tracks.
I repeat my scoring criteria:
-general idea, structure of the piece
-melody
-innovativines
-playing skills
-sounds
-goove/feel/how the piece drives

BTW, great piece from the Subcycles/Milkster, but breakes the rules,
I wish the composer makes the track downloadable in the Soundcloud.

[MilksterX]

Voted - many great tracks.
I repeat my scoring criteria:
-general idea, structure of the piece
-melody
-innovativines
-playing skills
-sounds
-goove/feel/how the piece drives

BTW, great piece from the Subcycles/Milkster, but breakes the rules,
I wish the composer makes the track downloadable in the Soundcloud.

Ah thankyou for spotting this I'm sure I had enabled downloads. Fixed this now.

[zipidowski]

Voted. So many nice tracks and it was really hard to decide what points to give this round.

I think I managed to comment all tracks (where available). If not let me know. Commenting wasn´t easy task either but now I know what it takes.

Oh and now there isn´t anymore that blank track . I don´t remember anymore which it was but it´s there.

[IV!]

Warning!

Ah, what a "pleasant" surprise! For some reason, zipidowski's message pushed me to check if everything was OK with my voices, and this is what I saw: 44 tracks out of 56 are not scored! I can't say this for sure, but maybe it's all those tracks that were below the empty track. I recommend everyone who voted before zipidowski to check their votes and distribute them again if necessary. Although it is possible that this happened only to me. I will go and finish the voting again, fortunately I remember my scores well.

---

Edit: "All Tracks Scored!" Again)

[silverpants]

After hearing the first 3rd I can say 2 things a lot are very moody and dark (I hope everyone is feeling ok) and the quality is crazy high with most either 4 or 5 so far.

I think that Surge XT has so many nice features that it automatically invites us to explore darker atmospheres as one easily stumbles over these qualities while getting to know the synth. Surge XT is super inspiring and it's great that it makes people create wonderful stuff.

Yes. I think the little FM synths in 160 will probably produce a lot more light hearted tunes.

[baconpaul]

Attaching a patch that does a vocal count in ("1, 2, 3, 4") using a phrase built into the Twist oscillator.

This is such an elegant and crazy use of the msegs and twist. Really clever. Thanks for digging deep enough into the synth to find this inspiring little bit of madness!

[Leonard Bowman]

A couple folks have asked about how I made my zero instance piece, so I've attached my Reaper project file here.

A couple of important things to note:
1) it's sample rate dependent, so it will sound different if you aren't at a sample rate of 48000.
2) it makes sound even when it isn't playing - you can scrub around the timeline and hold your favorite moment of the song forever if you want. I used automation to mute the very beginning and end though, so return to the start (or open a different window) if you need a moment of silence.

Now, for the techniques!
There are two effects that create noise with no input: Tape (using the degrade settings) and Airwindows Voice Of The Starship. These serve as the base for most of my sounds.
When you feed that noise into the Combulator or Resonator effects with high feedback/resonance, you can create a tonal sound. Alternately, feeding that noise into Reverb1 with a very small Size setting gives an inharmonic sound - that's how I made my bells.

All other sounds start with the Waveshaper effect. Turning off all the filters and cranking up the Bias gives a DC offset. Feeding that into the Ring Modulator turns ringmod into a versatile oscillator.

The last big technique is using Nimbus for rhythms. With negative Density settings, it outputs grains at regularly spaced intervals. putting this in between a noise source and Combulator/Reverb1 creates the rhythmic plucking/bells you hear about a minute into my piece.

Everything else is fairly standard use of FX; feel free to poke around the project and ask questions if there's any sounds you're curious about!

[MadMcMan]

Voted, great tracks again as always!

[z.prime]

@Leonard. Firstly, this is an amazing feat! But there is a philosophical question: is this a one synth challenge entry if it doesn't have any synth instances?

[] Peter:H []

@Leonard. Firstly, this is an amazing feat! But there is a philosophical question: is this a one synth challenge entry if it doesn't have any synth instances?

I think he should be disqualified immediately and banned forever for showing curiosity, technical skills, genuine creativity ... if only he had used a standard and proper chord progression, sigh. I have now only one philosophical question which is why this is a philosophical question... *add arbitrary emoticon here* meow.

[z.prime]

Learn what troll means.

[Korg Supporter]

My votes have been updated. "Venusian Fields" became available, so I listened to it and gave it a 5!

[neverbeeninariot]

Voted - There are some really remarkable tracks this month and I was gobsmacked by some of the single instance entries, but Leonard gets an additional nod, a wink, and a doff of my cap for using no instances - brilliant. : )

However, if he doesn't complete the next OSC without using a DAW, I'll be disappointed