Dance/Electronic Zebra 2 Preset Bank - available NOW!

[beej]

Yeah of course, I'm just kinda suggesting what I look for personally.

There are other types of music than dance, and sometimes I think people forget that (ooh supersaw! teh virus! How can I Benassi my kick? How can I get wicked sick dope phat beats on my empeecee?... and so on...

[Howard]

For me, I find dance presets highly ignorable in the main. My personal taste is playable sounds, ie sounds which aren't overly complex, but have unique and interesting timbres, respond well to playing styles (velocity, aftertouch, modwheels etc) and offer me a nice amount of control while playing/automating... I want the sounds to feel like I'm playing an instrument, rather than just playing notes, so it's mostly tone, movement and expression that I'm into.
I dunno - some ramblings which may or may not be helpful...

That was more than "some ramblings", beej! With these views you may be in the minority.
But it's my kind of minority

[beej]

Ah I dunno - with the universal praise your Zebra bank generated, maybe there's more of us out there than you'd think...!

[pdxindy]

that would be me too...

I especially like playable sounds with organic sounding timbres. Not necessarily exact emulations but sounds that one might think were made by some unknown physical instrument. This is one reason I have gravitated towards physical modeled synths (owning Tassman and String Studio) and also why midi keyboards with good expressive control are important to me. I think it is a minority because up until recently, you could not buy a midi controller that was as good as the ones made 10 years ago. I wish there was a new midi controller that had XY pad, breath control, and poly AT along with the usual modwheel, pedal sustain etc.

[Howard]

that would be me too...

Hey beej, pdxindy: Have you already programmed one or two patches that are expressive in the way beej described? If not, you really should give it a try (the secret is to be obsessive about control ranges, BTW).

[beej]

Yes, but I usually do it in my "patch mastering" stage. I tend to make sounds and get the essence and sound character right, so the essence/core of the patch is done.

Then later on when I've got a batch of these and start to assemble a full bank, I do the polish and optimisation then - making sure all modulation and expression stuff works with sensible ranges, XY stuff does sensible/interesting things, balancing volumes and gain structure, and any last minute tweaks to improve the patch.

It's not an exclusive rule of course, sometimes the expression is very much part of the patch so I might concentrate a little more on that in the inception stage, but generally speaking I like to generate lots of content and then select the best stuff and polish it later, rather than getting caught up in the details of each patch at the time...

[Howard]

...I like to generate lots of content and then select the best stuff and polish it later, rather than getting caught up in the details of each patch at the time

Yep, that's exactly what I do most of the time.

[zircon]

You know, it's interesting seeing people's thoughts on the topic of patch design and comparing it to their backgrounds. Howard, based on your site, it seems like you've always been a performance guy - and your sounds and design philosophy of course match up with that. In comparison, I do all my work in a studio setting, inputting notes using the mouse and only using my controller to test a sound or a pattern - I *rarely* record! Not to mention, using FL7 as my sequencer, manual linking to different CCs on a synth is required on a per-plugin basis so I usually don't even bother to "hook up" things like the modwheel. So - at least from a personal standpoint - I don't have some of the considerations for control in mind...

But I am interested, of course, in organic sounds as well. I loved your work in the Absynth factory bank, particularly! The presets I am currently working on do lean towards the organic, such as a sort of choir patch (roughly approximated since there's no waveform input) and a pretty cool panflute pad/texture.

[beej]

The thing is, if a patch has expression built in to the usual controllers such as modulation, velocity, aftertouch etc, even the non-players will benefit, as tweaking those controls in your host automation or edit pages will instantly give some musically interesting and useful ways to change and develop the sound.

Let's say you have a patch doing an arpeggiated sequence. The mod wheel may close down the filter, or the velocity might give some subtle tone variations. Aftertouch may bring in an extra layer, or more distortion or something.

Of course, you can ignore all that if you like very straight repetition, but using those options does give each sound more options and range for expression, no matter how you choose to express it - and that's why I bang on about this so much.

I'm not saying that every patch should be doing wacky things when you play with different velocities, I'm just saying that sound designers *should* imho pay attention to these things. It's one of the things that makes each sound more valuable, as right off the bat there's really quick ways you can get more milage out of them.

For instance, with my Zebra sounds, I usually set up on XY1 some controls to do some interesting things to the tone/waveforms/oscillators, on XY2 some interesting filtery things, on XY3 usually some envelopy things, and on XY4 some FX things. So on any given patch, even non programmers can very quickly shape any given patch into what they prefer - reduce the effects, speed up the attacks, find a sweet spot for the filters and alter the tone to taste - and that means that there's a larger chance that any given patch would be useful to any given person, without needing the knowledge to know how to do it in synthesis terms.

And while you're playing, grabbing the mod wheel, pressing down on the keyboard or really hitting the keys hard will all do something appropriate, rather than nothing at all.

After all, expressing yourself is what making music is about...

[pdxindy]

that would be me too...

Hey beej, pdxindy: Have you already programmed one or two patches that are expressive in the way beej described? If not, you really should give it a try (the secret is to be obsessive about control ranges, BTW).

Yeah, I've programmed a number of patches. I use modwheel, AT, Expression pedal, and the XY pad on my controller. (not all at once) I like the expression pedal because it leaves both hands free to play so I am glad it is an option in Zebra.

[politcat]

$15 for this bunch, i'll take it. great stuff on a great synth.

[TerryR]

Nice demo. I haven't even bought Zebra 2.1 yet, and I'm almost ready to pay my $15.

[beej]

Nice demo. I haven't even bought Zebra 2.1 yet, and I'm almost ready to pay my $15.

Now *there's* yer quote for your webpage , Zirc..!

[pdxindy]

Nice demo. I haven't even bought Zebra 2.1 yet, and I'm almost ready to pay my $15.

Now *there's* yer quote for your webpage , Zirc..!

yup!

[zircon]

Bump - will update this with a demo of the upcoming volume 2 soon, been having lots of fun designing sounds for it. Thanks for the continued interest!