Bazzille vs. Zebra... CAGE MATCH!

[pdxindy]

I once tried to make my Nord Modular say "sushi", but all I could get out of it was "Suzie".
Then my wife demanded to know who Suzie was, and things got ugly...

Obviously you were doing it for a friend who has a crush on his co-worker named Suzie!

Vocal stuff is really hard...

[pdxindy]

Here is a Zebra preset I made last night...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra70.mp3

[Phase47]

Here is a Zebra preset I made last night...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra70.mp3

PDX you need to release a Zebra patch bank. All your patches are superb.

[TomTwohy]

Sendy... dance music is going strong even with these vocal sounds you object to. Maybe folks like 'em?

To lump an entire field of endeavor into either good or bad serves no one.

But thanks for the kind words!



OK guys, fair enough... my haste has not served my point.

I'm not good enough (yet) to whip out patches like a pro... I'll eat that.


pdxindy... you took a stance that Bazzille was some amazing new item, that is debatable... I merely contend that with more modern features it could be even more so.

That point still stands.

Sorry for the colorful remarks, perhaps couching a discussion about synth products in theater of professional wrestling vernacular is too alien for your tastes? Just trying to bring levity to a fairly dry debate (from the start).


Hakey... just make the sound. If you can't, I'll forgive you.

It would be the reasonable approach, as opposed to mere verbal pot-shots. Credibility is a two way street.

To complain (on the internet) is just too damned easy... sorry.


deastman... DUDE... lay off that Ghetto Rock!

[pdxindy]

Here is a Zebra preset I made last night...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra70.mp3

PDX you need to release a Zebra patch bank. All your patches are superb.

Thanks! I am working on it... will be a while still though

[Sendy]

Sendy... dance music is going strong even with these vocal sounds you object to. Maybe folks like 'em?

To lump an entire field of endeavor into either good or bad serves no one.

So if something is commercially succesful I'm foolish to have the opinion that I dislike the majority of it? I wish no ill on those that do enjoy it.

Also, I'm obviously not lumping "all" dance music (nor all vocaloid sounds) into the same basket - I just find a lot of the commercial stuff released today kinda obnoxious. Surely it's understood that we speak in generalizations because we all know there'll always be exceptions to the rule and it'd be tedious to have to put that disclaimer in every time we voiced an opinion?

More on WHY I have this opinion (on most of it) - To me it is "checklist" music. You'll note the countless and infinitessimal genres we have today, each with their own strict rules. Back a while ago (when I preferred dance music) things were more open - it was house, trance, ambient, acid, drum+bass, etc. Each had a huge scope for variety. These days you could almost take a track, change the attack rate of one of the synths, and it'll be a different genre, because each one is so tightly prescribed. You have kids arguing about whether a track is "forlorn reverse doggy-style booty bass" or "slightly miffed reverse doggy-style booty bass" and comments like "where's the drop? wots da point of this its borin!?" to music that doesn't seem to take one soilitary idea and bludgeon the listener with it in the most obvious way possible. I personally find that unfortunate but that's just me :/

[pdxindy]

pdxindy... you took a stance that Bazzille was some amazing new item, that is debatable... I merely contend that with more modern features it could be even more so.

Bazille is a musical and expressive synth with remarkable sound quality and a truly unique feature set. The tools allow some unusual sorts of modulation that leads to different places and some creative organic sounds.

The sequencer is one example. Quite different than the usual. Here is one example of something more standard modulating pitch

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille52.mp3

But then it can do some cool stuff like audio rate modulation between sequencer patterns and using the sequencer as a sound source. Here are some examples of those things.

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille30.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille22.wav
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille35.mp3

This one has a seq playing and being modulated at audio rate. It leads to some lovely organic variations that are not like the usual mechanical sound of a step sequencer.

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille37.mp3


Couple more examples

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille32.mp3
http://draigathar.org/sounds/Bazille34.mp3


My point being, Bazille is something unique and should be appreciated for what it is... It has great highs, amazing freakin bass, and the modulations can be so clear, and liquid and beautiful!

[xh3rv]

I guess I'm consistently impressed by stuff that's, not even on a spectrum but in an n-dimensional universe of vocality characteristics.

For Zebra the intelligibility is novel, but IMO the really musically interesting bit is the way the OSC/wavetable technically reduces the definition of the sound down to something that's at a sweet spot between, I dunno, granular and additive and sampling techniques, and also at a sweet spot in terms of being manageable given the PC-based UI. Excited to see what Urs & associates come up with here for Zebra3, potentially what's been done with Zebra2 is just prologue here.

For Bazille / ACE, I think it's the way bottom-up patching and cabling inspires unique ideas that just wouldn't happen otherwise. There are a few easy patterns like using the 2 filters for formant-ish peaks, also some crude (well, relative to Zebra) ways to get the oscillators to foment formants, but what's really going to animate things is how the craziness of the modularity modulates these relatively incomplete forms. It'll sing, probably not like any human could

I believe lots of non-synth instruments could really be talked about in the same way, too. There's so often amazing interplay between instrumental and vocal performance in any given musical culture. Just very abstracted bits of articulation, not really about words but profoundly about expression, and it goes both ways. Example (didn't think too hard about it, but ...): sort of an operatic gamelan thing: - I swear the vibrato in singer's voice is related to the subtle detuning of individual bars on gamelans (tuned for a frequency-based beating rather than, like, a choral or symphonic detuning).

[pdxindy]

For Bazille / ACE, I think it's the way bottom-up patching and cabling inspires unique ideas that just wouldn't happen otherwise. There are a few easy patterns like using the 2 filters for formant-ish peaks, also some crude (well, relative to Zebra) ways to get the oscillators to foment formants, but what's really going to animate things is how the craziness of the modularity modulates these relatively incomplete forms. It'll sing, probably not like any human could

With Zebra it is easier to shape the sound into word patterns like Howards impessive 'I Am Zebra' preset. However that is still a very synthetic computer voice.

At least for me, I find Bazille easier to get a more natural vocal tone that in moments can be good enough to sound like a single actual voice.

[hakey]

Hakey... just make the sound. If you can't, I'll forgive you.

It would be the reasonable approach, as opposed to mere verbal pot-shots. Credibility is a two way street.

I was arguing that getting an intelligible vocal out of Zebra is very difficult - on present evidence, I think that's a credible argument.

And 'reasonable approach' and 'verbal pot-shots'? What kind of an impression do you think you've been presenting in this thread?

-

[hakey]

With Zebra it is easier to shape the sound into word patterns like Howards impessive 'I Am Zebra' preset.

TomTwohy, if I produced something along the lines of this, would it shut you up?

[Fritze]

Here is a Zebra preset I made last night...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra70.mp3

Noice! Likey.

[whyterabbyt]

i think this thing should be more like that thing because that thing is the thing i like more.

[TomTwohy]

i think this thing should be more like that thing because that thing is the thing i like more.

-whyterabbyt

Good point.

Maybe I should just loan U-he some cash to gain influence?

[pdxindy]

i think this thing should be more like that thing because that thing is the thing i like more.

-whyterabbyt

Good point.

Maybe I should just loan U-he some cash to gain influence?

No, you should first actually learn how cool it is right now, before advocating it be changed to something else