u-he

pough · Post by **pough** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 8:33 pm

Beardedone wrote:
We can make our own, Beardedone, and just ignore all the scary complex stuff. Bearded Pough's Basic Black and White Zebra Presets!
It would be great to have someone actually show me how to program a synth first hand. But I wonder if you would have patience. I'm not very quick.

Aren't you a guitar player? Hell, I'm a bass player who dabbles in ukulele. I have less of a clue what the knobs, button and sliders do than you! I can't even seem to deal with more than 4 strings!

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 10:36 pm

Beardedone wrote: It would be great to have someone actually show me how to program a synth first hand. But I wonder if you would have patience. I'm not very quick.

In case you're really interested, get the "How to make a Noise" PDF from here:
http://www.noisesculpture.com/

I can also recommend some of the (freely available) SOS backissues on the topic of synth programming.

Beardedone · Post by **Beardedone** » Sat Oct 08, 2005 2:49 am

Thanks Pough. I have these. I just haven't devoted the time/effort yet. I have some basic understanding but need to hear how simple one. two and three oscillator synths work then move on to filters. It's pretty daunting.

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Sat Oct 08, 2005 6:16 am

Beardedone wrote:Thanks Pough. I have these. I just haven't devoted the time/effort yet. I have some basic understanding but need to hear how simple one. two and three oscillator synths work then move on to filters. It's pretty daunting.

The Native Instruments freebie "Soundforum" is a great little tool for teaching yourself basic subtractive synth stuff. A lot of the download links for it are dead but this page seems to still have it - not available for OSX as far as I can see.

http://www.rempro.nl/download.htm

Windows version is here:

http://rempro.nl/downloads/soundforumsynth.zip

It serves as a tutorial to some degree - it has presets demonstrating basic sounds and quite a few of the tricks of the trade (eg filter envelope effects, using noise) and a CRO type display showing the output waveform so you can "see" how changes are affecting the sound.

peitzmann · Post by **peitzmann** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:51 pm

Urs wrote:Heh, ok, more news:

Just finished a little gui widget for testing spline based envelope curves:

So you can smoothly go from straight line to each of the four other curve types for each segment of the envelope.

What do you think? Wouldn't that stuff be sufficient for complex envelopes?

Cheers,

Urs

Looks good. Just curious - couldn't you simplify this and stick to the first three curves and substitute number 4 and 5 with 2+3 and 3+2 (or the other way round)?

Thomas

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 6:27 pm

peitzmann wrote:Looks good. Just curious - couldn't you simplify this and stick to the first three curves and substitute number 4 and 5 with 2+3 and 3+2 (or the other way round)?

Hmmm... dunno...

... actually, it works quite well already, I added a grid, zoom, multiple steps, various dragging and drawing modes, a loop...

There'll also be meta controls that adjust/modulate stuff like start point, loop point, loop duration...

Cheers,

Urs

OMU · Post by **OMU** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:49 am

begins to look like... Absynth

OMU · Post by **OMU** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:50 am

... which is, of course very cool

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:30 am

OMU wrote:begins to look like... Absynth

But it sounds soooooo different

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:31 am

OMU wrote:... which is, of course very cool

Indeed

OMU · Post by **OMU** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:53 pm

Urs wrote:
OMU wrote:begins to look like... Absynth
But it sounds soooooo different

Let us hear more

Beside this, I really like your synth. It is installed (the demo, of course) on my recentely bought PowerBook (which is my first Mac) and I wish the ten minutes to be 30

I think it sounds great but somehow the preset included are just an appetizer and I really think you should hire some great sound designers to do more presets. MX4, which is a direct competitor of Zebra, being also coded for mac, has hundreds of presets, which for people like me who have to do sometimes quick jobs are a real blessing.
And now, when you enter the pc scene, there is z3ta+ which also ships with a very good library, and has some user made banks spread over the net (altough I don't like the fact that the factory presets are not logically distributed. Having preset cattegories is very time saving).
These being said, maybe you could ask Rob Papen to do some for you

I'm waiting for v2 to be release to see if the improvements and the sounds will determine me to buy it.

Beardedone · Post by **Beardedone** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 3:01 pm

I am wondering when I can test a PC demo so I can finally buy this monster. It looks amazing. I know how great Zebra sounds having heard it on a friend's Mac

Don't worry I stood far away from the apple logo.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 3:42 pm

OMU wrote:Let us hear more

As you wish:

http://www.u-he.com/music/Zebra2JuiceBass.mp3

4 Zebra2 prototypes, but only 3 patches (the bass and the arpeggio synths are the same patch, but latter has some delay...). ADLimiter to kill the spikes. No further processing...

... but unfortunately, mp3 killed a lot of the subbass pressure and quality...

Regrading presets, I have no doubt that there'll be tons!

The current plan is to ship Zebra2 with 2-3 simplified "tutorial synths" that allow for easy editing of certain key features and will produce presets that can be used in Zebra2 as well.

There'll also be preset competitions and stuff, you'll see... (I doubt that Rob would want to do anything, because his Blue synth shows some features that enter Zebra in V2)

Cheers,

Urs

OMU · Post by **OMU** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:20 pm

Man, you're something

Thanks for the mp3 and the infos.
(edit) The demo is awsome!!! thanks, you're good.
And, by the way, Blue doesn't come even close to Zebra (the sound, not the featues)

Good luck and inspiration with your "new" synth.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:21 pm

Hints: The new multistage envelopes were not used. The FilterFM-like sound is not FilterFM (the patch only has a 6dB lowpass filter)... but there's a mixture of PhaseDistortion and FM going on. The bass uses two oscillators that are pretty randomly panned.

Hey Beardedone, the closest Apple Logo I have is at the PC... it's on the Apple Display (necessary to feel comfortable with XP)

Urs

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