KVR Audio

mkdr · Post by **mkdr** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 7:14 am

zerocrossing wrote: ...the current trend is people are doing more Skrillexesque performances using Live and some Akai controllers.

That my friend is a decade old trend by now...
And what i understood that dude is doing dj gigs?

Oh and i have to add
I've used only softsynths since 1994!!

mbncp · Post by **mbncp** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 10:30 am

mikedw wrote:What soft synth do you prefer over the virus?

I wouldn't mind a multi-timbral Diva in a box similar to my TI2 Polar or maybe a little bigger and more knobs.

The Telenator · Post by **The Telenator** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 11:22 am

I really wasn't aware that there were any soft synths back in '94. Do you recall the name of any you used then? I was still running away from anything digital back then!

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 12:14 pm

you're kidding right?

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 3:47 pm

mkdr wrote:
zerocrossing wrote: ...the current trend is people are doing more Skrillexesque performances using Live and some Akai controllers.
That my friend is a decade old trend by now...
And what i understood that dude is doing dj gigs?

Oh and i have to add
I've used only softsynths since 1994!!

Oh, you only have to go into Guitar Center every now and then to know that truth. I didn't say that but yeah, the DJ trend actually a trend that goes a lot further back than 10 years, though computers wen't involved. What I was talking about is the trend for DJs to also be the people who compose and produce the music they're DJing.

I did try it once. After a gig where a fellow musician/instrumentalist and I performed at a down-tempo rave, we noticed how much attention the DJs that came on after us were getting as we packed up our gear. It was pretty clear that the audience (who responded well to us) was just as happy having people come up and play CDs. I thought of all the time I had just spent shlepping gear around and the fact that I had to leave because there was no where for me to store my stuff after our set, yet the guys who brought in a CD wallet were getting just as good a response from the audience and were free to spend the night and party as long as they wanted.

So, I started making loops of my own music and put together a set in Live. I hated it. The people at the party liked it fine, but I hated doing it. It felt... like karaoke compared to playing with a real band. Even though I had a small keyboard and I as actually playing soft synths... I just had a hard time getting into it. Anyway, no slight to the people who play Live like an instrument. More power to them. It's just not for me. However, the compact rig was for me. I'd been seeing a friend do a looping/beatbox show with a laptop and mic and I'd been really envious. Well, thanks to VSTis I'm not jealous any more. I'm doing an internet radio gig at the end of March and all I'm bringing is a guitar, Remote 25sl, IK Stealthpedal and a Behringer FCB1010. Would a Virus make my rig any better? I can't imagine it would.

The Telenator · Post by **The Telenator** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 5:16 pm

zerocrossing -- that's an interesting story and from your telling I can put myself into that situation. Rock and Pop bands always seemed to require tons of gear back then, even for the smallest venue.

@aciddose -- seriously, no kidding. For myself and other guitarists in those days retro had been happening since Punk Rock in the late '70s, and to at least a small degree it affected all of us. We were all anti- to any of that stuff. You could be shunned in some circles for having any synth at all on your LP. Players would sometimes put a note on the back cover, saying, "No synthesizers were used in the making of this record." And remember, starting just a few years before your '94 date, MIDI was sort of shaky glitchy and digital gear was very limited. My first solid exposure to the digital world was when I bought one of the second generation of Roland Guitar Synth setups, a GR-7 or maybe a 10 -- can't remember the number, but it didn't track very well. That was in roughly '83, and I recall that most settings sounded like a cheesy accordion. With all the hardware other than the few and expensive hardware synths being so primitive, our introduction to all that was a real turn-off. There was also some speculation that the whole thing was just a sort of fad, that it wasn't going to catch on . . . so why invest or learn much? My guitar synth was more of a curiosity -- really just an expensive toy. Good keyboard players were rare and often too broke to own much, even though we all knew about those $5k synths. Oooh! Every keys player dreamt of buying a Prophet synth way back in my teens. Honestly, though, other than the novel albums like Switched-on Bach and Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing, for years and years I had no idea what MIDI was for or its advantages. As a guitarist, it was so easy to remain blissfully ignorant of it all.

How things have changed! Here I am, still predominantly a guitarist but poking around the Web to find out and possibly acquire the latest top-rated soft synth. It took me years to get free of my guitar junkie gear addiction and instead I'm hooked on all this stuff. I would have never believed it a mere 15 or more years ago!

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:11 am

The Telenator wrote:starting just a few years before your '94 date, MIDI was sort of shaky glitchy and digital gear was very limited

maybe in some cases. the dx-7 was the first instrument to have a reasonably full implementation and that was 1983.

The Telenator wrote:Honestly, though, other than the novel albums like Switched-on Bach and Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing, for years and years I had no idea what MIDI was for or its advantages. As a guitarist, it was so easy to remain blissfully ignorant of it all.

that is true... midi was one possible interface. any programmer or typical computer nerd who was also interested in synthesizers would have built their own DAC and software to control it though. i know i did! it doesn't take much effort or expense to produce a dac using either serial or parallel and the tons of chips made exactly for the purpose out there. it actually only costs you about ten bucks to build a parallel port dac capable of audio rates, and in the 90s you even had most software with an option for such a thing already built in!

The Telenator wrote:How things have changed! Here I am, still predominantly a guitarist but poking around the Web to find out and possibly acquire the latest top-rated soft synth. It took me years to get free of my guitar junkie gear addiction and instead I'm hooked on all this stuff. I would have never believed it a mere 15 or more years ago!

well, in my experience there are two points that go against that: 1) the latest trend tends to be total crap and this all comes as a revelation to the masses a few years later. 2) nothing is ever more productive than a simple set of gear and a daw. software is best as a multiplier, not as a foundation on it's own.

of course i suppose other people may experience things differently, but i'd find it hard to believe a guitarist would see anything but a guitar and a good preamp as the proper foundation for their work.

VitaminD · Post by **VitaminD** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:12 am

aciddose wrote:you're kidding right?

Sounds like the background to an Ed Rush and Optical DNB song..

vata44 · Post by **vata44** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:43 am

everything

cytospur · Post by **cytospur** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 2:11 am

Synapse Audio's DUNE, backed up by my Novation synths (KS rack, Nova and Xio), and Waldorf Blofeld. I'll probably sell the Nova and Xio though. Any takers?