Two new XT2 tunes with new Synth/Sampler sounds

[Scot Solida]

Over the past couple of days, I have been playing around with XT2 and came up with a couple of tracks using only XT2's Synth/Sampler and sounds I have made for it:

http://www.olscratchrecordings.com/Soun ... serves.mp3

http://www.olscratchrecordings.com/Sounds/QuietTime.mp3

No EQ or processing was used, save for some maximizing of the final mix. Everything you hear is from the Synth/Sampler in XT2. Many of my classic synths were multi-sampled and rolled into these XT2 Synth/Sampler patches, along with many, many electric and acoustic instruments.

[1barEnuff]

hi, nice sounds scot, quiettime is a very apt title for that song
it sounds kind of south american pan pipe type thing. i clicked the link for rocketships outside my window but i didnt really get it ,what were you actually referring to? i missed the point somehow.

cheers, john

[Scot Solida]

hi, nice sounds scot, quiettime is a very apt title for that song
it sounds kind of south american pan pipe type thing. i clicked the link for rocketships outside my window but i didnt really get it ,what were you actually referring to? i missed the point somehow.

cheers, john

Thanks! That's exactly what that sound is: a small pan pipe that I sampled for XT2's synth/sampler (all these sounds were made for Jorgen and his synth/sampler). The rocketships link is just part of my signature. That museum is a couple blocks away from my house. Nothing to do with my post...

[1barEnuff]

that sounds like a cool museum, my two little boys would love to live near that!

john

[Scot Solida]

that sounds like a cool museum, my two little boys would love to live near that!

john

It is cool...it's the second biggest space museum in the world. And because it's free for residents here, my son and I are pretty regular visitors. Some very important artifacts are housed there, including the actual Apollo 13 and Liberty Bell capsules. They do the resortation work for NASA and the Smithsonian, so there are always cool things coming through. In fact, there are big rocket parts stored all around town...it's very surreal (and not a little inpsiring!)

[Caleb]

I can't get the damn things playing on this computer. Will try when I get home Scot.

How are you finding the synth Scot? I'm not liking it much, but it's a synthesis method I don't really understand to tell you the truth, so I really don't know how to get the most out of it.

Regards
Caleb

[Scot Solida]

I can't get the damn things playing on this computer. Will try when I get home Scot.

How are you finding the synth Scot? I'm not liking it much, but it's a synthesis method I don't really understand to tell you the truth, so I really don't know how to get the most out of it.

Regards
Caleb

All in all, it is a good resource for just about any kind of sound. If you can't get into the phase distortion side, you can treat it just like any other subtractive instrument, but one with a really flexible oscillator. More than that, the ability to bring in and save samples as part of the patch opens it up to just about any kind of sound at all. It's easy to layer, say, a struck or bowed attack with a synthesized wave (ala the D-50 or ESQ-1), and you can quite easily draw ROMpler style sounds from it. Such an inclusion give XT2 something that many of the big name DAWs lack. Add to that the fact that you can simply drag a preset from the browser into the sequencer arrangement and the value of this thing becomes clear. Want a Minimoog bass? Drag the preset over, complete with samples, and start playing. It's as good as an integration of an instrument I have seen (it is kinda like Ableton's Live in this sense). It's immediate, but retains enough flexibility to allow for some complex sounds if you want to take the time. If you don't, then i have it on good authoriaty that it may very well include a number of good presets...

[djsubject]

nice sounds!!

sounds like you know what your doing with that synth/sampler


i'm glad presets are coming (maybe ) as making the sound you want from a template is much easier than from scratch,

& just being lazy & playing presets & seeing where it takes you is great fun

Subz

[Scot Solida]

nice sounds!!

sounds like you know what your doing with that synth/sampler


Subz

Thanks! I've spent a lot of time with it in recent weeks...

Yes templates are easier...you've just given me an idea...

[kirtap910]

Yes templates are easier...you've just given me an idea...

I guess we can expect some nice presets this friday!

[djsubject]

I guess we can expect some nice presets this friday!

what made you think that

[Caleb]

Scot - listened to them finally.
I really like that first one.

When you said you sampled alot of classic synths - are you saying that you're not using the XT2 synth oscillators at all? These are the buggers that are annoying me.

I can't write a tutorial on the synth/sampler because I have no idea what it's doing. Grrrrr.

Oh - hang on, I just realised one of these waveforms says "Modulator".
This is kinda like FM, but modulating the phase rather than the frequency?

And you can self-modulate as well?

Hmmm - I've got to look up something on this so that I know enough to experiment with some vague intelligence.

Regards
Caleb

[Scot Solida]

Scot - listened to them finally.
I really like that first one.

When you said you sampled alot of classic synths - are you saying that you're not using the XT2 synth oscillators at all? These are the buggers that are annoying me.

And you can self-modulate as well?

Regards
Caleb

Thanks, Caleb. I used both samples and the built-in oscillators.

I may be off-base, but I think I have gotten a pretty good handle on the way it works. Think of the oscillators in sort of the same way you do oscillators on a DX or CZ synth. Instead of having a handful of waveforms like saw, sine, square, you have one oscillator that can be modulated by the other to create more interesting waveforms. The oscillator on the right side of the GUI is the one to think of as the "carrier". In its default setting, it's actually pretty close to a normal sawtooth wave, and there is no interaction with the waveform on the left. You can click on the waveform and drag it down to a sine wave, or drag it up to add harmonics. Things get interesting when you start modulating it with the waveform to the left. Use the parameters displayed between the two to control how much modulation occurs. If you don't modulate the waveforms against one another, then you can really treate the synth as a normal subtractive with a user-definable waveshape, and you only need to pay attention to the waveform shown on the right.

One way to get a handle on what is happening is to strap something like s(M)exoscope onto the output and zoom in on the waveform as you modulate it. That might help you better visualize what is going on.

[Caleb]

Hey thanks for taking the time Scot.
Once I had the "A-ha!" moment, I was a bit more successful in playing with it.

It seems like just a different form of FM. The carrier can be by itself without modulation - in which case you can alter the sound of it by introducing self-modulation(?) - ie dragging up and down.

With this you can get a sine wav, an almost-saw wave and various additional variations involving different harmonics due to the varying levels of static phase self-modulation.

You can then use it like an interesting oscillator in a subtractive synth by adding more layers for more oscillators and applying filters, modulation etc...

Now - when you want to explore different sonic territories you can expand the range of each carrier wave by modulating the phase with a separate wave form. This wave form can also self modulate and gives you a much wider form of interesting harmonics etc that using just the carrier wave. You can control how much modulation is present and also use this 1 - 32x thingy for more extreme results (seems to accentuate higher harmonics as you go).

You can modulate the phase modulation using envelopes and lfos etc.. to make the phase modulation a little more dynamic.

I didn't touch upon RingMod there but that's just another way of "impacting" the carrier and/or modulator.

Anyway - stuffing around I came up with a preset - oh my lord how did that happen!?

It's as random as most of my preset generation (particularly with synthesis methods I don't understand very well )

It's just a one oscillator jobby.

Anyway - here's a crappy meandering on my keyboard for a few seconds. How embarrassment!

http://www.calebblake.com/temp/synthleadcrap.mp3

Regards
Caleb

[Scot Solida]

Hey thanks for taking the time Scot.
Once I had the "A-ha!" moment, I was a bit more successful in playing with it.

It seems like just a different form of FM. The carrier can be by itself without modulation - in which case you can alter the sound of it by introducing self-modulation(?) - ie dragging up and down.

With this you can get a sine wav, an almost-saw wave and various additional variations involving different harmonics due to the varying levels of static phase self-modulation.

You can then use it like an interesting oscillator in a subtractive synth by adding more layers for more oscillators and applying filters, modulation etc...

Now - when you want to explore different sonic territories you can expand the range of each carrier wave by modulating the phase with a separate wave form. This wave form can also self modulate and gives you a much wider form of interesting harmonics etc that using just the carrier wave. You can control how much modulation is present and also use this 1 - 32x thingy for more extreme results (seems to accentuate higher harmonics as you go).

You can modulate the phase modulation using envelopes and lfos etc.. to make the phase modulation a little more dynamic.

I didn't touch upon RingMod there but that's just another way of "impacting" the carrier and/or modulator.

Anyway - stuffing around I came up with a preset - oh my lord how did that happen!?

It's as random as most of my preset generation (particularly with synthesis methods I don't understand very well )

It's just a one oscillator jobby.

Anyway - here's a crappy meandering on my keyboard for a few seconds. How embarrassment!

http://www.calebblake.com/temp/synthleadcrap.mp3

Regards
Caleb

Actually, I think that's a very nice lead sound, Caleb! I knew you'd grok it. It's not so hard once you understand how it's all laid out. It's really quite a lot easier than a DX, since you only have the two oscillators, rather than four or six (of course, you can compound things by adding more synth layers to the patch).