One Synth Challenge #159: Surge XT

[bjporter]

Welcome to the One Synth Challenge #159! It's a friendly music competition where you can win cool prizes but most importantly, meet amazing musicians, and learn a lot about mixing, sound design, and more!

Here's How It Works:

1. Download our synth of the month here
2. You make an awesome track before the 1st of next month using only the chosen synth and some effects *Rules Apply*
3. Announce your submission here on this thread, with proper details
4. At minimum, please mention # of instances of the synth, the DAW (Reaper, Ableton, etc), and all plugins.
5. Submit your soundcloud link here following the correct format for title, download enabled, and submission description. Your song will be picked up on the OSC player
6. Once submissions are over, the voting starts - you *MUST* vote to get a ranking or prize
7. The voting link will be posted on the 1st, and OP will be updated.
8. Maybe you win? You meet new friends? Learn something new?
9. Most importantly... have fun!
   
   **MAKE SURE YOU READ THE RULES** | See Contest Page for latest track Submissions, Info, FAQ & More

Submissions will show up here once voting starts (n/a):


One of the best open source synths. "Featuring many synthesis techniques, a great selection of filters, a flexible modulation engine, a smorgasbord of effects, and modern features like MPE and microtuning."



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvBgb4HGx0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-mKySh ... =emb_title


Prizes:
(Would you like to be a sponsor / prize donor? Contact RichardSemper via PM or go ahead and post your intended donation here! Get a cool mention on our donator wall of honor)


Special Note:
We are offering a secondary prize (on top of the normal prize): FXB Project, or JRR Shop (Uncle E)

NEW Additional Bonus Prize!
For the first Single Instance entry to make the top 5 a cash bonus of $50. (note: this prize may be carried forward to selected OSC challenges until it is won)




discoDSP : 1 copy of Discovery (Up to 2 winners may choose this)


KV331 Audio : Bundle of Synthmaster One + Synthmaster 2.x!


Dmitry Sches : Diversion


NUSofting : 1 Copy of Modelonia v2 Synthesizer


ChordPak.com : 1x Pro Pack (Up to 3 winners may choose this)


United Audio Artists : Scratch Master Pro (2 may be chosen per month)


Yuli Yolo Sound Design : (Top 3 Winners get this) Soundsets for Vital: Diversity, Bass Music Wavetables, Noises & Exciters


Luftrum : Two Choices: Either 1x NFR software license of either Bioscape or Lunaris, or two soundsets of choice


Audio Thing : Outer Space (vintage tape echo plugin)


Guda Audio : Euterpe XL


JRR Sounds: Any 1 soundset (This is a secondary prize, you may pick it as well as your main prize)


SoundGym : *NEW* 12 Month Subscription. (SoundGym is a
"technological, personalized and gamified audio learning environment")


JRR Shop : UVI: Digital Synsations (vintage 90's synth sample library and player)


Touch The Universe Productions: LuSH-101 Cloud Layers soundset


The FXB Project by alvfaria : 1 commercial sound bank as an extra prize on top of the regular first prize. See the main site here


Abstract Cats Music : AbiTron Bank for Synthmaster


satYatunes : One of any commercial product


Xenos Soundworks : Choice of any 1 product


Ghostwave Audio : Any two soundsets of Choice


Twolegs Toneworks : Any one soundset


Newloops.com : any 3 sound packs of choice (excluding bundles)


The Unfinished : Any two soundsets of Choice


Aiyn Zahev Sounds: Any 2 Soundsets of choice from the website (Uplifting Trance Presets)


Mulperi : 1 Soundbank of Choice


Bjulin : Inspire soundset for Zebra²


LeapIntoTheVoid : Enchantment Of Absynth Trilogy


Solidtrax : 1 Soundset of choice (except for the Future Chill and Space Trips expansions)


Dream Audio Tools : 1 Indie Fingers bundle (Indie Fingers volumes One and Two)


Any other offers of prizes will be greatly appreciated.


Questions? Comments? Concerns? You want some love? Just post here in this thread


Want to try out your skills in other contests / competitions /challenges?

• DiHalt Demoscene competitions - Developers may be looking for artists to make music.
• Indaba - Has a mix of popular and indie artists with various contests like remixing and song writing.
• metapop - Has many competitions, with a soundcloud like interface where you can share, upload, get likes, comments, etc.
• Mix Challenge - Join monthly recurring Songwriting Competitions (with a new theme/genre every month) and/or Mix(ing) Challenges (mixing multi-tracks from scratch). Win prizes!
• Open Source Music Nexus Challenge - From the people who brought you the FM Challenge last year!
• Skio Music Contests - Lots of remixes you can join (Mostly EDM) - big prizes.

[baconpaul]

Wahey! Glad to feature the results on our web page as we have done with the past. Xt101 is pretty rock solid but our nightly has a bunch of fun new features like editor undo if you want to beta 1.1 while also doing one synth challenge

[emikaela]

i think a lot of us have been looking forward to this one!

perhaps i'll even double-beta and give the clap version a go, i see that's available now...

[baconpaul]

The clap only works in bitwig 4.2.3 or later but I think is pretty functional. If you want to self build with juce7 you can make lv2 most platforms also. If you wanna try any of these things probably best to join the surge discord though

[Rahodees]

Rules question, possible discussion: In Surge XT we can load basically any sound we want as a wavetable, right? Are there rules limiting the use of this feature? (I feel there ought to be.)

[J.Ruegg]

* double post

[J.Ruegg]

Rules question, possible discussion: In Surge XT we can load basically any sound we want as a wavetable, right? Are there rules limiting the use of this feature? (I feel there ought to be.)

With wavetable synths usually you are free to import any wavetable you want as long as it's not exploited as a sample player. For example loading a drum sound, or a piano, and using it as a sample player.

Also, sometimes it got restricted to just 2 frames for custom wavetable imports, but I think that depends on the synth... Better to wait for official clarification.

[Rahodees]

Rules question, possible discussion: In Surge XT we can load basically any sound we want as a wavetable, right? Are there rules limiting the use of this feature? (I feel there ought to be.)

With wavetable synths usually you are free to import any wavetable you want as long as it's not exploited as a sample player. For example loading a drum sound, or a piano, and using it as a sample player.

Hmm okay. I think I understand. To clarify (I'm new to all this), it'd also be using it as a sample player if I imported a recording of someone typing on a typewriter, leaves rustling, or if I imported a sound recorded from another synth right? So in other words, is the basic rule that any importat WT must not be recognizeable, nor originate prior to application of various FX, as a natural or manmade sound that could occur in the physical world?

[Rahodees]

Also, sometimes it got restricted to just 2 frames for custom wavetable imports, but I think that depends on the synth... Better to wait for official clarification.

Does that mean, the WT was allowed to just have a starting and ending waveform, with anything in between being whatever the synth interpolates on its own? I'd be down with that.

[ELEX]

Rules question, possible discussion: In Surge XT we can load basically any sound we want as a wavetable, right? Are there rules limiting the use of this feature? (I feel there ought to be.)

With wavetable synths usually you are free to import any wavetable you want as long as it's not exploited as a sample player. For example loading a drum sound, or a piano, and using it as a sample player.

Hmm okay. I think I understand. To clarify (I'm new to all this), it'd also be using it as a sample player if I imported a recording of someone typing on a typewriter, leaves rustling, or if I imported a sound recorded from another synth right? So in other words, is the basic rule that any importat WT must not be recognizeable, nor originate prior to application of various FX, as a natural or manmade sound that could occur in the physical world?

Exactly. And any tables you want to use need not be restricted to two frames. That's already been clarified not that long ago, during the WhispAir round.

[Rahodees]

Okay, I still don't like it but it is clear and I can understand why someone might make the rule that way.

(If it'd been me I would have written the rule to do more work to preserve "the synth's sound", and being too free to import external sounds messes with that too much for my total comfort. But that's just me!)

[MadMcMan]

what about the presets included that have wavetables?

[Taron]

Ah, you're ruining my life by bringing up Surge... DANG IT! I really love this thing and missed last time it came around.
As for wavetables, I used them in the past to map wave segments across the keyboard. For example, I literally drew single wave loops by hand after a female vocal across the keyboard for each note (every 3rd, I think it was) and then had keytracking on the WT. Gorgeous stuff. Tedious, but great. Similar thing with violin and even piano, matching the characteristics of the notes as best as possible within a single wave of the respective frequency. Awwww, how dedicated I can get to this stuff. ...don't remember, if Surge allows tracking by frequency rather than keys. I did that with MUX in MuLab. I think, it's even part of the factory presets since then, hehe.

Anyway, love Surge! Hope I'll find the time!

[emikaela]

The clap only works in bitwig 4.2.3 or later but I think is pretty functional. If you want to self build with juce7 you can make lv2 most platforms also. If you wanna try any of these things probably best to join the surge discord though

yeah i'm lurking in there already got it up and running in bitwig now! seems smooth so far, i'll let you know if anything weird comes up.

(if anyone else wants to try this, you need to enable clap in bitwig by adding "clap : true" to the file config.json (create the file if it does not already exist) in your appdata/local/bitwig studio folder (or the equivalent location on your system). then add the clap folder to your plug-in locations, and bitwig should be able to find it.)

[Leonard Bowman]

I might also have to make a reappearance here; Surge XT is too wonderful to pass up and it's been a little while since I've composed in the OSC mindset.

side note: if you're looking for sound ideas, several people shared their presets in the OSC 138 thread. You can also find some of my sounds in the "Rare Earth" patch bank that ships with the synth. Please don't be afraid to use them!