[sdiy] Yamaha DXy DCO's

[Rude 66]

Messageto be honest, i find the aliasing and noise from an fm synth adds to its timbre and personality. just like early digital can give certain drum sounds that extra 'something'. especially in bass sounds, you can really make a dx synth sound nasty. filtering will pretty much remove that..

r./
(always the devils advocate..;-)


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: phillip m gallo 
  To: 'Cynthia Webster' 
  Cc: synth diy 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:02 AM
  Subject: RE: [sdiy] Yamaha DXy DCO's


  Cynthia,

  Filters are a natural for Dx kind of FM (as well as analog FM).   As the FM technique generates freq. side bands both above and below the sounding Frequency  bandpass and high pass filters demonstrate increased effectiveness.   Also because FM provides another form of timbral "dynamism",   filter techniques long considered boringly standard, sound new working in contrast or in concert with the dynamism occurring upon the DCO, this leads to a complexity of sound that moderates and enhances the timbral palette resulting from FM.

  I'm looking forward to the SDIY meet and will surely bring the DCO's to play with.

  regards,
  p

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Cynthia Webster [mailto:cynthia.webster at gte.net] 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 2:32 PM
  To: philgallo at attglobal.net; synth diy
  Subject: Re: [sdiy] Yamaha DXy DCO's


  Hi Phil!

  The recent thread comparing DX7 and Buchla FM synthesis 
  techniques pondered the use of Analog Filters on Digital 
  FM Oscillators as something worthwhile to play with.

  This reminded me of the experience that I had when
  you brought your Yamaha DCO board to a SciSound
  meeting.  I was rather amazed at the quality of the sounds 
  when no filters at all were involved.

  Being a total filter junkie myself, I was humbled by the 
  filtered types of sounds that you were getting without any.

  So naturally, I would love to hear that wonderful DCO
  combination through a juicy analog filter like the (4-pole)
  Nyle Steiner design!

  Maybe we'll finally get to try this at Jim Patchell's next 
  DIY meet?  (March 27th same location as last year)

  It is so odd that folks with fairly large systems typically 
  seem to dedicate only a single filter to each "voice"
  (when it get far more interesting when multiple filters 
  are involved) 

  Clever use of Digital Oscillators suggests that if some 
  of the "filtering" is done without filters...
  then some total magic may be possible when they're 
  combined with um, (forgive me)... The real thing!

  There are some keyboard synths that combine the two, 
  anyone care to share their experiences here?

  Cyn




  on 2/17/04 12:26 PM, phillip m gallo at philgallo at attglobal.net wrote:



    Posts regarding polyphony so far have only dealt with multiple "like" voice channels.   There is more to polyphony than implementing this way.   Polyphonically driving multiple "different" voices  is a very potent technique.  It does require a more sophisticated "Note control". 

    As an example, in my pre-MIDI days, i built a controller which drove 9 Yamaha DXy DCO's with my SDIY modular tracing the highest key (descant) , and my MG-1 tracing the lowest key(basso).  The DXy's where given all notes but even here i did not program the DCO's to have the same voice.  This was a digital implementation of what i had done in an analog way with a Lancaster Poly and the two synths. 

    This technique provides a really interesting ensemble effect that resulted in two "performance" characteristics: 

    1) 
    You playing stop's being pianistic or organ-tuan but becomes very precise as notes allocate to "voicings" and repeatability requires precise technique, 

    2) 
    Alternatively, pianistic playing resulting in very cool ad hoc voice assignment which provided a "uncertainty" to the "orchestration" which had the dangerous side effect of keeping you playing the synth way past bed time and bending your orchestrational "ear".  Reminded me of the insite gained from playing a "prepared piano". 

    Now MIDI make all this very easy.  Your M2CV needs to have rules in it for not to voice assignment, an example being how to detect new voice activations vs. "overlap" between key activations.  Since MIDI provide velocity information as well as channel info it's pretty easy to make decisions as to voice allocation.  You do need to provide a buffer for key's pressed but not presently assigned to help govern these rules.  

    I have always disliked the rotary note assignment that poly synths often do and am sure this is a major contributor to polysynths sounding like really neat but non-the-less organ-like instruments. 

    regards, 
    p 

    -----Original Message----- 
    From: owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl [mailto:owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of Grant Richter 
    Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 10:37 AM 
    To: Rainer Buchty; Andalong Dudigual 
    Cc: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl 
    Subject: Re: [sdiy] poly? 

    > Now for the fake solutions: 
    > 
    > The cheapest way to turn a monophonic synth into some sort of 
    > polyphonic machine is the arpeggiator. Works nicely with chords, but 
    > is rather unusable for true polyphonic play. 

    My electronic music teacher (Dr. August Wagner) pointed out that echo devices like the Echoplex allow you to achieve polyphony with a mono-synth by layering in real time. It was one reason they were so popular to use with early synths. 

    He also pointed out that electronic instruments are the only ones without inherent acoustic ambience, which all acoustic instruments have. Hence electronic reverb is practically an essential for imitative synthesis. 

    This was in response to my comment that using effects units with synthesizers was "cheating". His response was that, not only was it not "cheating", but imperative for the above reasons. 

    I know that is not what the original poster intended. But I thought they were rather keen insights on his part (and for 1976). He died very young, and I try to keep his memory alive in some small way. 




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