Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

Peter, John and Warren:

Thanks for the interesting comments. They are very encouraging.
Peter, I am glad that works for you. The AN1X is particularly good at
getting interesting nasal/or slightly discordant but evocative
sustained sounds. You can pitch an oscillator really high in the
overtone series and detune it to give the character you want, and
since you have the oscillator edge parameter, it gives you precise
control over how much of that overtone's overtones you have in the
patch.

Peter, by technique I am going to assume you mean control of the
sound, rather than keyboard technique, since that is covered by all
the piano resources. Interestingly I picked up february's Electronic
Musician which is something I never do. They have an excellent
article by Pat Martirano on the subject of emulative playing. But
what the article is really good for, is ideas about using the
controllers (ribbons, aftertouch, etc) to create evocative
expressions with the synth. It's only in the last page or so that he
talks about this, but he packs in a number of ideas. I am going to
enjoy trying them out.

<soapbox on> You know us synth players are using about 10% of the
resources available to us in terms of expression. Despite all the
possibilities we typically only use portamento, filter sweeps and
tremolo. I think that's going to change, as the modulation matrixes
have become common over the last 3 years and people are beginning to
explore the possibilities. The weak link is now the lack of time. To
internalize and play a certain modulation routing scheme takes a lot
of practice and one has to commit a certain amount of time to
become "natural" with a particular set of expressions. Ideally, we
should get to the point where the muscles are obeying the
subconscious, just like on a violin or piano. Of course, the synth
manufacturers give us some new toy every year and we tend to give up
on embracing the technique of any one toy. :) <soapbox off>

Warren, I am into micro tuning as well. It's neat to find people with
similar interests. I have enjoyed a lot of Wendy Carlos' music,
including a jewel of a CD called Beauty in the Beast, which employs
micro tuning heavily. I'll take some time to read the resources you
have. I have a Roland JV synth, and a guy called Benjamin Tubb put
together the settings for the main tuning schemes. Occasionally, I'll
visit his web site and try something new out. I agree that being "out
of tune" is very important to being evocative. It's hard to find
those features combined with a good programming architecture like the
AN1X unless you pony up for a Kurzweil. Or maybe I should try out an
ESQ. Does it have polyphonic aftertouch by any chance?

Cheers,

Jerry