Scott Warren writes:
>>Excellent job, Ken, and thank you Paul S. for making this available. The
drum sounds are incredible.<<
Thanks for the compliments.
Jay writes:
>>I didn't get one, but I would assume the important thing is showing you
how to even get to the point that he did. Now you get to tweak.<<
Exactly.
coyoteous writes:
>>When it said "book," I guess I expected a "book," not a leaflet!<<
I was assuming "patch book" was refering to the overall concept of buying
the individual parts over time like loose-leaf pages that would be added
together to eventually form a larger motm patch book. It's hard to make a
book from a few drum patches, or vocal or flute patches for instance.
>>Page for page, I guess the way overpriced copy of the Strange book I got
last year ($125)<<
I'm surprised Paul S. isn't chiming in. I myself get paid modules for patch
booklets. Then whatever price he determines is out of my hands. If I get a
module, he needs to make that back. The lower the price the more people
that buy though. But then again, there is more overhead in more orders.
That's his call. Since these patches are only being bought by a few dozen
people as opposed to tens of thousands like a book would be, that comes into
play. I myself would like to see it get into more hands, but I'm kind of
out of the loop on that part. Since this is a new thing, everybody is
learning. No polls were taken ahead of time to see what would be best.
Also, this is really about getting patches that can produce sounds of a lot
more realism and complexity than has previously been done. Drum patches in
Roland's The Synthesizer book sometimes consist only of 3 to 4 modules, and
you end up with a cheap drum machine sound, as opposed to mine with up to
about 16 if you count the outboard fx. Nobody who has read Strange's book
has produced a hauntingly realistic female voice patch. Tomita had to use a
real female for a similar vocal sound. Nobody has patched up a recorder
patch so real and expressive it could play in an ensemble of real recorders
and nobody would even notice it's fake. Can't get a set of patches of a
train passing by. So, I think some of this is getting something of a higher
level and better quality than what's out there. Otherwise there probably
wouldn't be much need for this patch booklet in the first place.
mate_stubb writes:
>>Agreed on the outboard stuff, but consider:
1. The main attraction we have to Ken's sounds is its attention to
realism and "acousticness".
2. There are no MOTM modules currently available for creating complex
formants as required.<<
Right. Addressing coyoteous here. Some modulars have parametric EQ,
graphic EQ, delay, phaser, chorus, and filter bank modules. MOTM does not.
Those are legitimate and much needed modules for doing many things, so I
don't consider them outboard gear so much. If you have a multi-effects
device, you may already have most of that stuff already in a single unit.
Plus, it is a lot less expensive buying a separate graphic EQ than if
synthtech were to put one behind a panel and sell it. And in the used
market some people are almost giving them away. Plus the EQ can be removed
in those patches. The filters could be altered, or other ones added.
Whatever gets you to the sound you want is all that is important in the end.
>>The MOTM-450 filter bank will be useful for certain types of formant
shaping similar to what the graphic EQ does<<
Sort of. But it's too bad the motm isn't going after the extended filter
bank model, as the bands don't go up very high. Also, the thing with fixed
filter banks in general is that with non-movable frequencies or resonances,
they don't always sit where you need them. I can kind of get a low male
baritone vocal sound out of my Doepfer filter bank, but there is no way to
push it up a little for a more natural sounding and usable tenor voice. I
had to use a Boss VT-1 Voice Transposer to shift formants up higher.
>>For complex multiple narrow nodes of "body resonance", we need
something more. The comb filter effect obtained from a stopped flanger
or phaser is one way. The only problem there is that you can't tune
each individual comb separately. The Moog String Filter has many
narrow bands with alternate bands tapped to two stereo outputs, but I
don't think they are tuneable.<<
That's what I use my Nord Modular for. 40 bands of tunable very sharp
filters. That's what I'm using for my latest Nord string sounds.
Mike Marsh writes:
>>I'm curious if Ken's comb filter is analog. If so, what brand? An analog
MOTM comb filter would be incredibly cool.<<
In the patch book, it's a digital Lexicon PCM-41. For comb filtering it
doesn't make much difference sound-wise, except that you can usually go to
smaller or larger delays with digital if you need to, and quite often you
want inverted feedback which you usually don't get on an analog unit.
Michael Zacherl writes:
>>... while one may skip the basics I do like to see the process of how
someone like Ken approaches to get the desired sound.<<
In general terms of how I start from a blank sound and get to a finished
result, I can only best describe it as like how a painter mixes his primary
colors and b/w to get the color he wants. First you kind of know what you
need to do to get close by knowing the basics of sound and timbre and its
shape and how to use a synthesizer to get close. Then you need to be able
to hear where your sound currently is and what is wrong about it, and you
have to know what you need to change/add to get it to where it should be.
Dave Halliday writes:
>>Kenneth -- do you have any of your music available on CD?<<
No. I have various synth demos around the web, but nothing done yet for a
full CD.
-Elhardt