The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

I made a cool lead sound then went to see what was going on. I used 
only one oscillator, in leagato mode single, with the Pulse width 
turned down to 1. Nice tweezy sound. Responds well to pitch 
modulation.

With all those cool LFO waves, I feel a little funny just using the 
sine wave but I find it so useful. Triangle is cool for filters, but 
sounds odd to me for pitch mod. I like to set the mod wheel to pitch 
mod set around 9 with a sine LFO around 75 speed, no delay. If you 
use the sample and hold wave set high, with pitch mod, you get a cool 
sea sick sound, like a bad VHS recording of a late night movie. I 
tried layering two sounds with pitch mod set different for each. Yuck.

I made a pretty good marimba sound using the electric piano mode. I 
got a tinkly overly treble electric piano sound (sync pitch gives the 
sound a nice  metalic tone) then set the voices for dual and layered 
a weird bassy thunk that gave the sound some feeling. Doesn't sound 
at all like a marimba, but fits in where a marimba would. Used all 16 
modulation routings on both scenes!

Someone wanted to know about 303 sounds. If you set the amplifier 
envelope sustain real low like 1 and then play with the decay you get 
a nice 303 sound. It's a little weird for manual playing but somehow 
sounds great with the step sequencer.

My computer is barely working so no an1x files to upload-sorry.

Rainbow Jimmy
http://www.spaceanimals.com
http://www.mp3.com/spaceanimals

I love designing sounds on a good synthesizer. The presets on the 
AN1X are good for certain styles of music. However, there's usually 
very little programmed into the matrix and very little programmed 
into the free eg. Nothing wrong with this, but it's so much fun 
getting a little subtle frequency modulation sweeping into a patch, 
or using aftertouch to add some subtle filtering, velocity to speed 
up the attack a little, all those fun little things that keep a patch 
from sounding too sterile.

The initial process is absorbing, twiddling the knobs, bringing 
things in then editting them out. Then, when a patch finally clicks, 
it's a great feeling. On top of that, sound design allows me to add 
my signature to my music-I get to play instruments that no one else 
has. I get to make my own instruments. This is very cool.

The next sound I'll be working on is a Bernie Worrell meow sound that 
he gets out of his ARP modular on a Parliament album.

Rainbow Jimmy
http://www.mp3.com/spaceanimals
http://www.spaceanimals.com