Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Hi,

I got my XL-7 a while ago, mostly to use a live sequencer, which it does admirably, if a bit cumbersome at times. 

I've recently started looking into the sound generation in more detail on this machine. With a good range of basic waveshapes (saw, square etc) and a quite nice sounding filter, it works very well emulatiung a classic analog synth. The main thing missing is that there is no waveform modulation whatsoever (PWM, ring mod etc), although of course there are a number of samples that try to accomplish the same thing.

The Patchcord concept is nice, but again, like Oberheim's Matrix Modulation, gets a bit cumbersome. Also, on the XL-7 with its 16 knobs (nice!), 16 of the 24 patchcord locations are by default taken up by the knob routings alone. Add a couple of modulation routings, and most of the presets only have one or two unused patchcord locations.

The interaction between the Quick Edit knobs and the parameters gets confusing too, even if it is very logical, in many patches the filter frequency is set to 0, but with knob A feeding the filter the actual filter frequency setting will be higher, depending on the initial value of that knob.

I started putting together some 'bread-n-butter' analog sounds: blippy sequencer things, resonant basses etc, but it struck me that perhaps someone has put together a bunch of patches in that style already. I had a look in the files section, but there was nothing obvious down this route (although there were sets of other patches of course).

So my question is, does anyone know of a bank of analog-style patches using the XL-7 somewhere, or have something they'd like to share?

/Ricard

2012/2/9 Matt <somatt@...>
> Also I figured out that if you assign the note triggers directly to arps on your b channels you can hack the sequencer to run arps on latch in addition to your 16 tracks, to give you full access to the 32 channels. Then you can stop the whole sequencer while your arps keep running, switch patterns, and hit play and everything syncs up again.

This sounds like a seriously sick crap! Gonna try it today, since I
already see the "use case" for it... thanks for sharing.

Bruno

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, Matt <somatt@...> wrote:
>
> I make my own patches with square wave as the instrument then expirament
> with filters.

Yes, I'm well on my way making patches too, but it struck me that someone else might have had a similar inclination.

It's funny, the ROM boards for these units are highly sought after and seem to remain at the same price point for years. But it seems few people are actually willing to dive in and program the thing.  At any rate I haven't found any banks of patches for this machine, save for the few in the files section of this group. For some synths there are heaps of patches everywhere.

> Remember in addition to the knobs there are also 3 ADSRs (per
> layer? Someone correct me)

Yep, 3 per layer it is. Quite flexible they are too, which on the other hand means they can be a bit awkward to get your head around. Only the volume envelope is actually dedicated, the filter envelope always needs a patchcord to connect to the filter, so you could use the filter and aux envelopes together with the same destination if you wanted to do something really weird.

Plus the two LFO's. If you set the waveshape to 'random', key sync on, and the lowest frequency you can get a key synced random generator out of the LFO. I've got a patch where the LFO is patched to pan, so each note that appears comes at a slightly different point in the stereo image.

At the moment I'm really using it as a single layer machine with multiple oscillators, i.e. I set up a couple of different waveforms for the different layers, but then use Edit All Layers to get all the envelopes and other controls the same. Well, maybe doing a couple of layer specific tweaks in the end.

It all comes from cutting my teeth on analogue synthesizers, where there is usually two or more oscillators but feeding to a common filter and VCA. My other main axe is a Nord Lead which sounds great and of course is very intuitive with all parameters instantly available. The 16 knobs on the XL-7 don't come far behind though and are infinitely much more useful than the measly 4 knobs that most of the rest of the E-MU range has.

> I get nice TB sounds with the square wav set on monophonic with glide on
> and the arp on 1/16. REMEMBER to play with the filter types!

I haven't really gotten much further than the 24 dB/octave low pass, but it sounds really nice and warm, lacks a bit of bite perhaps.

I think one tends to get carried away with all the features available, instead of trying to simplify matters and only go for the complexity when actually needed.

> Also I figured out that if you assign the note triggers directly to arps on
> your b channels you can hack the sequencer to run arps on latch in addition
> to your 16 tracks, to give you full access to the 32 channels. Then you can
> stop the whole sequencer while your arps keep running, switch patterns, and
> hit play and everything syncs up again.

Cool. I've got to look into this.

One of my tricks has been setting up a user arp which is basically a simple 8 note pattern in octaves, like L-L-H-L-H-H-L-H, then playing the patch like a string pad. It really brightens up a mix without being too 'heavy' like a pad can be.

/Ricard

Check out the two patchcord sources keyrand1 and keyrand2 - these do 
exactly what you want, which frees up your 2 LFOs to do other 
modulations. I usually set one to pan and the other to volume or filter 
(for arpeggio, rhythm, or sequencer type parts). This is one of the 
things I love about the XL-7!

Ricard wrote:

>  
>
>
>
>
> Plus the two LFO's. If you set the waveshape to 'random', key sync on, 
> and the lowest frequency you can get a key synced random generator out 
> of the LFO. I've got a patch where the LFO is patched to pan, so each 
> note that appears comes at a slightly different point in the stereo image.
>
>