Let's make a Synth - part 2

There was a post a while back on how it would be possible to have the 4k emulate a synth. I had done something similar on my XL years ago, but it was very basic without the modulation possibilities of a real sampler. On the 2k you can assign up to 3 samples to an auto chromatic program, have velocity modulation, and use the basic AD amp and filter envelopes, but that’s about it and no live knob tweaking. I've always wanted to try this, but didn't have a real sampler back then. I picked up a Z4 a little bit ago, and this was the first thing I did. I actually have little use for it since I always sequence synths via MIDI... but wanted to learn how so that I would be able to do to samples what I know how to do with synths. The nice thing is that you can sequence notes from a kit like this when you just want to use one box, and then change the routing to MIDI later. This was the post from 2 years ago:
http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=16583

MINIMOOG
I was trying to roughly emulate a minimoog patch since that is where I sampled the waveforms from. I set the program to legato to make it a monosynth... but turn that setting off and you have a 64-voice synth, sweet!

OSCS
There seem to be quite a few ways to go about programming this, so it depends on exactly what you are trying to model and what you want to be able to tweak on the fly. I first sampled raw triangle, saw, square, and pulse waveforms from the Voyager. I sampled at a low frequency (midi C0) and 96/24 to get the best resolution from the sample (easier to loop too). Each waveform was trimmed to a single wave cycle and looped. Unlike complex waveforms, you should not need to multisample on basic waveshapes. However, I noticed that the sampler seems to have a range on how far it will pitch the sample. It appears it will only pitch samples 3 octaves (apparently only 2 in 48k mode). I suppose this is a limitation of the engine. I added an extra multisample and keygroup for now, but as it seems, you are probably best getting at least one multisample per octave. Each zone has a set osc waveform. I assigned it 1-tri, 2-saw, 3-square, 4-pulse. So we have a meaty 4 osc minimoog (the real one only gets 3, but has selectable waveforms). You can setup each of the oscs seperately as zones or as keygroups, but I went with zones this time for simplicity and to easily set up knobs for zone osc levels. To fatten up the sound, I slightly detuned the triangle, pulse and square from the saw. Try changing the detune values to get some interesting results. To get more musical results, try detuning a full 5, 7 or 12 (octave). Small detunes actually make it sound like the combined waveform shape has it has an LFO to it, but its just the slightly different frequencies drifting in and out of sync as the waveforms line up.

FILTER
The filter can be set however you like it. I used the LP 4+ to make it squelch a bit (sounds ok, but its no moog filter by any means, sorry). For fun with the filter try different shapes and tweaking the hell out of cutoff and resonance (filter envelope is good for tweaking too).

ENVELOPES
Used basic punchy bass envelopes. Smoothing these out can help turn the synth more into a pad or string sound. These are also good modulations destinations to be assigned by knobs if you want to emulate a knobby synth.

LFO
Set modwheel to LFO1, which modulates pitch and LFO speed. Aftertouch also turns LFO on slightly. LFO2 is very slightly modulating filter cutoff. I wish the LFOs went faster (and sometimes slower), could do a lot more with them that way.

KNOBS
One of the coolest features of the Z is that it allows you to assign tons of the parameters to its Q-link knobs and MIDI CCs. So if you have a 32 knob MIDI controller, you could easily assign all of the knobs and essentially make a full knoby synth out of your sampler. I assigned Q-link knobs 1-4 to the levels of oscs 1-4. This way you can see how each of the waveforms sound by themselves or with each other. For example, try knob 1 up and the others down for a good triangle bass. Careful with the levels as with the way knob modulation works, its easy to overdrive the levels to where you can hear it distort. I set 5 and 6 to filter cutoff and resonance since those are fun on the fly (see note below on this).

LIMITATIONS
You can adjust sample start, but not loop start or end. That is just too bad, you can totally freak the sound out by changing these values. Too see how cool this could have been, try playing one of the samples in the sample edit page while you change the start or end loop setting. A setting like that being tweakable or modulated would have really made it crazy. There are a lot of other synth techniques that aren’t possible such as sync, FM, etc. Although MIDI knobs are cool if you have an interface, they can be a pain to setup. Modulations only allow you to assign them to negative or positive offsets. This means that if you want to make your full knobby synth, you need to have settings set to 0 or 100 to get full range of a parameter. This sucks, because your synth probably wont make any sound from the start in that case until you adjust the knobs accordingly. The other work around is to assign 2 knobs to the parameter (one positive, one negative), but its awkward.

WHAT NEXT?
First off, add reverb, chorus, delay, distortion or other effect... I don't have the card, so I couldn’t set one. There are plenty of modulation slots and work than can be done with them. Set up midi knobs. Change the waveforms (make your own wavetable), filters, envelopes, LFOs, etc. There is lots of tweaking to get completely different sounds like you can do with a synth. In essence, you can start with this basic layout and when you make changes and save the new program, you have a new synth patch.

THE FILES
I'm including a link to a zipped file with a multi, program and samples. I programmed this on a Z4 (I still don't have a 4k), it should work the same though. First try loading the multi to get everything into memory. With the Z4, I was only able to program the first 4 knobs. You need to go to the Q-link page and assign the sliders to EXT 5 and EXT 6 just like the knobs do for EXT 1-4 (otherwise you don’t get filter control). If you resave the multi, the Q-link settings will be saved. The only point of the multi is these preset knob settings. If you don’t need those, the program by itself will do just fine. If you don't understand how any of this works, start reading the manual under "programs" (ak.sys manual helps a lot too). I can't help you with the 4k interface since I don't use one, but the Ak.sys editing is exactly the same and can make things easier to program.

http://mcsmooth.com/junk/z-minimoog.zip
More to follow… next lesson: morphable oscillator waveforms. Enjoy!

One little "analogue style" trick is the "LFO Sync" feature.

Easy to miss this one.
If you turn LFO Sync off, then all the LFOs are randomly offset from each other by up to +/-6 percent (per voice).

This gives you scope to layer up some keygroups where you've got a tiny wee bit of LFO >>> PITCH modulation, slightly different for each keygroup.

How do you assign a remote knob (UC33 in my case) to lets say.. the delay time of a delay effect? (or another effect parameter)

Good tip feline, I didn't realize what that sync was for, so I had left it off. I was hoping they would be quicker to help emulate tiny analog pitch fluctuations which works on some VAs. Midi snyc is also usefull on LFOs with notes that are held in sequences.

As far as I know, you cannot directly assign midi CCs to effects parameters, but I can think of a way to pull it off. The midi CCs can only be programmed in the modulation section of a program whereas effects are taken care of at the multi level. You can however assign Q-link knobs to FX parameters. You select the effects chanel under Part and the parameter under Assign. At that point, you can assign the Q-link knob to a midi CC under Ctrl and MIDI (its in the manual). So in a backwards way, that will do what you wanted... but you've already used up and assigned a Q-link knob. So that kind of kills most of the point, but will do what you wanted in case you wanted remote control of a parameter.

Thanks Smooth

Here's an old trick for patches that you want to make 'big'. Hate two samples play; one left and one right and have their pitches slightly different (only a tiny amount). This will 'spread' out the sound. It's higly effective on pads but also on stuff that has a lot of (mid) high frequency content, such as crispy hats. Slightly different LFO to pitch settings make this even sweeter.

Yamaha samplers have this function built in (as well as 'analogue drift') but it's easy enough to recreate on the Akai.

Another synthtrick I like is to have two samples layered but instead of have them crossfaded with the regular function (which just cuts / boosts the relative volume) have one of them cut off by a LPF and the other by a HPF. Have both filters controlled by the mod wheel (or velocity) and you can 'sweep' in and out the two voices in silky smooth way.

^ its called phazing...

Yes, you get a stereo phasing effect (or even a stereo unison like effect if you care to call it that) with trick number one.

Here's another well known trick to make (some) strings sound 'backward'. It's simple and effective: give them a loooong attack and a rather sudden release...this works best on mellotronish / lofi samples of real strings in my experience. Add a little envelope that makes the pitch go up a tad bit in the end to fake the reversed attack.

Why this is much more effective than simply reversing a sample?...I'll that to you folks to figure out.

Here's another simple synthesis tip for those who want to make nice synthy bass lines: use a sample of a pure sine (or a block or even a trangle) one octave below your sawtooth bass to get more of that beefy 'moogish' low end.

Actually, that's not a moog trick - sine-wave sub-bass is a Yamaha CS-series trick

McSmooth wrote:
As far as I know, you cannot directly assign midi CCs to effects parameters, but I can think of a way to pull it off.

Correct, We're stuck with sysex for Mixer & FX control.

I filed an RFE (Request for Enhancement) to Akai about 1 1/2 year ago, requesting that they add a Multi Modulation screen, just like the Program Modulation screen, so that we have a 64 point (or more) matrix to lay out to have different programs interact with each other (4 point Matrix rather then 2 )

1 for which Program or you can select Multi for the Source
2 for which program/mulit parameter is the source
3 Select which program or select multi for the destination, or Midi CC# can be selected here
4 select which program/multi parameter for the destination

then of course would still have the standard a) how much is applied and b) which keygroup/note if applicable

This would allow us:

a)
to have programs parameter to interact with each other, I can have 1 LFO from Program 1, modulating the Filter Cutoff on Programs 1,2,3,4 all in sync

b)
to have programs parameters to interact with multi settings.
So you can have an LFO sweep the feedback on the delay, or Volume on the Mixer

c)
to set Midi CC parameters for FX settings and Mixer (one would need to set a Multi Midi Channel or something to handle these seperately)


If doesn't make it in the 4k OS (if that ever happens) then maybe it'll make it on the new MPC 484820203828282 that they'll be putting out to replace the 4k....

Dave

so you can remotely control the mixer and fx with sysex?
where can i download the sysex manual? i think ive lost it

drumtrack wrote:so you can remotely control the mixer and fx with sysex?
where can i download the sysex manual? i think ive lost it

For whatever reason, they put it in "archived older product" page...
found it via google:

http://www.akaipro.com/archives.html

actual link is:
http://www.akaipro.com/sysex/z48sx150.zip

of course it only goes back to 1.50 and they haven't cared to update it since then....

But when you open it, you won't find a "Mixer" section per say. You'll
want to go to Multi, as that is really where the Volume, Pan , FX send is really done at, the Mixer is just a nice GUI for those of us used to a mixing board


Dave

I was writing to Akai only today about that SysEx document.

There are LOADS of things in there which DON'T BLOODY WORK
(or at best, only work for Z4/Z8, and it doesn't explain they aren't
for the MPC4000).

The FX stuff is totally generalised and abstracted,
rather than specific to the actual "EB4JS" fx card.
Jeez, you thing after FOUR YEARS, someone at Akai would find
time to include a few tables in that document, showing what all
the parameter indexes for the EB4JS really were.

The SysEx didn't work AT ALL originally,
and they fixed a lot of things for OS 1.50,
but not all.
I think it's still very shoddy.

PS my guess is that Ak.Sys communicates down the USB cable
by sending SysEx to the MPC4000? And vice versa?

I don't see why Ak.Sys can't have an FX editor as part of the Multi bit.

feline1 wrote:Actually, that's not a moog trick - sine-wave sub-bass is a Yamaha CS-series trick

It is is it? It's a good way though to get that deep sounding bassiness most people associate with the Moog (the mini in particular)...there was a time when some people called all synths 'Moogs'.