Points of Interest

On saturday I had the occasion (but not the time) to play the instrument depicted above. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of its console with traditional stops on either side, as I was in a hurry.

It’s quite an interesting instrument, built in 2007 by Freiburger Orgelbau. The disposition of the stops qualifies the instrument for authentic playing of both baroque and romantic organ music:

I. Main (C–g3)

1. Bordon 16’
2. Prinzipal 8’
3. Gedeckt 8’
4. Flute harmonique 8’
5. Viola da Gamba 8’
6. Octave 4’
7. Gemshorn 4’
8. Superoctave 2′
9. Mixtur 4-5fach 1 1/’3’
10. Trompete 8’

Tremulant

II. Swell (C–g3)
11. Geigenprizipal 8′
12. Rohrgedeckt 8’
13. Salicional 8’
14. Vox coelestis 8’
15. Octav 4’
16. Traversflöte 4’
17. Nasard 2 2/’3’
18. Octavin 2’
19. Terz 1 3/’5’
20. Piccolo 1’
21. Trompette harmonique 8’
22. Hautbois 8’

Tremulant

Pedal (C–f1)
23. Prinzipalbass 16′
24. Subbass 16’
25. Octavbass 8’
26. Gedacktbass 8’
27. Octav 4’
28. Bombarde 16’
29. Trompete 8’

Obviously it is dominated by 8’ stops. Its timbre is rather full and warm instead of brilliant. I hope there will be a second chance for playing it. Here are the stops I’m most interested in:

• Prinzipal 8’ – full and warm
• Flute harmonique 8’ – one of my all time favorite stops. The length of those pipes is twice the length necessary, while a small drilling in the middle of the length ensures the pipe’s pitch is correct.
• Trompete 8’ – not a bawler at all
• Vox coelestis 8’ – if you like programming pads with two detuned oscillators on synthesizers, this stop is for you. You will ask “How can I create such a sound on a synth?!?”
• Terz 1 3/’5’ – a third. A unique stop. I had absolutely no luck programming it on a synthesizer.
• Hautbois 8’ – another lingual stop. Another sound you won’t be able to program on a synth.
• Bombarde 16’ – nomen est omen. The right pedal stop for bombastic pieces. Grand Jeux comes to my mind :)

Guitarists, violinists, or the players of some woodwind instruments can influence the pitch of the played tones, either to bend the tone or to apply a little vibrato. Piano players can not. Synth enthusiasts can, as most electronic keyboards provide a pitch bender and a modulation controller.

The most common hardware used for those are two separate wheels. The pitch wheel is centered by a spring automatically, while the modulation wheel remains at the position where it was released:

The wheels of a Hammond XB-1 portable organ, besides its drawbars and sound control buttons

Roland keyboards traditionally use a different approach by a combined pitch and modulation lever. Moving it left or right will bend the pitch down- respectively upwards. Pressing it towards the back of the instrument will apply modulation. The lever always is held at its origin position by a spring, e.g. the player cannot leave a little vibrato applied to the sound:

The (in)famous lever of a Roland A-50 MIDI Keyboard Controller

The Roland A-50 MIDI Keyboard Controller I’m still using offers both, the lever and two wheels. This allows the player to chose what suits the situation best. Frankly, I got used to the Roland lever and prefer it over the wheels when playing solos – but this depends on personal taste.

Some keyboards use ribbon controllers. Those are either small stripes (one axis for controlling one parameter only) or pads (two axes to control two different parameters), similar to the touch pads found on notebooks. The default behaviour is that the controller resets itself as soon it was released (»centered by a spring«). Sometimes an additional switch can be used to define whether the controller shall remember the last used position when releasing it (»spring is broken«). The Korg Z1 synthesizer provides both controller types, wheels and pad:

Wheels and pad of a Korg Z1 synthesizer

Other instruments use a joy-stick which can be moved in two axes. The Korg Kronos, for example, uses two of them. The smaller one will keep its position when being released. The second one, mainly used for pitch bending and vibrato, will return to its origin when being released. Here you can see two switches, the main joystick and the ribbon controller of the Korg Kronos synthesizer workstation:

Korg Kronos ribbon controller and joystick

Why am I blogging about those controllers? Because there is a cool video where Fernando Draganici demonstrates the power of the Kronos controllers. In case you are new to synth playing and have wondered how to use controllers, this one can serve you as a tutorial. The final fun starts at 5:50 – don’t miss it :) .

If comment spam wasn’t a problem, I was interested in a poll what other players prefer. Are you still using the wheels as introduced by the Minimoog? How many of us are addicted to Roland’s lever? Who prefers joysticks, and are there musicians using a touch pad all the time? And what about users of iPad controlled instruments?

Plenty of unanswered questions. Enjoy the video :) .

Edit: Here’s a further video, where the usage of the Kronos joystick can be seen e.g. at 6:53.

Waldorf microQ synthesizer

The microQ is a cool device, and you get a lot of synthesizer for the money. However, it didn’t provide the kind of sound I was after.

The Microwave (I) was the first real synth I ever owned. I still can program it almost blindly. It is one of the most punchy synths I ever played. And it has an individual voice.

Waldorf Microwave I synthesizer

Today I sold both synths, breaking the tradition of playing Waldorf machines. Hope both buyers will have fun with them.

Due to time constraints, I decided to sell some of my classic synth gear.

This was my very first true synthesizer, the (in)famous Waldorf Microwave I. Unfortunately the corners have been damaged by the rack mount screws, which already was the case when I bought the device, which was the demo device at Musik-Service Aschaffenburg. The backlight of the display is fully operational, but the display appears a bit dark on the picture due to some underexposure.

I fired it up these days, and was still impressed by its sound. The envelopes are really fast, dedicating the device for lead, bass, and drum sounds. Thanks to its analogue filters, pads sound great as well. Contemporary synths can do much more than the Microwave, but this device is an easy to program and use workhorse with an absolutely individual sound.

Waldorf Microwave I synthesizer

The Digitech Studio Quad is a four in four out multi effects processor. The inputs can be routed to the outputs individually. In between, several effects can be applied. I used this device for some delay or a little reverb for the Microwave and as a digital rotary speaker (aka Leslie) for my old Viscount D9 organ (already sold).

Digitech Studio Quad multieffects processor

The Waldorf microQ more or less is the grandson of the Microwave, though its sound architecture is different. It’s similar to its successor, the Waldorf Blofeld, but AFAIK the Blofeld does not provide drum maps.

Waldorf microQ synthesizer

I prefer shipping within Germany. For other destinations, the price needs adjustment due to the extra traffic.

Sliced lemon (openclipart.org, public domain)

To better understand sound synthesis and synth waveforms it is very useful to learn more about Fourier synthesis, the reverse process of Fourier analysis. In the following sections, I’ll try to condense the necessary knowledge as much as possible. I hope this simplification does not produce mistakable results. Otherwise please drop me a line.
(more…)

Korg Z1 synth

I wanted to try out some sounds for the Korg Z1 which are publicly available on webpages (such as the Z1 Yahoo group). To ease this process, I tried out several tools to rearrange the individual sounds across the various collections.
(more…)

Synth sounds would be too static (and thus boring) if there were no modulators like envelopes. To get even more spice into a sound, synth programmers use low frequency oscillators, in short LFOs.

(more…)

While the lowpass filters are the most important in synthesizers, highpass, bandpass and bandreject (aka notch) filters are nice to use as well. Here are some examples. The horizontal red bars stand for the partial tones in a waveform. The gray area emphasizes the partials that are allowed to pass the filter. The light red bars show the partials being filtered out.

(more…)

I’ve posted about ADSR envelopes earlier. You will find them in most synths. However, some synths provide further waveforms. As a monophonic solo synthesizer, the Minimoog provided no release portion. This results in a simpler ADS envelope:

ADS Envelope

Here’s a live video of the WDR, where Klaus Schluze is treating his various synths back in 1977.

And here’s one more remarkable video, where Józef Skrzek plays a pipe organ and a Minimoog simultaneously. It’s stunning what the Moog sounds like.

ADSR-Envelope

One of the most essential modulators found in synthesizers are envelopes. Most synths at least provide two envelopes – one for the amplifier, one for the filter. Both allow to apply a contour to the sound, the first one to the volume, the latter one to the spectrum of partials.

The most basic type of an envelope is the ADSR envelope. The four characters stand for Attack time, Decay time, Sustain level and Release time. The above figure should give you a glue what this is all about. The envelope gets triggered as soon a key is pressed. After that, it raises to the maximum level, and falls down in the decay time until it reaches the sustain level. This level gets held until you release the key. After releasing the key, the envelope falls down to zero during release time.

For solo sounds, both the attack and release times usually are set to small values, so the musician only needs to adjust the decay time and sustain level to his likings. You can hear an ADSR envelope applied to a lowpass filter on the previous post.