Couple of synthesis questions (hard and soft synths)
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Couple of synthesis questions (hard and soft synths) Posted on: 26.03.2012 by Dione Haimes I can never seem to get a decent sound out of a synth, and hate using presets because i dont want to sound the same as everyone else , however i only ever use one at a time, does anyone here use a soft synth 'rack' if you like to chain sounds in/out of other soft synths, and if so how do you do it?also, i passed on an offer of a cheap moog slim phatty, purely and simply because i dont have a CLUE about hard synths, i could probably get a decent 'sound' out of it because i know a bit about subtractive synthesis and how it works etc, but how do i get the 'noise' i have created to play a tune? do you sample the sound into ableton and play it into there? Do i connect my keyboard to the midi in? whats the USB port for? o.O What are the control inputs for and how do you program them. Couple of newbie questions because google is little help. | |
| Dione Haimes 26.03.2012 | I can never seem to get a decent sound out of a synth, and hate using presets because i dont want to sound the same as everyone else , however i only ever use one at a time, does anyone here use a soft synth 'rack' if you like to chain sounds in/out of other soft synths, and if so how do you do it? also, i passed on an offer of a cheap moog slim phatty, purely and simply because i dont have a CLUE about hard synths, i could probably get a decent 'sound' out of it because i know a bit about subtractive synthesis and how it works etc, but how do i get the 'noise' i have created to play a tune? do you sample the sound into ableton and play it into there? Do i connect my keyboard to the midi in? whats the USB port for? o.O What are the control inputs for and how do you program them. Couple of newbie questions because google is little help. |
| Dorie Scelzo 26.03.2012 | Yeah. Analogs are awesome too, but for me it's about the control structure. Analog vs. digital doesn't make a difference to me. |
| Georgina Schatzman 26.03.2012 | By VA's I'm going to assume you mean Virtual Analogs? |
| Dorie Scelzo 26.03.2012 | There are VAs that would make me happy: nord lead, virus, radias, etc.. It takes me a lot less time to get sounds I like out of a VA than a soft synth, even if they've got essentially the same controls and are using very similar methods. |
| Georgina Schatzman 26.03.2012 | The Slim Phatty is nothing more than a Little Phatty minus the keyboard. If all you want to do it twist knobs and program synths, look into modular setups. You won't be any happier than that |
| Dorie Scelzo 26.03.2012 | I like knobs. Like…a lot. Computers did make a lot of things better, but programming synths wasn't one of them. At least, not in my opinion. Then again, I don't believe the Slim Phatty is worth it…it'd work, but it doesn't have a lot of controls to tweak at once. It'd be almost as annoying as software. Different strokes. |
| Georgina Schatzman 26.03.2012 | The experience is over rated I'd say, and more frustrating then it should be at times |
| Dorie Scelzo 26.03.2012 | Agreed. The only reason to buy hardware at this point is to have the experience of using hardware……which I believe counts for a lot. I'm not the only one, but I'm also not automatically right either. |
| Georgina Schatzman 27.03.2012 | There's nothing wrong with using presets as a learning tool. If you want to learn how to make a "bouncey" bass for example, you would find a preset similar and then reverse engineer it and so on for other sounds. They really are great learning tools to be honest. As for the Slim Phatty, it can receive midi via USB from your DAW, it's pretty straight forward like Mostapha said. As for putting money towards hardware vs software, that's a sticky debate with pro's and con's on both sides. But unless you're already making a decent amount of change off the music gig soft synths just make more sense I'd say. Bottom line, it's all about the music first and foremost. People could care less if you made the sound with a Soft ARP2600 vs a real ARP2600. As long as the music is good, it shouldn't matter how you made it. |
| Dorie Scelzo 26.03.2012 | For the first question, uhh…no. I have one soft synth that I don't hate, and I use it for everything. Well, I use the demo that can't open patches and use screenshots as recall sheets if I need to. It's kind of cheating them out of their money, but it fits their demo license and I'm not willing to pay for soft synths…that money is going towards hardware. As for your questions about integrating hardware. The USB on a lot of synths is for MIDI over USB. I believe the slim phatty works like that, but I'm not sure. As for how you get it to work…you create a MIDI track and just don't put an instrument on it. Send the MIDI out to your synth (either over USB if you can or through a MIDI interface…or a MIDI output port on your audio interface if it has one). And run the synth's audio into your audio interface, which becomes the input for an audio track. I believe Ableton has a device called something like "External Instrument" which has the MIDI output and audio input configuration right there. It might be simpler to use it that way. I could be making that up. I remember it had an "External Audio Effect" device and kind of assumed there was one for instruments. Either way, set up your channels, and use it just like you would a soft synth. Just make sure your input monitoring is set correctly. It's one of those things that's easier to do than to explain, so I hope that was clear. |
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