WeeklyBotSynth Treehouse // Weekly Discussion - July 9, 2023
ChappIOI bought a bunch of cabling which I am expecting to be delivered next week. So I hope to set up my gear in such a way I can walk around any play whatever I want to play. All connected to Ableton.
That sounds exciting! I’ve been debating setting everything up to be able to run thtough Ableton as well (currently I run everything dawless) but it feels like a big task. Could you give a rundown of your plan? Would love to hear how you’re routing everything
I have a very long powered usb-c extension chord, a ton of audio cables and power running to a setup behind my desk.
Audio: All the audio cables go into a (normalled) patch bay. My most common gear I have normalled to my audio interface but if I want to replace it with something else as the number of inputs on the audio interface are limited.
Power: For power I have a big power splitter with multiple sections that have their own power switch allowing me to fully disconnect things.
USB: For USB I have a usb hub at the end of the usb c extender. It’s a powered hub as well to support connecting more things.
Ableton: I made presets for most of my instruments using tracks and the external instrument device. My electron gear runs through Overbridge (to save on audio interface ports as well as being able to save and recall presets from Ableton).
I think that’s about it, did I miss anything? I will probably share some pictures in next week’s thread since I hope it will be done then.
The dreaded electric spaghetti! I hate cords so much. Nice to have them, though. Especially nice once everything is connected and you don’t have to futz with cables anymore. Congrats!
PinkDuckBusy week. I've been stuck making a new revision of eurorack module I'm working on, but also found some time to visit a friends studio and refine a mix of a track I'm hoping to release soon. So, some exciting stuff coming soon :)
Sounds like a good week 😊
andycowleySpent far too many hours searching for the perfect vocal sample and achieving nothing except making my sample library even more impenetrable 😅
Recently got into loopcloud, put all my sample locations there and although it not perfect, it’s way more manageable
I’ve been using Sononym. Really good bit of kit
Beep blop! I am a bot. Doing routine tasks as usual :)
Joined 50/90 challenge (write 50 songs in 90 days) lemmy.studio/post/113402
And even created one track (: youtu.be/FNxvktmkh7w
Join us for 50/90! - lemmy.studio
“50/90” is a challenge that started decades ago on Yahoo! Groups, with the goal of writing 50 songs in 90 days. It starts on July 4th, and goes til October 1st. These days the challenge is hosted on the FAWM website [https://fiftyninety.fawm.org/]. I know you’re probably thinking “there’s no way I can write 50 songs in 90 days!”. And yeah, it’s not easy, and usually less than 10% of participants make it to 50. I’ve been doing the challenge since 2016, and in a few years I wrote only 3 songs. The important thing is that if you write one more song than you’d normally write, you’re already a winner! 50/90 is an incredible supportive community, with prompts and challenges for inspiration. It’s a great way to get feedback on your songs, and to practice finishing songs! The website is live, and the challenge starts in a week… who’s up for it? 🙂
BKLroninSpend 10 minutes tuning the drums on a really promising DnB track.
Alter_IdI'm in a ttrpg group that plays Pathfinder about once a month. We had a session yesterday, and with where we left off I've got some cool ideas for some synth scoring for the next session. I haven't written for the group before, though I've been invited to by the GM since he knows I'm into synths and he usually uses dungeon synth as the background music during play sessions. Planning to get to work on this later today, and I've got probably 5 weeks to get things wrapped. Our sessions usually run 4+ hours, and I think aiming for that run time is overly ambitious, but I'm thinking maybe roughly an hour is the goal. We'll see how easily things progress since what I have in mind is stylistically quite different from what I typically do. Maybe things will flow gang busters and I'll get a lot more out than what I'm anticipating. Hoping this will be a cool surprise for the group.
PorphyryAwesome. I play ttrpgs too (mostly dnd) and have thought about doing this but as of yet haven’t had the follow through. Will you be posting anything? I’d like to hear how it comes out.
I'll give that a firm maybe, depending on how it turns out. :) If it's not a disaster I may throw it out for people to hear.
Our campaign is in a wasteland desert right now and the party inquisitor is being driven mad through hearing voices of some enslaved spirits, so the tone may not be transferrable to everybody's table (lol), but if that sounds interesting I've got some weird ideas I'd like to see if I can get to translate to that vibe.
I got a polybrute recently. It's absolutely amazing, and I've been doing stuff with it.
https://obfuscation.bandcamp.com/album/mothership
I made this ep with the poly only. I'm planning on doing more things with it soon. I've been enjoying making concept work, soundtrack style stuff in a scifi theme.
Mothership, by Obfuscation
4 track album
I started rededicating my efforts to practicing cello and trying to learn some new pieces. I want to incorporate it into the music I make and want to really get my chops back. For a while I had been only really playing things that I’ve already learned but not learning anything new and I want to stretch my brain again and learn a new thing with a goal of getting it performance ready. It feels really good to have a clear goal and something I need to put real focus into.
Oh that’s cool 😄 such a beautiful instrument too. Will you share anything you’ve done?
Yeah, I definitely plan to. I will for sure upload any songs I write that I incorporate it into. If there’s interest I can also share just performing classical pieces as well but this being a synth board I can see how that may be slightly out of scope.
If people start complaining about sharing classical pieces on the synth community then we will just create a classical community as well. All music is welcome.
Cool, will do then. Thanks.
I’m glad someone (@[email protected] ?) found a way to automate this. I forgot last week and probably would have forgotten again.
Yeah I automated it last week but figured I wouldn’t start the bot yet just in case someone wanted to pick up that mantle.
Plans include putting a pedal board together. Bought a pedal train board from Sweetwater earlier this year on one of the big holiday sales and it’s just been sitting. Really all I need to do is put the Velcro on it. I did find out that it doesn’t fit the standard power brick on the underside because it is low profile. So eventually I might try to sell the pose brick and get a couple low profile power supplies. For now, I have enough room to put it on top because the pedal train is huge lol. And I don’t have too many pedals at this point. So that and practicing with my new Peak synth are my goals this week. And a little studio clean up and organizing.
stephencI have the Pedaltrain Metro and use the Truetone CS6 power supply. Note that even that is maybe just a few millimeters too thick so I added an inch of clearance at the rear by adding feet. The available clearance on those boards is very thin. But I do like the end result.
I got an sp303 a few weeks back and havebeen making beats frequently with it. Also got am sp202 for use a sample mangler/flavor adder.
That’s neat. Is it your first time using them? Is it easy to get a beat going?
I have a 404mk2 and the learning curve is steep. I want to get a 202 for spice but the last thing I need right now is to memorize another manual.
oh yea they are dead simple. I had a little experience making beats before using older lofi equipment, but every time I’ve tried, I ultimately bounced off. I would make 2-3 bad beats and lose interest. This time it seems to have stuck though as I am working nearly daily on music which is very unlike me. I think the 303 is just such a sublime machine to work on once you get flowing and it just sounds SO good.
I thought about a 404mk2 but it honestly seemed TOO complicated for me. The 303 is the same skeleton but missing the expansive features that make it scary to learn.
You will have ZERO issue learning to use the 202. It doesn’t even have a sequencer. All you can really do on it is record samples and add FX to them. It is basically one button per function. It doesn’t have resampling so you have to bounce it to your 404 and back if you want to stack up its FX, but for the most part its Pitch function is most of the reason to own it. I am not sure why but the 202 stretches and pitches things SO smoothly, so much better than any SP to come after it.
Yeah I guess it’s mostly newer gear that’s challenging to learn, not the other way around. Nice thank you for the great advice ;)