Loopop ought to do a tutorial series – the paid for kind. When i have a Grandmother i’ll carefully work through and play with all the examples he gives in this video.
He also can make any synth look good, but he’s to honest to not tell you if there’s something missing.
I love the portrait painted of the spring reverb “literally singing in the background”.
the sub is a bass monsta and can get pretty agressive with overdriven filter, granny is more gentle and can walk deep into fm territory.
on the sub you can control evrything via midi and store patches, on granny youll need your bare fingers, but it likes to play together with an o-coast and eurorack modules.
I got my gm last week and got some time to play around with it. some questions arise:
while the keyboard gives out velocity, there is no way to play the loudness dynamically, at least i didnt find one without the help of a second external vca.
second is the clock output. it only seems to run when the arp/seq is active and a key is pressed. its not running constantly even when it gets a clock via midi or usb. i cant use it as a master to sync other synths, which is a pity.
any suggestions?
Is it possible to Patch the Keyboard Velocity CV Output to AMP CV input?
Or is there a Pedal in? If Not then i guess you can only wiggle the Volume knob…
Couldn’t you set the VCA Mode to Drone and then patch the Key Velocity jack to the VCA Amount In? Mix that with the envelope?
EDIT: I see the problem with this… if you do, the VCA will be left at the most recent level, so if the last note played is loud, there will be a bit of bleed through.
the “VCA Amt In” controls the loudness. So if you switch it to “Env” or “Kbd rel”, the voltage applied here is added (!) to the EG. This works for tremolo and AM, if you patch in the lfo, because the lfo gives out positive and negative voltages. but it doesnt work with velocity, because velocity is always positive (0 to +8 Volts) and the vca already goes to the maximum. to control the loudness via velocity, the “vca amt in” would need to multiply (!) the incoming voltages with the eg.
If you turn the vca in drone mode, then the voltage in vca amt in controlls the loudness entirely. but again, in the mult its only possible to add the EG singnal with the velocity, its not possible to multiply it. For this you would need an voltage controlled mixer/atenuator like the mother 32 has – or a second vca.
but maybe Im missing something …
So… Grandmother is in the house. And I haven’t felt the pleasure I had playing with the Slim Phatty a year ago…
There are numerous patch points, true, but somehow I still feel locked : it’s not as feature-packed as a Rev 2 or Peak, I knew this, but maybe because of my little Eurorack skiff it doesn’t feel that opened to me.
And it’s sooooo big, like it’s going to stay in-house forever, no way I can bring it away.
The spring reverb is nice, but it always produces the same sound. I have a Space and an Empress reverb, maybe I was spoiled.
There is the sound, that’s for sure. Both agressive bass and FM weirdnesses…
Yet somehow I’m still left hungry.
I’m a bit disappointed to be that soon convinced it’s gone be back to seller in a few days…
I’ll put a note to never again buy a monosynth.
Interesting.
Because they feel to limited to you or because you have too many of them?
Initially I thought, “meh, that spring is sort of nice, but a one trick pony…don’t think I’ll use it much…”
One album later ( just wrapped something up ) & the GM spring reverb is on pretty much all of it.
The thing I discovered, is that it doesn’t react like a normal reverb - it sort of becomes part of the sound…& with careful patching it really becomes part of the patch, reacting far more organically & musically than an external unit. I found that I ended up with varying amounts of the spring on almost all patches & then going out into my other pedals / fx units as normal. I guess it ends up what sort of music you’re doing - I was producing an ambient / drone project & so the GM & it’s reverb just became quite magical & integral to the sound of the whole thing very quickly.
It’s my fave ever Moog. pure vibe.
Ahaha… Well, I’ve been playing with Elektron synths for some time now. I like the ability to switch from mono to poly if needed, for sure.
Same for the SH-01a, when I feel like notes should overlap.
As for true monos, I have a Shruthi I seldom use, and the Avalon I absolutely love for what it does well.
I used to love my Phatty, the sound was really alive ! It’s the submenus I couldn’t bear anymore. I really thought GM would give me both the hands-on control and openness to Eurorack world.
Somehow today I feel like a monosynth is like a guitar with one string only.
You can surely do a lot with this, all the more if you’re a talented keyboardist (which I’m not).
I understand today that it’s just not my cup of tea.
I routed Osc 2 only to the reverb, while going crazy with osc 1, and it was pretty indeed.
I do understand I have only scratched the surface so far. In a few days I’ll see where I’m at but I’m a bit sad not to have fallen in love at the first sight.
yeah - it’s cool we’re all so different I think !
I’ve gotten rid of all my polys - Monosynths all the way for me ! I find multitracking & / or ‘faking’ polyphony with delays / reverb etc. far more exciting than being able to throw a handful of notes down - it seems to take me to different places.
I see. I seem to prefer the sound of many monos to most polys, but I also decide for synths with poly options most of the time. Cause I always think, well if you need it it’s available
The funny thing is that I use my Elektrons as parallel monos pretty often. So I see what you mean.
I’ll try to let Grandma sing what she has to tell me before I send it back, it’s a promise!
“It’s the difference between visiting a lovely city park… and remembering what it’s like to be in the forest”
Nicely put.
I was in the same boat as you. I then had an epiphany. Why do you need a keyboard with a Mono synth? Its like overkill. So i sent it back as the Grandmother is all mono with a great keyboard. Ive now joined the Mother 2 camp. Which is mono but can play just enough notes with the octave pad. Thats all you need in a mono synth. Plus i think it sounds better and more deep than than the Grandmother. If i want poly then two make a decent attempt. Not the Sub 37 though. I disnctly didnt like that sound.
Similar situation which is why it resonated.
Funny this cropped up - I mean the “getting rid of granny” idea.
I was contemplating the same thing a week ago.
I found myself thinking that I wasn’t making the kind of inventive stuff I thought I would with a “semi modular” synth. I thought that either the machine isn’t that versatile after all or I wasn’t very good at synthesis. My instinct leaned more towards my lack of synthesis skills.
So, I started from basic single oscillator sounds, trying to make things that were purer and sonically pleasing. This has worked well over the last few days but I am far from creating things that I thought I would do with this synth.
At the moment . . . I’m 50/50. It may stay but it may fall to the wayside. I hope not because I do like what comes out of it. I’m just not sure I can make enough come out of it.
Yeah, I must say that the raw sound is lovely and really playable.
And the keyboard is great to play but I also love to sequence my synths from the OT so the keyboard doesn’t always come into it for me.