I wanted to see how the Analog Rytm would sound as an analog poly synth. It’s not straightforward to play it that way with a keyboard, so I wrote a little app to help with this.
I think it’s quite fun, and I am tempted to spend a bit more time on the app to be able to release it (it’s buggy and manual at the moment). But before I do so, I wanted to gauge the interest.
I put together a small video. It is quite poor but it gives an idea. All 3 voices are pure analog, no samples.
@nightfade Re: voice parameters. Yes, definitely. That’s the case already (unless I misunderstood you?). In the little video I am adjusting the filter params on all 3 voices at once. Is it what you meant?
@gihaume: thing is I am having a hard time controlling saturation when I play several voices at the same time like this. As soon as you add resonance, it tends to saturate (in a not so pleasant way I mean).
I am no expert and maybe I am missing something… or maybe it’s just that the analog “Machines” are not really meant to be played like this. I need to look into it a bit more.
nice one! i did http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2svbHnHe7Kc similar a while ago which was instead an attempt to get an eight voice synth out of the AR, i guess it could be easily adapted to have something like an eight voice polyphony synth … may be worth giving it a try
That’s very interesting !
I have several questions:
Can you record this live on the sequencer ?
Can you use any of the 8 voices or are you limited to some ?
Can you use samples instead of synth tones ?
Do you have any problem with the length of the synth tones ? For me the length of the sounds is tied to the pitch, higher pitched synth tones are shorter than lower pitched ones.
Which platform/OS are you developping this app for ?
thank you for this !
and sorry for all the questions but I think it’ll help everyone understand a bit more what you are doing.
cheers
Pretty sure you can record all voices simultaneously to the sequencer.
Single-cycle waveform samples can be used with no problems, and AFAIK should track pitch accurately (as long as the original sample is properly in tune).
You can set the env to have an “auto” hold value, which gives you true sustain capability to a voice. When hold is set to auto, the decay value will become a “release” value for the env.
when you play notes on a MIDI controller, they are all sent to the same MIDI channel, i.e. to the same track (by default) on AR
in order to play the AR as a polysynth, you would need each note in a chord to be sent to a different channel
e.g.: you are playing C - E - G on your keyboard, you want C/Ch1 - E/Ch2 - G/Ch3 (for instance). If you do that, then each note will be played by a different voice on AR.
So that’s what the app is doing. It splits the notes in your chords into multiple channels.
It means:
you can play samples, synths, anything really. Everything an AR track can play, you can play it with this little app.
you can play all 8 voices simultaneously, no problem.
you can tweak the settings (e.g. filter) of all the tracks at once from your MIDI controller
the thing is, to get “normal” polyphony, you’d need each AR track to play the same sound. And that’s where things get complicated. The AR can’t play the same analog sound (the same “Machine”) on every track. So for sample based sounds, it’s no problem. But if you want analog sound you start to be limited. Hence the 3 voices in the video. Indeed, you can load the exact same analog sound on the first 3 tracks. Not on the following ones.
So if someone knows how to generate the same analog sound on each track, then I can make it a 8-voice polysynth. And it would be… pretty cool I think.
@guga I meant to add: I did watch your video and it is really good. The only thing is I don’t believe you can adapt it to make a polysynth. I mean you can program every single note in your DAW, sending each one to a different channel, but it would be really painful. If you want to play live (complex chords, not the same note on multiple tracks) with a keyboard, I think you do need a specific app.
@v00d00ppl It’s a Mac app. You just need to connect your AR to your Mac via USB, and your MIDI keyboard to another USB port. That’s all.
Basically the app is just taking MIDI in, transforming it, and sending it to AR.
I think someone did this for the A4 before it went poly (search over a yr ago), plus midipal does this I think, I’ve also done it for a nord lead (&A4 I think) so you can play 4 slots (all different chans) and by using a similar voice (but different) you get a beautiful big patch, a bit like the architecture of an oberheim 4 voice, it’d be much easier to do on an 8 voice because you can worry less about voice stealing etc - recording on multi tracks must be an issue tho ! I’d imagine the samples through the variable state filter would be amazing with the drive,dist,comp etc : - ) getting AR gas bad
[quote=“tsutek”]Pretty sure you can record all voices simultaneously to the sequencer.
Single-cycle waveform samples can be used with no problems, and AFAIK should track pitch accurately (as long as the original sample is properly in tune).
You can set the env to have an “auto” hold value, which gives you true sustain capability to a voice. When hold is set to auto, the decay value will become a “release” value for the env.
[/quote]
How do you set hold to auto?[/quote]
turn the hold parameter to min position to set auto hold.
