985 Kilohertz

Songs & Sounds
,
1

Hola,

… and… who would have suspected this… a new one, this one was “produced” with the little one sitting in her baby chair next to the synths and therefore, there were severe time restrictions (about 10 minutes in total, after a few tracks had been jam-prerecorded on the sequencer). Also, of course, it had to be a somewhat happy melody! :smiley:

It is in a bit of a different format, it was created using only one hand, as the other hand was busy holding the camera and filming :). Hope you enjoyed it and hope to hear new music creations from you, too! 

Many greets!
Peter

2

Very nice! Next time with a headmounted GoPro!

What’s that you’re tweaking just underneath the mixer?

 

Best,

3

Thanks a lot, Andy!

The red knob constantly tweaked below the mixer is the DIY stereo polivoks filter, it was recommended by jojjelito, and man, that thing is awesome! :smiley: Good idea with the GoPro, I tried it once, but had no proper headmount and fixed it to my head (mouth) with rubberbands :-D. I could not breathe properly, it somehow worked out, but I felt strangely lightheaded after the recording. Maybe should rethink that filming strategy :-). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV36JWecqrc

Many greets,

Peter

4

Wow didn’t knew about your musical work and setup. oO
Very cool ! Keep it going =)
greets 
Jerome

5

Thanks, Jerome! :slight_smile: It was (as usual) quickly hacked together, but lately there is not too much time for nothin’ :-). Literally, the kid wanted food after i hit the stop button, so no time for a second take - there are some flaws and mistakes, but in the end it is just about the fun - and you can have lots of it with MIDIbox! :slight_smile: Trying to motivate people to make more music and post it - and while we won’t get (and don’t want) Sony record deals, we can enjoy ourselves :slight_smile:

Many greets,
Peter

6

Love it :slight_smile: The best part is the time spent with your wee one, before long she’ll be wanting to jam along with daddy.

yogi

7

Thanks, yogi!

That sounds wonderful, am really looking forward to it! Currently doing a bit of daily (5 minute) piano training with the little one, but the fingers are yet too small to play one key with a single finger :slight_smile: - and using the whole hands for that job does not really sound very harmonic :slight_smile: - but then, there is enough time to improve matters…

Many greets,

Peter

8

Tell me something about the EMU 6400 mod, please!

9

Hi ilmenator,

of course! The long story… :slight_smile:

GAS helped me to an E-MU Ultra - it was all broken up, the previous owner let it falll on the floor or something, anyways, the acrylics section (with the label E-6400 Ultra) was missing… that’s why it was very cheap… and I had to have it :slight_smile: Well, with the saved money, and because I really began to love it’s user interface and its possibilities, I began to mod it a bit:

a) added an Artronik 240x64px display with a white LED backlight. The contrast regulation did not work properly at first, so a small manual contrast regulator (potentiometer) had to be installed (but this was in the schems), so no problem. Afterwards, it was possible to get rid of the annoying el-foil high voltage generator…

b) removed the noisy 40x40mm fan and added a silent 80x80 fan, that is driven by only 7 volts (12V and 5V lines = 7V differential). It was silent on 12v already, and at 7v it is inaudible, but there is a bit of airflow over the internal PSU, that should be sufficient…

c) added a 120GB SATA SSD, that is converted to IDE with a SATA->IDE converter. The disk is formatted to FAT and has a quick-eject frame, so you can prepare samples on a PC and easily transfer lots of them to the E-MU.

d) as the front-window was broken up, and it looked very messy, I did not know what to do with the “open space”. By accident, i stumbled upon the DSO 138 DIY oscilloscope kit, which can be bought for around 17$ (incl. shipping) from china :-). It was a fun afternoon session to solder - it can be “preset” to audio waveform levels, so no adjustment is necessary, every time the unit is powered up… It is internally connected to the headphone output (which is still available) and to 5V/GND. The display has been separated from the main PCB, to allow installation in the available area… Now, only a 50% black smoked replacement window (covering both displays, they are bright enough) needs to be ordered from Ponoko, and I am a happy parker with a probably quite unique e6400 :-).

By the way, if you also have an Ultra or any similar sampler from that era, the “adventurekid single-cycle waveforms” are just plain awesome:

http://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/waveforms/adventure-kid-waveforms/

For example on the E-MU, you could build a 64-oscillator monosynth or an 8 voice 8-oscillator poly using these waveforms. Many of them come from traditional synths (or from 8-bit soundchips / arcade machines), and there are many more synthetic waveforms. They sound just awesome! :slight_smile:

Many greets and have a great time!
Peter

10

On 5/15/2016 at 5:26 PM, latigid on said:

Very nice! Next time with a headmounted GoPro!

What’s that you’re tweaking just underneath the mixer?

 

Best,

He’s playing with his “red knob”, hehehehe.

 

11

Just now, Smithy said:

He’s playing with his “red knob”, hehehehe.

Well, yes! The Polivoks filter feels almost as good as playing good old summer games on the Commodore 64

12

5 hours ago, Hawkeye said:

By the way, if you also have an Ultra or any similar sampler from that era, the “adventurekid single-cycle waveforms” are just plain awesome:

http://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/waveforms/adventure-kid-waveforms/

 

Yes indeed - currently boxed, but I do have a small collection of EMU samplers… no software sounds like an EMU.

Have you converted these waveforms to EMU proprietary samples already?

13

Just now, ilmenator said:

Yes indeed - currently boxed, but I do have a small collection of EMU samplers… no software sounds like an EMU.

Have you converted these waveforms to EMU proprietary samples already?

Hey, great, that you say that! I really don’t know how they do it, but I agree, they sound fantastic! But, I have no clue, why that is… :slight_smile:

After downloading the all-in-one single cycle wave pack http://www.adventurekid.se/AKRTfiles/AKWF/AKWF.zip it was possible to load up the WAVs directly in the E-MU Ultra (newest OS). I am not sure, if older versions can load WAVs (i think so), but you need a way of getting them into the sampler. One way is using a harddisk with a FAT filesystem and to store it directly from the computer - you can also transfer samples via MIDI (and it won’t take long, as these are short), or it might even work with floppies (small file size, no problem). When examining the samples e.g. in the tools/loop screen, i see no clutter (like header binary noise), so these need no conversion and you can dive through thousands of sounds!

The cool thing is, that Adventure Kid provides sets of only slightly different waves (e.g. bass1-40), so you can assign a whole bunch of these similar waveforms to a single preset, using different waveforms for left / right panning, and more/other waveforms octave-transposed (up and down). Like that, a patch can contain for example six or eight similar, but not identical waves and it begins to sound properly fat :-). You can then slow-lfo detune a few of these waves, to add more substance :-). If you then route that through the famous E-MU filters, e.g. like the Peak/Shelf Morphing Filter, and add a bit of reverb, you are in sampler heaven! :smiley:

Many greets!

Peter

14

Man, I wish I had some more time again for these things…

1 Like