the production thread

Dan

IndustryStandard Great vid that…..Chatham! I’m in Great Chart about an hour away….small world.

IndustryStandard

Dan Know it well. Went to Uni at Imperial at Wye and lived in Ashford for a few years after. Pre HS1 so was a different world back then……lol. Big free party scene back then. Sound system in a Landy bowling around trying to find a spot. Great days

apyssjw

Dan Brilliant, thanks. Oliver is, as you might expect, straight to the point. Have another one out in a couple of weeks. I’ll post it up here then.

Dan

apyssjw He’s a fucking Legend…still got his early stuff as Spicelab.

apyssjw

There are just so many great sounding soft synths out there. NI just retired Absynth - which is still amazing (IMHO) after 20 odd years.

apyssjw

Amps Gear is of course great! But for the millionth time it’s the message not the medium that counts…

apyssjw

Dan 100% yes. A pioneer.

ArchimedesQ

apyssjw This is superb, love it mate.

apyssjw

ArchimedesQ thanks mate, appreciate it.

303abuser

@Morty-C-137 Enjoyed going through your SoundCloud this morning. Good music to start the day, I like those short piano bits too.

Morty-C-137

303abuser Cheers! Yeah I like making small pieces that just have a vibe to them. Also am more inspired by Todos Kilchurn sessions playlist lately. Not inspired at all to make club tracks of any kind. Just yesterday I made a simple piece with the thought of making a soundpallete that fits a creepy movie or some-such.

Writing tot that kind of purpose, making soundscapes (like, to film) draws me in more.. I’ll post up the soundscape I did yesterday as soon as I have the chance.

303abuser

Morty-C-137 I’m of the same mind. No one would touch 90% what I make for a club, unless it’s early in a warm up set. I enjoy making music-based soundscapes and dub lends really well to that. I write to the grid, but don’t really follow any traditional structure as far as intro-bridge-chorus type phrasing. Everything is space and atmosphere for me.

“After Twelve” is straight out of an episode of Dr Who, sounds cool.

Morty-C-137

Alright, here goes:

Morty-C-137

Morty-C-137 Listening back now on another day, the mix sounds a tad tilted towards the high end of the spectrum. Bit too hifi sounding and bit lacking in warmth/bass. So I’ll prob go in and give it a small tilt towards the other side on the masterdesk.

Basterd SoundCloud won’t let you replace a track on the free plan… BASTARDS! lol

loopdokter

Morty-C-137 I’m even considering their rent-to-own option as this thing almost never goes on sale and extremely rarely pops up in the second hand markets.

Basslines my friend. Thank me later. Since you tend not to make screechy scratchy stuff with lots of filter sweeps, that’s where that thing will blow your head clean off. It also excels at FX (sweeps, LFO blips and bleeps, risers, etc.) and lead sounds. A subtle machine it is not. You can also make some pretty killer drum sounds with it too because the envelopes are nice and snappy.

Morty-C-137

loopdokter Getting great basses and pads out of it. And it all depends on placement and function in a piece of course. I have Vital, Omnisphere and Sylenth to cover all my needs really. I could probably use only Omnisphere and never need anything else, but the workflow of Vital and sound of Sylenth are different enough to offer me a different pallet alongside.

I use Logic as my DAW and Alchemy is a capable synth but it just doesn’t gel with me and the others of Logic’s synths I can’t be bothered with. You’ve got quite an arsenal of synths Jay, haven’t you? Do you have favourites?

Morty-C-137

loopdokter I have waited patiently for a discount:

I am very very well versed with Vital (I even prefer it over Zebra, which was my go 2 in the past) but some way that Sylenth handles phase and voicing I can’t quite nail in Vital. Plus the filter is very nice. Vital could do with one of those.

loopdokter

Morty-C-137

Yeah, I’m mostly hardware these days - or at least in terms of the sounds I actually use. I own tonnes of soft synths and they rarely get used. Sometimes I’ll just use them as a quick ‘what does this sound like’, or a bread and butter sound and then I’ll replace with with a sound off of one of my hardware synths. The nice thing with soft synths is the full recall you can have. With hardware it’s a bit different because you don’t get that recall, so sometimes I just record tonnes of material and variations.

Quite frankly with working full time and being a dad to a little fella I don’t get much time for music anymore, so they mostly look pretty and once and a while I get to noodle. I miss doing the DJ/producer thing full time, but I don’t miss the lack of sleep and shite pay.

Up until three days ago I had a Jupiter-8 on loan for the past three or so years, but my mate sold it. That was pretty special. I’m fortunate that I have a mate who’s addicted to vintage and classic hardware synths like me, but has a way bigger pocket book and owns tonnes of unobtainium that he allows me to use and keep here for extended periods. Things like a Rhodes Chroma, Oberheim OB-8, Yamaha CS-50, Oberheim Matrix-12/Xpander, Alesis Andromeda A6, etc. have all lived in my studio for extended periods.

That said, out of the stuff I own my faves include the KORG MS-20 Mini, AKAI AX73 with the Tauntek OS mod and my Roland JX-8P & PG-800 with the Vecoven mods. Most of the stuff I have is ‘classic’ or clones of classic kit like several Behringer things. If there’s a mod available to give something that didn’t have MIDI or increased functionality, I’ve likely installed it.

Right now in the studio I have the following:

AKAI AX73 with Tauntek OS upgrade
Arturia MiniBrute SE
Arturia PolyBrute (on loan)
Behringer Model D
Behringer PRO-1
Behringer TD-3 ×2 (one is at my techs being modded)
Behringer RD-8
a heavily modded Behringer RD-6 that allows individual tuning of all voices, plus some other fun things
Ensoniq ESQ M
Gakken SX-150 (out being modded for MIDI)
KAWAI XD-5 digital drum synth (on loan)
KORG EX-800 with HAWK-800, AtomaHAWK & circuitbenders.co.uk mods installed
KORG Monotron Delay (out being modded for MIDI)
KORG MonoPoly with Tubbetec MIDI upgrade (on loan)
KORG M-500 micropreset MKI with MIDI2CV mod
KORG MS-20 Mini with additional CV patch point mods like diode ring mod, PWM, CV invertor, individual in/out for oscillator 1, etc.
KORG Prophecy
KORG Z1
MeeBlip Anode (a nifty little Canadian/Dutch monophonic digital/analogue hybrid)
Moog Sub-37 (on loan)
Roland SynthPlus10 (an Alpha Juno-1 in disguise)
Roland JX-3P with Organix MIDI mod & D-Tronics DT200
Roland JX-8P with aformentioned Vecoven mods and a new screen + PG-800 programmer
Roland Jupiter-6 (on loan)
Squarp Instruments Pyramid sequencer
Yamaha A3000 sampler with SCSI2CD installed and V2 firmware
Yamaha AN200 (groovebox version of the AN1X)
Yamaha CS-01 MKII with Highly Liquid UMR-2 MIDI mod
Yamaha CS-20M that has MIDI2CV MIDI mod that was a bin find and restored to nearly new

Dan

IndustryStandard There is bugger all here nowadays lol

303abuser

loopdokter Next time my wife says I’m out of control, I’m showing her this list.

Morty-C-137

loopdokter That’s quite a collection! lol I hear you when talking about full recall with plugins. The only hardware I ever owned were a Mono Lancet, Virus Snow and a Virus C. I like the tactile and immediate control but just couldn’t be bothered with the workflow setup of hardware (cables, mixers etc). So it’s plugins only. What I do sometimes though is just record a plugin live as if I was fiddling with hardware.

Makes for a different process because you are committing to audio straight away. Recall with plugins is great. But sometimes it also means being able to keep tweaking. Sometimes you just have to commit early once you have an inspiring sound and go from there. I would prob never go back to hardware though. Too many upsides to plugins for me. And there are many absolutely great sounding ones. I try a lot, but always filter it down to a handful that I truly like best.

mono-stereo

loopdokter Do you actually use all that kit?

loopdokter

303abuser

🤣

Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.) is real my friend. Once you’re in, you can never leave… Like the Hotel California.

There’s probably a reason I’m single and I’m surrounded by synths instead.

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