CONCERT - Synth-ing Nº10!

If you tried to listen to Synth-ing Nº10 but were not able to, I'm very sorry as I was experiencing some problems with the internet, which ended up affecting the performance...

Due to those problems, I think at least the first 10 minutes or more of the concert were not streamed live...

The good news is, I recorded the whole performance and you can actually listen to it here!

Simple setup, Yamaha CS-30 -> Electrix Repeater -> Clavia Nord Modular G2X -> RME Fireface 800

This time, I decided to bring a new synth to my setup, the legendary Yamaha CS-30, which was looped by the Electrix Repeater (or better said, delayed for quite some time)!

Like in previous occasions, the Clavia Nord Modular G2X provides a polyphonic pad (which is not looped) and serves as a mixer for those two sound sources!

Electrix Repeater feeding the Clavia Nord Modular G2X with long long delays!

Unlike what happens most of the times, this time the center of the setup ended up being the Yamaha CS-30, but the Clavia Nord Modular G2X was still pretty useful, as you'll notice from the patch descriptions I'll be making afterwards!


The polyphonic synth patch I came up with for this performance was named "PString" and is a quite capable patch!

"PString", not too complex but still quite versatile, and definitely nice for pads ;)

It's not a very complex patch, but I think it sounds pretty good and it still offers a nice amount of versatility!

In this patch, I really like the nice touch the WaveWrap module (which is definitely a module I have to experiment more with) ends up giving to the sound!
The feedback line also gives a nice contribution to the character this patch has, and the addition of the highpass filter is definitely more than welcomed!
And the fact that one of the oscillators is used as modulator and that both oscillators interact together also allowed for very interesting sounds to be possible with this patch!


To mix the "PString" patch with the sound coming from the Electrix Repeater, I used the following patch, named "Mix2-10":

Two reverbs at once with "Mix2-10"

As you can see, the idea here was to come up with a short gated reverb running in parallel with a long reverb.

I wanted this patch to be considerably different, with much more interesting feedback lines than the ones I ended up choosing, but unfortunately, I used almost all the available processing power of the Clavia Nord Modular G2X with this set of modules...

In the first reverb I chose to add pitch-shifter and consider two feedback lines with switched inputs (so that the signal can be processed by both pitch-shifters).

On the second reverb, I had to do a simpler chain, which ended up featuring two feedback lines with lowpass filters...
My idea was to put one of the feedback lines with highpass filters, but even that would have used more than the available power...

I think this was one of the first patches in which I got really frustrated with the power available from the Clavia Nord Modular G2, but those reverb modules are definitely hungry for processing power!

Looking back, I probably should have just created one more patch and developed two separate reverbs (since I still had a stereo bus channel available), but didn't really think about that at the time...

Still, I think these two simple reverb chains gave a nice touch to the overall sound!

It still needs some care, but the Yamaha CS-30 is a true monster! Definitely an underrated machine...

But as I mentioned before, the Yamaha CS-30 was really the star of this show and it was the synth I played most of the time!

Unfortunately my unit needs some fixing and some of the knobs scratch a bit badly, but the sound you get from it is just amazing, as I hope you could notice in this performance ;)

I honestly think this first series of monophonic synths from Yamaha is quite underrated as they are definitely one of my favourites!

I am lucky to have all of them (except the Yamaha CS-30L, which is basically the same machine without the sequencer and slightly different control possibilities), and despite that might give quite some overlap, comparing their values to similar synths from the same era just makes it not worth getting rid of...

From all of those (Yamaha CS-5, CS-10, CS-15 and CS-30), the Yamaha CS-30 is clearly the more versatile unit, with two filters that can be run in series plus a ring modulator, and plenty of modulation options to choose from (despite a second LFO would have probably been welcomed), making it almost as versatile as a semi-modular synth!

Together with the Electrix Repeater, being used as a long delay, I think it was possible to generate very interesting polyphonic textures that became even more alive with the help of the reverbs provided by the Clavia Nord Modular G2X!

This is definitely a machine that is fun to noodle around with, and with a looper the results you can get are just amazing!


I think this sums up my performance, which I hope you enjoyed!

If you want to check the patches I made for the Clavia Nord Modular G2, be sure to check them here, like always as a reply to the first post!