CONCERT - Synth-ing Nº8!

I know I forgot to post about it, but I performed Synth-ing Nº8 just some hours ago...


And if you want to listen to it, you can check the following link:

http://electro-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=68381


Unfortunately this time, things didn't really go as I hoping them to, and despite I still uploaded my performance to electro-music.com, I consider this one to be far from my finest...

This time, I picked up for my setup my Clavia Nord Modular G2X, my Lexicon PCM60 and my Yamaha CS-15, as I really love every single one of those units.

I posted about the Yamaha CS-15 before and I honestly think those series of synths from Yamaha is just amazing and give you an insane value when you take into account prices of other analog synths from the same era!
It might not be the most versatile machine, but it really sounds good and still has two VCOs (despite they can't really interact with eachother).
And it can even do things the more well featured Yamaha CS-30 just can't (like use Triangle waveforms on both VCOs, for instance)!

The Lexicon PCM60 is a really limited reverb with mono input and stereo output, but it too just sounds amazing!
It has two algorithms and buttons to select different values for the size, reverb time and to turn the contour on for bass and treble.
It's a shame you don't get a knob to control at least the size and reverb time, but the sound makes up for the lack of versatility, in my honest opinion!
Despite I have several reverbs that are much more featured than this one, I still end up using it once in a while!

And about the Clavia Nord Modular G2X, I think there is hardly much more I can say or show for you to understand how much I love this fantastic synth!

All these units should work really well together and I honestly think my performance idea fitted this setup pretty well!

The Clavia Nord Modular G2X would be playing a polyphonic pad with FM capabilities that would be sent to another patch where it would be mixed together with the sound coming from the Yamaha CS-15 (processed by the Lexicon PCM60).
In that mixing patch, an effect send would allow for a delay effect with pitch-shifters to be added to the signal.
And to finish the chain, there was also a master reverb patch made up with delays!


So, what went wrong?

I think the main reason is that I ended up spending too much time trying out new ideas with the Clavia Nord Modular G2X...
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, quite the opposite, but when the time had come for me to perform, none of the patches I intended to use was really finished...

I ended not having enough time to find the sweet spots for the different parameters of my patches, and one of them I wasn't even able to program directly on the Clavia Nord Modular G2X as I didn't have enough time to assign the parameters to the interface...

If you noticed that there was some bad distortion when I was playing the pad sound, the lack of time was one of the reasons for that to happen...
I am still not sure where the distortion came from, but that was definitely not intentional...


To make things worse, my Yamaha CS-15 also decided to be jerky and wasn't working well at the beginning of my performance...

The filter switches didn't seem to want to select a filter type and it ended up getting much quitter and noisier than it should.

Oh... and little Tux also decided he should see my performance closer!
You can guess which place he chose to stay at...

Little Tux really loves to listen to synth sounds!

Another stupid mistake I made lied in the use of the Lexicon PCM60...

Rather than using it as a short reverb, I ended up using for a more ambient reverb, which made the delays and pitch-shifters on the Clavia Nord Modular G2X patch basically didn't affect the sound of the Yamaha CS-15, at least in the way they were supposed to...

Looking at things in a more positive way, at least I learnt a bit from my mistakes, which is also what motivated this post!

I won't be posting the patches I made for this performance as I intend to reuse this setup in my next performance this coming thursday!

I intend to finish these patches and spend some time finding their sweet spots to give you all a much better performance the next time (I just hope the Yamaha CS-15 wants to collaborate with me)!


So, if you thought this wasn't a disastrous performance, get ready for the next one, cause it will be much more interesting ;)

Also, patches will be available to download then ;)