CONCERT - Synth-ing Nº14!

As I promised you all last Sunday, I have been uploading the missing "Synth-ing NºX" concerts!



Unfortunately, I haven't been able to upload all of them yet, but you can already listen or re-listen to Synth-ing Nº14!


This was a concert I really enjoyed playing as, for the first time in this series of performances, I used the Electrix Repeater as an actual looper, rather than a long delay!

The setup I used was the one shown in the photo below:

Small but very effective setup ;)

To feed the Electrix Repeater, I used my Korg Wavestation EX, which was used by the first time in this series of concerts!

I got this keyboard last year, and despite I knew I shouldn't have gotten an extra keyboard to the studio, the price I paid for it was way too low to pass the opportunity...

I had a regular Korg Wavestation before, which I sold as I was hoping to get a Korg Wavestation EX to replace it, so it was great to finally get one of these amazing Korg synths back in the studio!

Unfortunately I didn't have much time with it yet, and haven't programmed any of my own sounds for it, so I had to use presets...

This isn't something I like doing, but this time I really had to...

So it is normal if you know some of those sounds ;)

Korg Wavestation EX + Electrix Repeater = Dream pads! And yep, I need to get the backlight fixed in the Korg... :(

As I mentioned before, this time, I didn't use the Electrix Repeater as a very long delay, but rather as a 4 track looper!

In order to actually get 4 different loops going on, I had to connect the Korg Wavestation to the Electrix Repeater in mono rather than stereo, but I feel it was worth it as I could get some really interesting loops going on!

All the loops that were played in this concert were recorded as I was performing and the only processing I did to the loops was either changing the pitch of the tempo, which I felt could give really nice results, especially with the pads!

Since my Electrix Repeater is a bit noise (I think it doesn't have the Noise Mod done) I decided to finally bring back the Clavia Nord Modular G1 to fix this problem!

Thanks to the Expander module, I could create a patch named "DeNoiser" to reduce the noise and also add some more bottom end to the sound coming out of the Electrix Repeater!

"DeNoiser", to make the Electrix Repeater a little less noisy ;)

And since I was going to use the Clavia Nord Modular G1, I felt it would be nice to actually play a bit with it as well!

To get really expressive sounds, I decided to use it together with my Yamaha MCS2 / Yamaha BC3 combo!

To make full use of the breath controller, I decided to come up with a wind-instrument like patch, named "Saxyon":

"Saxyon", just add a Yamaha MCS2 and Yamaha BC, and prepare to have a blast of expressivity ;)

One reason why the Clavia Nord Modular G1 is so amazing to use with this Yamaha MCS2 / Yamaha BC3 combo is that you have up to 4 independent morph groups!

Since morph groups are not such a common feature, I'll just mentioned that they allow you to control several parameters at once!

And to keep things interesting, you can choose the minimum and maximum value you will get get while morphing your parameter! 

In this patch, I only made use of 3 of those groups, but I think I could get quite expressive results!

The first group (red) was controlled by the mod-wheel, while the second group (green) was controlled by the breath controller!

To make things a bit simpler when it came to controlling the patch in realtime, I controlled the third mod group with knob 5 to get ModOsc down 7 semitones, which allows me to have better precision than assigning separate knobs to the Detune and Fine parameters of that modulate.

Clavia Nord Modular G1 + Yamaha MCS2 + Yamaha BC3 = Very expressive sounds!

Still, I have to say I'm not totally satisfied with how it ended up sounding, but this was a last minute change to the setup (after I noticed I would need a noise gate on the Electrix Repeater), so maybe with some more tweaking it would have gotten a bit better!

But I think it still ended up being a very expressive sounding patch!

I guess the biggest mistake I did with this patch was not to use a reverb...

With the Clavia Nord Modular G2, I could easily add a reverb module to the patch.

But with the Clavia Nord Modular G1, the memory available is very small to come up with a nice long reverb patch...

And since all the patches from the Korg Wavestation EX had their own reverbs, I chose not to use a reverb at the end of the signal flow...

If I had used a proper mixer, it would have been a good idea to process only this "Saxyon" patch with a nice reverb.

But to add that extra reverb to the patches from the Korg Wavestation just seemed a bit too much...

Other than that, I really enjoyed doing this performance as it really ended up showing me I should use my Electrix Repeater as a real looper more often!

Layering few loops from the Korg Wavestation together can really sound great and it's still very fun to play with.

It is definitely one of those very inspirational machines that help you come up with something new every time you use it!

So, if you enjoyed this performance, be sure to keep following this "Synth-ing NºX" series as the Electrix Repeater will most likely be used as a real looper many more times ;)

And like always, be sure to post your feedback, it will be appreciated ;)