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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#11,221
steubig said:
pretty sure that there are no other ones that are in current manufacture. (this according to glen darcey of asm.)

they’re supposed to be doing a firmware update to fix the black keys. it’s not been something that bothered me.

if you get the hs, just know that a lot of the presets use pat, so some of them won’t work right with a controller that doesn’t send pat. the desktop’s pads *do* send pat. they’re decently functional.

if you need a new controller, i’d consider the keys version.
Click to expand...
I don't have any more room for any more keys, unfortunately. Anything I add, at this point, will be a desktop unit. I wish the Prophet X had one, or the Novation Summit. HS is the only thing I find really appealing, at this point. Anyone have any luck with the new Modal stuff?

I will admit that I don't use aftertouch a lot on all of my other synths, mostly because I forget it exists. That said, does it still do the regular mono AT (meaning, it uses the AT of the first key pressed for everything else)?
 
#11,222
lordradish said:
I don't have any more room for any more keys, unfortunately. Anything I add, at this point, will be a desktop unit. I wish the Prophet X had one, or the Novation Summit. HS is the only thing I find really appealing, at this point. Anyone have any luck with the new Modal stuff?

I will admit that I don't use aftertouch a lot on all of my other synths, mostly because I forget it exists. That said, does it still do the regular mono AT (meaning, it uses the AT of the first key pressed for everything else)?
Click to expand...

yeah the prophet x. something i looked at quite a bit. i have a friend who works for sequential. he say no plans for a desktop, which i think is folly. tbh, i think the iridium covers a lot of what it does—and more.

poly is pretty intriguing. for instance: with held chord left hand, melodic line right hand, pressing harder on the right hand creates differences in the right hand, but the left stays the same. or just modulating pressure on different fingers creates a lot of movement in a pad.

i’ve been intrigued by the modal stuff. i’ve read various user reports; somewhat mixed. size is good.

the modal cobalt coming out made me really curious as to what asm is going to do next (and how much longer i have to wait to know).
 
#11,224
steubig said:
yeah the prophet x. something i looked at quite a bit. i have a friend who works for sequential. he say no plans for a desktop, which i think is folly. tbh, i think the iridium covers a lot of what it does—and more.

poly is pretty intriguing. for instance: with held chord left hand, melodic line right hand, pressing harder on the right hand creates differences in the right hand, but the left stays the same. or just modulating pressure on different fingers creates a lot of movement in a pad.

i’ve been intrigued by the modal stuff. i’ve read various user reports; somewhat mixed. size is good.

the modal cobalt coming out made me really curious as to what asm is going to do next (and how much longer i have to wait to know).
Click to expand...
Too bad about the Prophet X, but yeah, I think the Iridium does cover a lot of that territory.

My thing with Modal vs ASM, every demo I've heard on the Modal, I still hear things that, well, I've heard before. What originally piqued my interest with the HS was how I heard a lot of very untypical complex sounds, and as y'all know, that's my bread and butter. I've yet to hear anything on the Modal stuff that sounds far removed by what could be done on the Virus.

Gonna put the Virus on sale today, so hopefully it sells quick, I can get the HS, and then use the remainder of the money to put towards paying down the Iridium.
 
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#11,226
lordradish said:
I'd also add that I think with the HS doin so well, the next generation of controllers may start having Poly AT be just another normal thing. Obviously, a lot of HS DT's are being sold and used with current controllers.
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for sure. if you have the roli thing, the hs mpe mode will be good. and the hs pads are useful, as they do have pat.
 
#11,232
lordradish said:
I think I'm just tired of the Virus, I'm tired of the sounds, and I hate the fact that Access is still selling these things and hasn't had an update in a few years, and from what I can gather, isn't going to.
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I'll be honest, that's generally a plus in my book. I'm not usually an early adopter, so if I get excited about a piece of gear -- especially synthesizers -- it's often years before I finally get around to acting on it. The Access Virus was on my MIDI Wish List for ages...but if I bought one now and discovered it had gone through enough upgrades such that it no longer resembled the thing that originally attracted me to it, I'd be pretty pissed.

Of course, who am I kidding? Right now my MIDI Wish List consists of one item: Some sucker who will pay me ten cents on the dollar and cart all my synths out of here.
 
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#11,234
Bob_Ross said:
I'll be honest, that's generally a plus in my book. I'm not usually an early adopter, so if I get excited about a piece of gear -- especially synthesizers -- it's often years before I finally get around to acting on it. The Access Virus was on my MIDI Wish List for ages...but if I bought one now and discovered it had gone through enough upgrades such that it no longer resembled the thing that originally attracted me to it, I'd be pretty pissed.

Of course, who am I kidding? Right now my MIDI Wish List consists of one item: Some sucker who will pay me ten cents on the dollar and cart all my synths out of here.
Click to expand...
Honestly, to clarify... my Virus has been top notch, in terms of performance, lack of bugs. My frustration with the updates primarily has to do with it still not having USB 2.0, and the library management interface just looks like software from 10 years ago. it's not scalable, and my eyes suck. It's still a great synth, one of the best, as most people would say, modern classic, yada yada. I think I'm just ready to move on, so lemme know if you wanna buy one. Most of the updates, as far as I can tell, have been bug fixes, not feature improvements.

Interesting about the early adopter... TI2's had already been out for about 7 years when I got one, but I got the wavestate right and iridium right as they came out. It's been a bit of an issue with the Wavestate, as they, up until last week, had it so the latest windows update had broken it, meaning, for about 2 months, if you had Win 10 ver 1909 you were out of luck,you had no way to use the librarian or updater. There is still room for improvement (like sends instead of master reverb, a few navigation things that would improve workflow), but when I'm an early adopter, I kind of expect those things. Now, with the Iridium, before it even came out, there was already talk about how the 3.0 OS, when it finally arrives, is going to be a huge improvement. I'm okay with that, because, apart from a few workflow improvements and a bug or two, they could leave the Iridium as it is, and I'd be fine with it, as it's already so amazing, so I kind of saw that as more of a, "cool, I'll work for a time with this awesome synth, learn it really good, and then, bang, a bunch of new features."
 
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#11,235
steubig said:
i don’t think so. if the roli sends pat, the hs might recognize it without being in mpe mode.
Click to expand...

It can be oddly therapeutic to come up with a cool patch, then just leave it running as you go about doing other things like making meals or whatever. On a good day it seems to take on a life of its own, slowly morphing and changing...
I’d better listen to The Cramps or something to shake off the hippie feels
 
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#11,236
dukeorock said:
It can be oddly therapeutic to come up with a cool patch, then just leave it running as you go about doing other things like making meals or whatever. On a good day it seems to take on a life of its own, slowly morphing and changing...
I’d better listen to The Cramps or something to shake off the hippie feels
Click to expand...
Funny you say that, as late night, when I'm getting into doing the sound design textural stuff, sometimes I come up with something so hypnotic, I end up just sitting there at my keys and zone out and listen to it for 20 minutes. That's generally a good indicator that it's a keeper.
 
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#11,237
dukeorock said:
It can be oddly therapeutic to come up with a cool patch, then just leave it running as you go about doing other things like making meals or whatever. On a good day it seems to take on a life of its own, slowly morphing and changing...
I’d better listen to The Cramps or something to shake off the hippie feels
Click to expand...

hippie?

eh, dunno.

i like things like that, listening carefully to things changing or walking around while something ambient-ish is going on (feldman comes to mind).

you know scelsi’s music? allegedly he spent a lot of time listening to single piano notes decay and then wrote all this wacky music. (i’ve done that with chords and it can be pretty interesting.)
 
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#11,238
Well, whadya know.... the Virus sold an HOUR after I put it up on FB, and I have a HS desktop that will be here, tomorrow. Plus I sold two more pairs of the Iridium wood ends I've been making. I'd say that's a good day.

I lucked out, as when I bought a used TI 2 from Gtr ctr, 4 years ago, it was DOA, so I got them to send me a new one at a reduced price, so I ended up only losing about 200 bucks on a synth that I got a TON of use out of for 4 years. Gonna take what's left after the Hydra and put it towards my Miezo 18" six string that should be here in January.
 
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#11,239
steubig said:
hippie?

eh, dunno.

i like things like that, listening carefully to things changing or walking around while something ambient-ish is going on (feldman comes to mind).

you know scelsi’s music? allegedly he spent a lot of time listening to single piano notes decay and then wrote all this wacky music. (i’ve done that with chords and it can be pretty interesting.)
Click to expand...

I was kidding with the hippie comment :)

Not aware of Scelsi, but will look into it!
 
#11,240
steubig said:
hippie?

eh, dunno.

i like things like that, listening carefully to things changing or walking around while something ambient-ish is going on (feldman comes to mind).

you know scelsi’s music? allegedly he spent a lot of time listening to single piano notes decay and then wrote all this wacky music. (i’ve done that with chords and it can be pretty interesting.)
Click to expand...
I really dig Scelsi's piano stuff.
(From what i remember....gotta go back and listen, its been a few years)

The rest, I can take only so much. He wrote ALOT for flute.....

What Morton Feldman ambient-ish compositions are you talking about?
My all time favorite is triadic memories.
Especially the Sabine Lieber interpretation.
 

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