/ Audio/ MC-505 Tips/ Patch Tips |
As a side note, the effect that john is describing also sounds awesome if you are using a synth or sampler or something that would allow you to load a drum loop as the waveform for the patch (i.e. sondius reality for the PC).... but for osc1 you have the normal drumloop, and for osc2 you have the same loop with like the first bar cut off... you set lfo1 to crossfade between them... then you can do stuff like have lfo2 modify the rate of lfo1 for more variation in when it "breaks"... or even get recursive and have lfo2 modifying lfo1 again which modifies lfo2 etc ...
so that every time it breaks it's like.,. "going back in time" one bar or however much you cut off...
this is also similar to using a "hard" delay with one tap... the pioneer EFX-500 does this nicely...
CUTTING BETWEEN TWO FILLS [John H.]
All I WASN'T doing right initially was adjusting the offset properly. It's like this:
...and I guess that's it. The pattern has seperate snare fills recorded on c4 and c#4, and the LFO cuts back and forth from one to the other. I'll probably also use one of the assignable controllers to have LFO 2 adjust the rate of LFO 1 or something to add to the zaniness.
That's DEFINITELY more of a hassle than just uploading the patch.
MAKING THE 505 SOUND ANALOGUE [Aaron]
On a slightly different topic, a while back I had posted some information I had pulled from some 505 site that concerned getting the 505 to act analogue. I foolishly had posted the information even before I had read through it myself, and after reading must admit to agreeing with those that stated it was the biggest load of crap I had ever seen. Then came a little post from DrK that really changed my view of the 505, something that stated something along the lines of looking at getting the 505 to sound analogue as a challenge, one that I have since continued to experiment in off and on. So far I have had success in getting the 505 to very often sound analogue, and a fair amount of success in getting the 505 to seem to act analouge and thought I'd share what I've unearthed with the list.
Step 1. (the waveforms)
Limit your self to those waveforms on the 505 that are analouge in origin, and if at all possiable, use sounds that orginate from the same source. So say if you are working with a square wave that came from a JP-8000 as one waveform, but you want a triangle waveform as well, try to find another waveform that orginates from the JP-8000 that is a triangle waveform.
Step 2. (structs)
Being that most analogue devices do not allow you to route oscillators through seperate/independent filters, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM STRUCT 1 if using more than one waveform. I personally see Struct 2 as moving the 5 to act in a much more typical analogue fashion (seems to combine the waveforms and then push them out the same filter). Structs 5 through 10 seem to act as intersting ring modulators, but I haven't been able to figure out completely how they work. DrK has a nice amount of information on structs 3 & 4 at www.delora.com (belive that is the site). For the most basic procedures though, I'll recommend sticking to struct 2.
Step 3. (setting up to be able to tweak your patch without destroying it/getting the patch to not only sound, but act analogue.)
This part is a bit tricky and can get somewhat tedious; and often, you really aren't going to get things to completely act as you want them to or even remotely how they would in an analogue enviroment. I've found it easiest to get synth bass and synth lead type patches to conform to my wants easiest, so I will use them as a basis of explaining this. The first thing you are going to want to do is consider how exactly you want the patch to sound when all those aspects of the patch you expect to fiddle with most often are set to zero (if working with two waveforms of the same type, you may want to make all settings on them aside from pitch and level the same). Assuming you plan on messing with cutoff and resonance a lot, begin with zeroing out cutoff and resonance, fiddle with the filter envelope amount until you are getting the sound that you want. REALIZE that the cutoff and resonance are set to zero here, and thusly your patch should represent that....do not expect a completely full sound when you have your cutoff and resonance set so low. Move the cutoff around, making adjustments to the filter envelope amount as needed until you have a nicely broad range of how the patch will act when the cutoff is at zero and when it is at full. Try making various resonance settings next in conjuction with various cutoff settings; very often you'll probably find that you need to adjust the resonance velocity settings in order to prevent ear bleeding at times, I've found that most commmonly this mean setting the resonance velocity values to negative figures.
Step 4. (getting in the position to mess with all other paramters of the patch freely without destroying the patch while doing so)
Modulation is there to use and abuse! I'm sure you'll end up finding that there may often be a lot of different aspects to your patch that you would like to be able to mess with but can't due to the fact that patch adjustments made on the fly generally mean your going to completely reconstruct the patch (i.e. a patch that has 4 waveforms with different pitch settings will turn into a patch with 4 waveforms of all the same pitch setting if you mess with the pitch knob before speifically selecting a tone; and even then it can be tricky to get that tone back to it's orginal pitch) this is where modulation comes espically in handy. Here you can designate what a specific waveform should do when the patch is modulated (change pitch, cutoff, lfo, etc.), and since it is easy to quickly have modulation return back to a setting that effects nothing, you can mess with various other aspects of your patch here freely without having to worry about destroying the overall patch.
Unfortunately these descriptions are pretty basic in their nature, but since patch creation yeilds nearly endless possibilities, it's the best I can think of to offer. Where a specific patch is concerened in it's regard of not being tweaked at all after being made, I've found that the 505 begins to come up strong in the analogue type sounds one may want to create more often than I ever thought possiable. When things begin to move into the realm of being tweaked after being made, I've found that though the 505 does not sound/act QUITE analogue all the time, it is capable of coming very close to doing so and may arguably be comparable to the types of sounds one will find in things like D-Lusions (orginal) "rubber duck" and other older VA software synths. In other words, close enough so that unless someone that is use to hearing the sound/reaction of analogue synths is around, you could pass it off.
REALISTIC HORN SOUNDS [Brent]
I've got some power horns. I make patches in 7th's and 9th's etc. I mostly use the trumpet and alto sax patches with varying notes and octaves. When I program I use one patch and turn off the other tones and layer different progressions so it sounds like a bunch of cats laying a soundtrack for Starsky and Hutch. I generally use a fast attack and detune everything a tad
REMOVE SILENT "TAILS" TO ENSURE MAXIMUM POLYPHONY [J]
> > 4. How does the 505's polyphony get eaten up?
>
> One way is REALLY long amp release times on drums. Keep an eye on
> those when creaiting user drum kits.
Yes. Hell, watch for this on the regular parts too. You can have "silent" tails to sounds where you can't hear the sound, but the R is set very high, so it's still counting as a note even though there's no audible indication of such. Best way to avoid this: go through EACH sound (tone) and adjust the R part to the smallest setting that doesn't alter your sound on a sustained note. That should get rid of the hidden tails.
GETTING BETTER SNARES [Jasio]
I tend to find my snares sound good when I lower the pitch just a tiiiiny bit and muck around with the filters.
GETTING BETTER TWEAKABILITY OUT OF PATCHES [Rob]
There are some truly great sounds in the 505, even those hard ones you're looking for I bet... For greater 'tweakability' of the filters try reducing the resonance velocity under the filters section (reso velo) to about -70 or less. This will allow you to turn up the res a little higher without piercing your ears and makes your filter sweeps smoother. Sometimes you can make the patch sound flat doing this though. Experiment. I find that patch structs 2-4 add some nice distortion to the patch and make the resonance sound a little better, also try adding some boost and a little FXM for some more nastiness. The more time you put into patch programming the better you will get, and the results are a 'better' 505!
SACRED NUMBERS IN PATCHES [Loren]
I've been working a lot lately with making patches.... One of the things I have been experimenting with is using special codes of numbers in the parameters to the patch. The idea is that numbers carry a kind of "charge" of meaning (or more accurately, different concepts "flow back" towards certain numbers, which can be said to represent them).... By consciously combining these numbers in a sound, you are creating a patch which is subtly imbued with the characteristics corresponding with the #s... I.E. if you are listening to a nice tone with LFOs cycling at rates and depths of 72,. you might feel a nice warm loving feeling upon hearing that sound.... get it?
It is not an exact science. It is more like "painting" a picture of a concept with the "shape" of the sound.
Think of all the parameters in your patch as being the coordinate axes of an imaginary "vector space" in which the patch exists as a point.. i.e. if the patch has 12 different parameters, it can be represented as a point in 12-dimensional space. Tweaking the patch is like drawing a vector along the axis corresponding to whatever parameter you are tweaking, which begins to describe a SHAPE in this multidimensional space. When you add a steady modulation matrix to the patch, it expands from a point to a solid, with the LFO-contolled movement of the parameters becoming the "sides" of the figure....If there are 12 parameters, but only 3 of them are LFO controlled, you can think of the patch existing as a solid in a 3 dimensional spatial domain within a 12-dimensional hyperspace. See what I mean?
So anyway, here are some of the most common numbers which I have been using.... They is a combination of traditional Qabalistic attributions and personal interpretations......
1 - heaven
2 - earth
3 - trinity
5 - Man
6 - Man Perfected
9 - triple trinity
10 - The 10 Emanations, # of Sephira on Tree of Life
11 - Master Number of Magick & Transformation
12 - "perfection" , union with God
13 - "perfect circle"
16 - computers
19 - to manifest
22 - Unity - "22 Doors" - # of letters in Hebrew alphabet
23 - LIFE FORCE, Magick of Life
24 - a "Mercurial" God, a body or substance
26 - NAME OF GOD (Tetragrammaton) - "Lost Word" - # letters in English
alphabet
27 - an enigma
28 - balanced, power
31 - GOD
32 - 16 x 2, computers
36 - name of God attributed to Mercury
40 - "Liberator"
45 - Redemption, Liberation, intelligence of Saturn
46 - a name of God
48 - Mercury
54 - THE WILL, Number of Hadit
61 - negative, non-existant
62 - healing
63 - computers
64 - DNA (# of codons in homo sapiens) , Human beings, computers
65 - Adonai
66 - Qlippoth
69 - "Opposing forces" , double timewaves
72 - PERFECT LOVE , kindness, MERCY
75 - The Pleiades
77 - Strength
80 - UNION, assembling , "Universal"
83 - a person, The Self
84 - a dream
85 - put into motion
86 - a name of God
88 - darkness
89 - silence
93 - THE CURRENT OF MAGICK
96 - a name of God, "Secret Council of the Lord"
98 - a name of God, to consume
99 - cognition, knowledge
101 - a storehouse
109 - MUSIC, a circle or sphere
111 - a name of God, AUM
120 - foundation, basis
121 - "whirling motion"
124 - a name of God
126 - a name of God
3 / 5
5 / 8
8 / 13
13 / 21
21 / 34
34 / 55
55 / 89 - All Fibonacci pairs... .good for 2 LFOs
So try some of these if you are interested...... In any case, it seems (to me anyway) that these numbers produce more pleasant sounds ... like if i dial in a sound "by ear" and then adjust it to the nearest "special" values, it usually ends up sounding that much sweeter..... a lot of these numbers have been considered "sacred" since time immemorial...They are just special. So..... there you go!
ADJUSTING GATE TIMES FOR BETTER DRUMS [rEalm]
Here's something I sort of stumbled across last night while trying to get my BD's punchier. If you record your drums in Step Mode 2 (which I would wager the majority of us do), then there's something you may have noticed. When you're selecting your drum sounds while holding SHIFT, it always seemed to me that the BD's were boomier, harder sounding than when you actually input them via step recording. Try this to see a fix to this:
Record a simple 4/4 kick line into the R-Part (unless you're a junglist, then spend the next hour coming up with something you think is original). Now go into Microscope Edit mode, and look at the gate values for your kick. They're all 1! That's pretty short huh? If you increase the gate value to around 25-30, your BD's become much punchier, especially that 808 kick. Wow, what a difference huh? It's not as apparent with all of the drum sounds, but on my custom kits at least and the 808, there's a huge difference. I almost scared myself the first time I tried this, the drums were that much more present.
So, say you like the change it made by increasing the gate time, but like me you really don't want to go back and manually adjust the gate times for each single BD hit in your patterns. Here's a little short cut:
Press EDIT + CHANGE GATE (one of the chiclets). Now set it up so that only the R-Part red light is lit. Scroll the data wheel until the desired gate change is displayed (I recommend around +30). Now you'll notice that all of the chiclet indicators are lit as well. If you were to hit ENTER right now, you would increase the gate time of all the drums hits in the R-part. That's not very ideal as we only want to increase the BD gate time. So simply use the octave buttons and chiclets to find the BD you want to increase. When only one chiclet is lit up, only that drum sound will be changed (to do the BD's, it's typically one or two presses of the octave down button, then it's chiclet 1 or 2). Once you have the drum sound selected, hit Enter, and you're done! Resave the pattern and do the next one.
PHAT BASS TIP 2 [drK]
Building on this tip...
Once you find the sweet spot a couple of further enhancements for playability. One is to add a bit of velocity modulation. This is particularly effective when driven by a sequence with some good accents and also subtle velocity changes. Also the arpeggiator with its velocity adjust does wonders with this type of patch. the key though is to first get the patch in that sweet spot area Rob talks about.
For more expressive playing you can try fiddling with the ENV DEPTH in real time. Also try using the CONTROLS settings to route one CC to control cutoff but only with a small amount of variation *centered* around the sweet spot. Patches come alive
As a general principle there is more to be gained in patches when you *limit* parameter changes then leaving it full open. Try it on other things.
PHAT BASS TIP [Rob]
Using the Filter depth and ADSR of the Filter envelope is also key to getting those fat basses the 505 'seems' to lack. A trick to try is finding the 'sweet spot' of the filter and set the cutoff slightly above or below this 'spot'. Then adjust the filter depth to drop or rise into this spot. Use the ADSR of the Filter envelope to get the punch you want. It takes a certain amount of experimenting (stucts, filter types, attack, etc...) to get what you want, but the time spent is well worth it.
PATCH TIP [Rob]
Here's something I like doing in my patches. Take one of the 'non- analog' waveforms (like the looped waveforms, bombs, noises, etc...) and one of the analog waveforms. Set the pitch of the non-analogue waveform a lot lower (like 2 or 3 octs) below the analogue waveform. The non-analogue waveform will modulate the analogue waveform in some really interesting ways when using the alternate structs. Sometimes the non-analogue waveform will be audible, but not recoginizable due to the nature of ROMpling and changing the pitch down so low. The 'Nemesys' patch I posted a while back it makes good use of this phenomenon especially in the -4 oct range.
LFOs AND THE R PART [Loren]
Hmmm... you could try using a rhythmic type patch on a regular part... Using the LFO to automatically alternate between two drum sounds... it's not really the same effect as the "auto-breaks" you can get with a sampler... if i am thinking of the same thing, the technique there, or at least what *I* did, was to take a complete breakbeat sample, then use an LFO to automatically crossfade between that and the same sample but with a bit chopped off the beginning, so that when it "crosses", the break "slides back in time" so to speak. Then you can set up complex arrangements with another LFO modifying the rate of the crossfading one so that the timing of the "crosses" changes... or even get into self-referring LFO setups which continuously change forever or at least for extremely long periods. There is a very distinctive and recognizable sound to a "time-sliding" break... Think of some big fat Lords of Acid beats slippin and sliding around. That's the sound.
There was a thread a while back where John was discussing something very similar that he was doing on the 505... check the archives.
[That message is in here somewhere]
PANNING FLAMMING [rEalm]
This is really nice if you have one of the tones with an LFO set to control panning. Use only one tone (let the rest go crazy) for the LFO, and set the speed really slow. People won't be able to walk straight after that....
RECORDING CHANGES TO PATCHES AT BEGINNING OF A PATTERN [Ras]
If you press REC and move the volume slider to 0 (if it is 0 move it off zero and back) and it should record that value at the start of your pattern before pressing PLAY. Same with other things cutoff/res ADSR of patches - just make your change after pressing REC and before pressing PLAY.
SIMULATING AN ANALOG KICK [Jeroen]
Random pitch ( just a little bit) on the kick/bass drum is the bomb!!!
I just found it out, it gives your kick/bass-drum part a more 'analog' feel
SIMULATING NATURE 2 [Norsez]
Water = white noise + LP filter (high res) + chaos LFO
Wind = white noise + slow LFO modulating amplitude + another LFO modulating
pitch + add LP filter as you like it Bird = white noise + fast S&H LFO
modulating pitch or high res LP filter (play this soud with portamento) Rattling
leaves = white noise + medium res BP filter + chaos or moderate speed S&H or random LFO modulating filter and another LFO of the same type modulating amp.
SIMULATING NATURE [drK]
Actually the first few are pretty straight forward. Water can be hard with the MC505 but there is some help. WAV A200 "STREAM" is a short loop of running water. Not really fine as is but if you disguise the loop with some filter (modulated) and playing multiple notes it may work.
Wind is filter noise modulated using the EG or maybe the LFO using SINE or TRI waveforms. I find that workable wind can be made using either lowpass, bandpass if adjusted right. Resonance can add a whistling quality, which when using lowpass or bandpass can become suggestive of howling at lower cutoff values. being from the windy city you probably know a lot about howling, chilling winds!
Birds are short nearly pure tone sounds. use sines for the starting waveform. The easy way is to program the chirps and whistles using the sequencer. getting this to happen automatically with patching can be more troublesome and unless you feel adventurous and want to investigate using EGs with initial delay settings and multiple tones I would proceed this way. Pitch enveloping is important for bird sounds because there is a natural lilt to their whistles. Also don't be afraid to use the included bird WAVs for starting material.
I find that layering multiple tones helps reduce the perceived repetition. Try variations with each tone to add interest. Also experiment with pitch shifting and multiple notes. effects help as usual.
FXM [drK]
Aaron, first thanks for sharing your explorations. I nice to see someone take up the '505 challenge and then report their findings.
[See below for the Aaron message]
FXM, or FM cross modulation, is a way of fattening the base waveform by essentially frequency modulating it with itself. This is an old analog technique (aren't they all?) that also found its way into the original DX-7 algorithm set. basically what it does is add additional overtones. It is a much neater effect when you can dynamically control the amount of cross modulation but in the '505 you can only do this as a static setting.
Roland does not really specify what the various settings do so some of this is a guess on my part. FXM Color is used to pick a "type" of cross modulation. I believe that this selects the waveshape doing the cross modulation, with lower settings being less complex. So increasing this from 1-4 will give progressively richer (rougher?) sounds. FXM Depth is pretty self explanatory - it determines the depth of the modulation, values 1-16. As the value increases more of the sidebands become emphasized.
So the bottom line on the FXM is that its a way to get a richer sounding waveform to work with. Like most of these things it is better to use this with the simpler, more basic wavesamples, but of course all is fair game.
The patch you have uncovered is actually a very cool effect that few synths can do. It requires multiple resonant peaks that move independent of each other. This is a lot like how the human vocal track works which is why you get the vocal suggestion. Try using either the BP or PEAK filter and repeat the experiment, possibly with reduced resonance. The spacing of the filters is pretty interesting to play with. Also try sweeping the four filters independently using a combination of LFOs and EGs. You can get some great textures that are very lively and pleasing, with that haunting echo quality that you have observed. Good find!
There is a pretty solid TB303 patch hiding in the '505. If you have not yet done it, seek out some of the web-available info on the TB303 and why it is unique. A lot of the trick with getting any synth, including the '505, to be a good emulator, is in understanding just how "imperfect" the 303 really was. Your FR-777 has these imperfections built in. As far as the resonance control, I find the problem with the '505 filters to be that the range of control from the panel is a bit too abrupt, making it hard to do those subtle changes in resonance to make things lively but not to squealing. One place to experiment is to try controlling the resonance from an external knob or wheel. The PATCH-EDIT CONTROL menu allows you to establish for each tone and each of three controllers (normally locked to MOD, Aftertouch, and Bend) four modulation routings. One of the destinations is resonance. With some use of this you can do things like limit the range of change on resonance and the rate it changes with respect to a control movement. Getting this right is key to making the patch to "play" right.
PATCH FIND [Aaron N.]
And while on the subject of patches, on my quest to have the 505 emulate analogue, I've been running into the all to frequent resonance problem. I will not say that I have overcome this problem (as I haven't by a long shot), but I have achieved some interesting results. I took one of the analogue based sample wave forms from the 505 and then applied the same waveform all 4 times in the same patch with different resonance settings and then set 2 to the same cuttoff frequencies and the other two to have the same cutoff frequencies as well (with each pair of cuttoffs differing from each other slightly). The ultimate result led to something that I found extremely interesting. Once the patch was finished I found that I did have more liberty with the cutoff than usual when using the patch to act as sort of a 303/101/202 type of thing (though the patch was not meant to sound like and does not sound like any of those things) and when turning the cutoff all the way up, it produced something very reminiscent of what my 777 tends to do when you have it's resonance up all the way, it's resonance max slightly up, and then turn the cutoff up all the way......sort of a high acidy type squeek (once again, it did not sound like a 303, that's just the closest thing I know to compare it to). Various other results occured as I played with the patches cutoff, ranging from deep bass sounds, to it almost sounding like it was echoing it self with a slightly human voice. I can't say that I have ever achieved results quite like this with any of the gear
ROLL TIP 2 [Ras]
Phaser and Flanger are the best things for HHats. I use RPS for my snare builds and so I set the RPS up generally without FX as I use them for different patterns at different times. I use cutoff to get that kind of whoosh sound coming through the snare roll. Cut off can effectively 'phase' HH in quite a nice way - which may free up an extra FX for you on some tracks (Though it won't have the exact same effect.........) -- try it in a kind of saw wave pattern each rise across a measure......
I've just thought though that I might as well set up SD rolls with FX added as well and unless it slicer it should probably work OK - and if it's ENHANCER or some boosting effect it'll only make the roll that little bit harder...... cool. nice one mrK.
ROLL TIP (KLOWN'S FIRST TIP! :) ) [klown]
The FX i like to use for drums(partucuarly for dnb style) is the phaser. Just a very light touch of it mind you. It brings out an interesting depth to the drums, and when you roll the snares, it allows them to slide and roll into each other with an amazing build. It's kind of hard to describe, but if you haven't tried that FX yet, you might want to look into it. I used it on my drums for the contest entry if you want to listen to an example of what i mean.
PUTTING PATCH MODIFICATIONS IN A PATTERN [Ras]
A hint that someone gave before....
If your patches are similar to a preset with only a few parameters changed like cutoff, res and release time you can just save the pattern with the preset patch and when you are recording a part before you press play just change the few parameters you need to change and these changes will be made each time the pattern starts - it can be useful for having small variations in patches - particularly useful with user patches where you want small changes in the patch between two patterns.
NB.. don't change too many parameters or it may caause the midi to glitch...
GOOD DRUMS WITH THE 505 [rEalm]
At first I too was disappointedint eh 505's ability to recreate cool sounding drums for DnB. But after some tweaking it's really possible quite easily. Making your own drum kit is essential I think for a few reasons:
JUNGLE BASSES [rEalm]
Yep, it's rEalm the trance freak here with some tips on how to make cool jungle bass sounds. I just saw Bad Company this past weekend, and their D&B sounds inspired me to really dig into getting those cool basses. Here's some things I found that seem to work well for getting that really gut wrenching bass:
Detune, detune, detune. Use it a lot, preferably with 4 tones going. Try values around +/- 8 semitones.
FXM. I found that FXM type 1 set to a depth of around 8 works really well on some of the TB style sounds. Play them lower on the key board to get that cool effect.
Envelopes are a must! Most of those sounds have a lot of smooth movement to them provided by playing with the filter and pitch envelopes. This is one of those things that's really pattern specific. Get your detuning down, then take that patch and throw it over some drums. Use the envelopes to provide movement to the sound in sync with the drums hits you have in your pattern.
PLay the patch way further down the keyboard tham you would normally play a bass patch. Then use the filter and res knobs to tune the patch until it sounds right. Work well to do this before you try the envelope thing.
Compressor EFX. Apply the compressor effect to your drums and bass, then set the attack value to around 80 or so. It helps the bass line sync up to the drums sometimes. It can get mushy though, so don't over do it. This is also way to get you drums to be more up front, and sound more sampled, and less 505ish.
Reverb. A lot of the bass in jungle has a lot of reverb set to a very short sustain(feedback) level. It helps to make it smooth, and gives it a very huge sound. Hall 2 works well for this.
NEAT SOUNDING TIP [Steve]
"Pushing Poly" - Select Patch B104 Seq Up, set D Beam to ad lib, apply lots of STG2 reverb to Seq Up. Play with the D Beam. I was amazed by the sounds - wonder if it pushes up against the 64 note limit.
DISCUSSION BETWEEN J AND DRK ABOUT HIDDEN PARAMETERS [J & drK]
[J's original text with my comments added - drK]
>So the question still remains though, what do the
>OFF/PEAK/HOLD of the control sources do?
This is a guess based on the XP-80. The three Control Sources that can have all those interesting parameters that we are discussing (only two are programmable on MC505) can each be set separately in how it behaves when the foot pedal input is on (Sustain pedal). If this setting is OFF then controller will change values (if it is changed) even if the pedal is down (notes sustained). So if the controller is the MOD wheel and you have the wheel up and then press hold, then take the wheel down, the sound will change.
HOLD does as it says - it freezes the value of the controller when the pedal is depressed (sustained). Continuing to change the controller will have no effect on the sustained notes (unclear what values new notes get though - I suspect what the latest controller value is, should test this)
PEAK is like hold except if the controller exceeds the held value it will update to the new higher value.
>Apart from that, I played some more with the esteemed
>playmate, and could not reproduce the "gradual opening" that you
>said Douglas, so maybe you could walk us through it.
I assigned Playmate to Controller 2 (normally pitchbend) and assigned one of the control destinations to be filter cutoff. I set the control value to -63 and then opened up the filter to be mostly lowpassing the signal while playing at an even quarter-note tempo. As I speed up my playing making the notes come faster the filter would open up. When I did this experiment on Friday it seemed that the controlling factor was the rate of the notes. However since then it has been suggested that the PLAYMATE parameter varies according to the length of time that the note is held. I can not really tell which it is for sure, but I believe that it is indeed the rate of note arrivals.
Here's my test patch. Starting with an INIT Patch set up the controller source for either Pitchbend or Aftertouch to be PLAYMATE (I used pitchbend, controller 2). Set its first control destination to be filter cutoff, set the amount to -63. Go to Filter Envelope and turn it to 0 depth. Now while playing at a fairly even rate play slowly (like 120BPM half notes) and adjust the filter cutoff until you hear a very heavily lowpassed sound. The setting will almost be all the way to the right (clockwise). Now increase your playing rate. You should here the filter open up. Try adding some hi res to make the effect all the more noticable. Alternatively, engage the arpeggiator and keep its type on the LCD. Start palying with the 1/4 note arpeggiation and set the cutoff barely open. Change to 1/6, then 1/8, 1/16... You should hear the filter open up.
As for this helping do a better TB303 it isn't the whole answer. Some other things need to be done to get the correct accent filter sweep effect. But this is an important part of the puzzle.
>On a new
>side though, I played with the tempo while Playmate was enabled,
>and actually the box measures the ACTUAL "distance" between
>notes, and not just the programmed one. Therefore if you slowly
>reduce tempo with playmate on, the control values will get larger
>(even if all the notes are still 16th notes and therefore have the
>same "programmed" distance between them).
This is a nice find! I just tried this with a 1/4 arp on the above patch and running the TEMPO up and down controlled the filter cutoff. Cool! Lots of possibilities here!
>Noticed there was a patch clock source setting. What could
>this control?
The XP-80 (and presumingly any JV synth) has the ability to set a tempo value that is stored with the patch so that just playing a patch with LFOs locked to TEMPO will do something expected. When the patch is part of a performance (in the MC505 this is always true) the performance can choose whether the patch retains its tempo setting, uses the performances, or uses the sequencer's This is what this parameter is all about, the patch's default tempo.
>For those who are still wondering what the hell this is about,
>it's really not spectacular. We still haven't found a way to load
>new sounds into the box :P
>Remember that you program each patch to receive three
>control inputs (MOD/PITCH BEND/AFTERTOUCH) and route these
>control sources to different outputs (i.e. CUTOFF, RES, PITCH
>BEND, etc.). Well with SYSEX you can change the PITCH
>BEND/AFTERTOUCH inputs to be one of a number of other inputs,
>such as LFO1,2, BREATHE controller, PLAYMATE, VELOCITY, KEY
>FOLLOW, etc. You cannot alter the MOD control input it seems.
>Course some of these are a little moot since you can already
>route from LFO1 and 2 into PITCH/AMP/FILTER envelopes which
>should allow you to do what you want with sounds, but there are
>subtle differences - if you dare to brave SYSEX blah blah lameass
>messages - which you can achieve. For example you can
>technically route LFO1 to the FILTER envelope Depth already
>(through the box) but you can't route LFO1 to the actual CUTOFF
>value.
Actually the way that LFOs work is not to adjust the envelope depths but in addition to the envelop. So with no envelope a Square wave modulation will still be heard from the LFO (provided it is set to SQ WAVE).
So the LFO parameter assignments at first seem lame until you look at some of the new things you can now control. To wit:
On loosing one of your controllers...
Pitchbend is actually a good one to blow off in this set as it is always hardwired to do what you expect it to do - bend notes. The use of it as a controller for the rest of the patch is definitely an advanced programming usage. By changing PITCHBEND to something like LFO1 or PLAYMATE you will still bend notes fine but you gain another controller. Also, these settings are per patch so you can just use it for a special programming need.
>So basically, if you don't want to muck around in SYSEX, just
>know that the most interesting patch parameter you're missing is
>the ANALOG FEEL which introduces random oscillator drift to your
>sound. You could fake this by putting a little bit of RANDOM PITCH
>to the patch, and also putting LFO1 to random and routing it to pitch
>depth. Nobody would tell the difference I bet (although come to
>think of it, I think there is a tiny difference between the two
>approaches).
yes this is a good alternative way. Be sure to set the LFO rate to a very slow value, with no key sync or tempo clock sync, unless you are after some other effect - remember no rules in patch building just an experiemntal attitude and experience.
>Oh, and you're missing the ability to rename your patches in the
>middle of a song. Me, I find this indispensible in my European Live
>Tours for reasons which are far too apparent to list here. :P
Great! I knew that new MIDI application I was working on would be a hot seller.
BHANG PATCH [Rob]
Here's the formula for a patch I call "bhang", as usual the name really doensn't have much to do with the sound, but if I were to describe it (sounds are so hard to describe) Maybe a little "chainsaw with a really good muffler" plus a touch of "evil sounding sleestak on acid from 'land of the lost'" Now doesn't that give you a good idea of what it sounds like? The thing I like about this one is it's "dark" sound and the progressive 'circular movement' in the background while applying cut+res with LPF. Hold any note, (I usually play it at -1 or -2 oct.)Start at a low cutoff and slowly move it up. The background sound will sweep in a wider arc the more cutoff you add. Something else to try: Switch over to LPF and set the arpeggiator to Heavy slap with the accent rate at full(100). Pick your favorite few keys (4,9,11,12 for instance) and hold. Start the LPF at a low cutoff and set resonance at around 12 o'clock. Start moving up the cutoff *very* slowly. Try it with the portamento knob at around 9 o'clock too! I think it has a nice 'psytrance' sound to it, but use it freely for whatever style you like. Hope you all like this one, and feel free to slice and dice how ever you see fit! Enjoy!
Patch: Text
BASS TIPS [drK]
>From my own work I find that it depends on the roll your looking for the bass to play. If it is that classic "feel-it" type but it isn't really present in the mix (not out front so to speak) then compression is a very good tool to maintain punch and overall loudness without all the transient problems. It is essential too for use with real live bass playing as the loudness level varies greatly in my experience. Also I find using filtering to properly emphasis the low end is useful for that booming sound. EQ is very useful here. As far as sound design goes I generally use near-instantaneous envelopes for attack and then like the "chopped" effect by having the release also very fast. No sustain (or little) and adjust decay (on the filter) to taste. The Volume envelop is probably best kept almost gate-like for best effect - but it is a listening preference.
Avoid delays and reverbs as this can clutter up the mix unless that is precisely the effect you are after. SYNC'ed delays/echoes is a very common compositional tool but in general reverb is best left out until the final mastering unless your doing something unique.
Subsonic elements add a lot too. Using a second instrument that is tune one octave down and has a heavily lowpassed sound can deepen the feel. This can be done in the actual patch or even added as a second track (for instance if you are trying to enhance a real recorded bass).
ANALOG FEEL 2 [drK]
Analog feel: what values to use?
This parameter adds a bit of lowpass filtered noise modulation to the pitch of an OSC. This causes slow variation in the pitch of the OSC. Very small values, say less then 5 will cause almost imperceptible variation but when the OSC is played at the same time as others (either in a multitone patch or in a chord-like passage) you will hear the result of this "drift" as varying amounts of slow "beat frequencies".
Clicks: All synths have this "problem". This arises when the rate of change in a gain element, like a panner or say the AMP is too fast and the waveform being modified is not at a value of zero when the gain change occurs. The resulting "jump" in the output value creates an audible click not unlike what you hear whne you use an envelope with an attack time of zero. You will also hear the same effect for fast release values. Only work around is to use slower modulation waveforms (slower in regard to the rate of change between high and low, low and high). Pulse and square waves are bad, triangle and sine are good. Saw will click at one end. If you want a full value swing very quickly use the TRAPAZOID wave in the LFO as this is precisely why that wave exists.
ANALOG FEEL [Norsez]
Sure! Let's say you wanna add analog feel value of 32 into part 1. These are the numbers to add. (use a fixed width font like courier font to view the diagram.)
your desired value of analog feel (32 = 20 in hex)
|
| ____Checksum. you can make this
| | number up. MC-505 will correct it for you.
| |
F0 41 10 00 0B 12 02 00 00 30 20 00 F7
|---------------| |---| | |
| | | |_____ table 1-3-1, analog feel
| | |__________
| Table 1 page 239 |
MC-505 SYS-EX header
page 242, table 1-3
RING MOD STUFF 2 [drK]
First of all I find the ring modulation effect in the JV series a bit weak as a whole. Nothing like you can get with the real deal.
OK, I looked in my MC505 manual in the section on Common Settings (pg 54-55) and it discusses the 10 STRUCTS. The text for the various RM types states this "The AMP of tone 1(3) adjusts the depth of ring modulation". So maybe your manual(s) are older? This, BTW agrees with the somewhat more terse text in the XP80 manual.
Types 6, 8 and 10 all implement what is strictly speaking not a ring modulator but rather an AM system. The reason is that these structs mix in the tone 2 component. Now in "classic" nomenclature I would call tone 2 the "carrier" and this system is not "balanced" as it still has components of the carrier present in the resulting spectra so it can not be termed "ring". I am sure this is exactly what Roland had in mind because true ring modulation has no output if either the carrier or the modulator are zero amplitude. This is what STRUCT 5, 7, and 9 are attempting to do. I verified all of this on the XP80 and it works per my manuals.
Getting the effect of a tone that becomes increasingly "ring moded" is not easy in any synth because of the lack of amplitude when either tone is zero. The usual work around for this is to feed the carrier into one side of a crossfade element and the ring modulation output into the other side. You then do a crossfade (via whatever control desired) to turn up the RM effect. At higher amounts of RM there is less and less carrier so at full fade the result is truly ring modulated.
Doing this on the '505 is not possible with only two tones as far as I know. You can do a simple case by using a trick where you track both OSC to the save freq and then apply a pitch env to the first which is simply a step (no attack, no deacy) and adjust the pitch depth so that when on the resulting sum/diff frequencies is what you are after. You can delay the onset of this using the first time constant of the envelope with its level set to zero (usually way to delay an envelope in the MC). But while this might work in some cases it probably is not general enough.
The other approach involves three tones. The pair is set up to do the ring modulation effect as desired using one of the true RM STRUCT. Duplicate Tone 2 (the carrier) to Tone 3. Turn on tones 1-3. Now use either velocity to do a crossfade between 1/2 and 3 (more velocity = more RM so increase 1/2 and decrease 3) or better yet use one of the Control modulation paths to control the level on 1/2 in a increasing fashion and on 3 in a decreasing so that you get a control based crossfade.
I'm doing this from my head so this could be in error but I think the general flavour is right.
RING MOD STUFF [Norsez]
I am no expert in synthesis, but let me try anyway :)
> Funny though, that in your experiments tone 1/3 control the amount
>of modulation when the manual says this should be controlled by tone
>2/4! :) And its such a good manual for the most part ... :)
I do use Ring Mod quite a bit. I think the manual is not inaccurate about this, although they should have elaborated much more on this. One stupid trick is just forget about the word, 'multiplication'. Instead take 'modulation' (from word, Ring Modulation) in to your mind.
Let's look at the diagrams of Type 6 to 10. You can see that each diagram are divided into upper (being tone 1 or 3) and lower (being tone2 or 4) part. When a Type is applied. The sound you get is the lower part (notice that AMP is in the lower part in every diagram). The upper one is now just working mainly as the 'modulator' of the sound. See picture in the manual, P. 56.
Usually you will want the upper part or Tone 1 (3) to be a simple waveform such as a Sine wave. Because you will see the effect pretty clearly. Especially when you tune it to different pitches than the sound it's modulating, i.e. Tone 2 or 4. (So this is Tone 1 or 3 "modulating" Tone 2 or 4's characteric by its "Pitch".)
Now for AMP in the diagram in the upper part, it's unfortunately not talking about our beloved AMP Env. It merely implies the overall amplitude of the modulator. Try adjusting Gain parameter of Tone 1 or 3 and you will see that the inharmonic overtones' characteristic created from Ring Mod are changed. (So this is Tone 1 or 3 "modulating" Tone 2 or 4's characteristic by its "Amplitude". I guess you can now guess how Tone 1 or 3 modulates Tone 2 or 4 with its "Filter". The hint is filter changes the wave "form" of Tone 1 or 3.)
I usually use Ring Mod to create twanking pad sounds by using LFO to slowly modulate Tone 1 or 3's pitch. And that's it. I find 505's Ring Mod pretty limited because I'd love to mute the sound of Tone 1 since it's now just a modulator (like LFOs) , but it doesn't allow that.
Hope that confuses you guys even more,
FAT BASS [drK]
Here's an oddball suggestion. Use a HP filter instead of a LP. Reason? The LP removes all of the "edge" from a sound (upper frequencies) so it tends to round out the sound more. This is sometimes good for bassy things but at other times you really want a big sort of rude sound. So the HP leaves the upper freqs in. So why not use no filter? Because with any filter you can jack the resonance up. For a HP this will be right about the frequency where the "cut" begins. So if you tune the filter so that its cutoff is around the fundamental pitch of the note then you will be adding a big emphasis on the fundamental without cutting out its edge. By increasing the resonance you add more "boom" to the sound.
The peaking filter works in a similar way but can only serve to emphasis a range of frequencies. For the above example a peaking filter works fine. Here's another thing you can do with the HP that is not as dramatic with a peaking filter: tune the filter so that it sits on the second or third harmonic of the note. This will give the sound an almost eerie quality as if something is missing but you can't quite place your finger on it.
For variety (maybe not such a great idea for bass sounds but try it anyway) modulate the frequency just a tad with either the envelope or a LFO. This bit of movement can give the sound a near reverberant quality and a bit of a shimmer.
As far as envelopes go use fast attacks and medium decays, no sustain. make sure that the release time and the decay time are about the same or else it will cutoff the decay (shorter release) or ring out the note (long release). This is actually fun to play with as it will definitely alter the feel of the sound.
For a huge bottom try using two tones in the patch. Use the above ideas (or any others) for the second tone and select the first tone to be one with its AMP EG simply ON/OFF and set the filter off. Choice one of the square wave waveforms. Set its Coarse Tune one octave below. Pick patch structure STRUCT 2 so that the filters are in series. Adjust the tone levels to taste.
This simulates a "subharmonic oscillator" an old technique to fatten sound by adding a sound one octave lower. It can be quite effective! You have a second filter not being used so experiment with that. Also try other waveforms for the "sub" such as a sine or even something a bit ruder.
There are lots of bass sound patching techniques and these are just a few.
INTERESTING USE OF CUTOFF [Serge]
Here's something I wanted to share (elementary stuff for most of you, but you never know, someone might be interested):
When cutoff is set at LPF, the "unfiltered" sound comes up when the knob is twisted to the right, right?
When cutoff is set at HPF, the"unfiltered" sound comes up when the knob is left on the left, right? ;)
Combining these two settings into a single patch can lead to some interesting results.
e.g.: create a user patch made of two tones. Set the cutoff type at LPF for the first one and at HPF for the second one. Write the patch. Twiddle with cutoff. If you twist the knob clockwise, you'll notice that the first tone comes up while the second one gradually vanishes ... and vice versa.
Used like this, the cutoff knob actually lets you kinda "move smoothly" between two different tones. Watch out: "different" means a lot here. - if the first tone has a different pitch, cutoff will act like an *unusual* pitch-shifter; - if the first tone has higher FXM settings, cutoff will act like an *unusual* distortion lever; - if ... well anything.
MORE PUNCH TO YOUR PATCHES [Norsez]
I don't know about the distortion. One thing I can think of to give more punch to a bass sound though is to increase Time2 value to the patch. This Time 2 parameter is not accessible through the front panel sliders. Just hit Edit+chiclet#8, then press Left page 6 times and you are there. Try changing the Time2 value to 4-8. What it does is it will give more time (after you hit the key) before it decays. (Actually, this is kind of why the Minimoog basses sound like they have more punch to them.)
PUTTING DRUMS ON STRANGE MUTE GROUPS [Ras]
because I hardly ever use the other section in the drum mutes. I changed my drum kit to include a Turbo Kick sound - pumped up. I then added a simple 44 using this stomping drum. And now I have one touch control to turn my 44 from a gentle bangin' to a hard rockin' jump up and down beat. [I think he's saying to put this extra kick on the TOM/PERC or similarly unused mute key.]
I will also be able to use my hit section for something extra clever - a progression on my hihats. that way I can switch between two different hihat patterns. Cool eh? And easy.....
HIDDEN PATCH PARAMETERS 6 [drK]
OK, here is a simple example and not one intended to be entirely useful, but it is a common effect.
Lets say you want a patch so that the resonance increases as you increase the cutoff but you want to do this by only moving the cutoff knob.
You would use the method describe, assigning CC74 (filter cutoff) to say SYS-CTL1. Then assign SYS-CTL1 as the source for PATCH CONTROL 3 (normally aftertouch).
Editing the PATCH CONTROL 3 settings you would make destination 1 RES and then the depth to be something like 63.
Now, turning the filter cutoff knob you will find that the resonance also goes up *from where it first started* - the effect is additive with the resonance control.
Some interesting variations to thing about...
Negative depths will decrease the resonance.
Depth values less then 63 will make it unable to go from full off to full one over the range of the cutoff change from off to full on.
Anything that is a modulation destination is fair game with this method. Another example - set the destination to be LFO1 rate instead of resonance. Now you can change the LFO speed as the cutoff changes.
HIDDEN PATCH PARAMETERS 5 [drK]
A few weeks ago we had an interesting thread going concerning some of the features in the MC505 that could only be set via SYSEX. Some good stuff came out of that.
While recently creating a patch I had the need for using one of the front panel knobs to control more then one thing - actually a very common sound design problem. The JV2080 and cousins have this featured called a "global system controller" of which there are two. The intended use is to have two controls available per patch that the user can set to any midi control source on a "across the board" basis without having to redo all of the patches. An example might be where one user wants to use a foot controller but another wants to use the breath controller.
The neat thing about these two global controllers is that they could in theory be set to something like the filter cutoff control number or the resonance, or decay - what have you. Promising for my need.
The way these are used is to set one of the two programmable "patch controls" from the common settings to one of these global system controllers at which point you have a matrix of four different destinations that can be controlled. This, BTW was the heart of the previous thread's discussions. So instead of the default Aftertouch you could have the third patch control set so that, say "CUTOFF" controls the up to 4 destinations.
The sysex listings for the MC505 clearly list SYS-CTL1 and SYS-CTL2 as possible control sources for the PATCH CONTROLS but no where are these two controls specified - its as if they don't exist.
On the other hand in the JV sysex listings there is an entry under "system common" where the value of these two controls can be set (in fact on the XP-80 this is even a menu option).
In the MC505 sysex listing the same place (address) shows as "reserved". Hmm...
Taking a leap of faith I decided to pretend that the MC505 was really just like the JV and set these SYS-CTLs according to my needs and then pick one for controlling the Aftertouch Patch Control (PitchBend also works).
Well it all works and I now have a way of having a front panel control not only control it's designated parameter but also up to four other things in a patch *on a per layer basis*
Needless to say this is hot shit for sound design.
For those of you interested in exploiting this a couple of things. First the SYS-CTL1 and SYS-CTL2 controls have no default use on the MC505 that I can tell. For all I know maybe the D-Beam uses them. Don't know, don't care. Second, these are system wide controls so once set they will affect all patches that reference them. And you only have two for the whole machine. In other words I suggest some personal "standards" in how they will be used as they are very precious resources. Finally, when trading patches that require these features you will be requiring the user of the patch to see the world the same way that you did with respect to using these controls. Things to keep in mind.
As before setting these hidden features requires you to drop into the insides of the MC505 and do byte-by-byte sysex programming. So fire up your external editors and other gizmos, or just get an empty pattern and drop into microscope edit. I outlined this procedure in a previous post.
As to the "mystery" sysex settings the important missing information is that
SYS-CTL1 is at address 00 00 00 12
SYS-CTL2 is at address 00 00 00 13
The data is the desired control number (1 for MOD, 74 for CUTOFF) written in hex of course. Not all values are available according to the XP docs that I have. They list CC1-CC5, CC7-CC31, CC64-CC95, and then PITCHBEND and AFTERTOUCH which correspond to a data value of 96 or 97 respectively.
Happy hacking! And oh, BTW, the result could not have been better for my needs!!!
HIDDEN PATCH PARAMETERS 4 (2 LFOs TO SUM) [J]
To sum up there are two ways of hooking up an LFO to itself.
You can:
1. Sum the LFOs (Have the LFO control a parameter while it also controls the same parameter again) (Set control parameter input 3 to LFO1 (enter the following SYSEX string: F0 41 10 00 0B 12 20 00 00 3B 0B (chksum = 38) F7) , set AT to control pitch and then go muck with LFO1's PITCH control settings.
Result: You've summed the waveforms, generally resulting in triangle waves which are twice as large, sine waves twice as large, square waves which are twice as large, etc. Note that CHAOS will be twice as larg, but you can never play with it's rate. Note that if you reverse the DEPTH value (use -63 for DEPTH of LFO1), you'll get a subtraction and the resultant effect on PITCH, or whatever will be less than it would be with an LFO on it's own. Sort of moot since you can just set up one LFO and control that with it's DEPTH, but what the heck, I mention it anyway.
2. You can control the LFO's rate by itself. (Set the control 1 input as above but set AT to control L1R (LFO 1 Rate).
Result: As your LFO1 controls PITCH, it's RATE will be controlled by its own value. I tried (poorly) to explain this in my last post, but if you just think about the LFO value at any given point, that value (for PITCH) will also be the momentary rate of the LFO. So if you have a triangle which has a given slope and rises according to this slope, the pitch will rise along with this LFO value (as normal); however the RATE will also rise along with this value. You'll end up with an upwards curving parabola to a cusp? (is that what they're called? I forget) at which point the value will drop back to the lowest point of the LFO's cycle (and, so will the RATE). So you get a series up upwardly curving parabolic arcs, like Doug said. This is sort of neat in that you get that Square wave thing I tried to describe in my last e-mail, but you also get things like a Random wave where if a low value is output, it will remain on that value for a long time, but if a high value is output it will quickly switch to another value. This sounds very much like the typical "computer" sounds which synths in the 80s were famous for ... or at least, I associate 80s synths for for some reason ...
HIDDEN PATCH PARAMETERS 3 (ABOUT 2 LFOs) [J]
You can set the input of the AFTERTOUCH to LFO1, then set AFTERTOUCH to control LFO1 Rate (L1R) at +63 control value. Now whatever you adjust with LFO1 will also control the input of LFO1 (as Doug said) so you can make a triangle wave which as it gets larger also gets faster. Now this sounds more interesting than it is, because the 505 seems to really not enjoy mucking with rates with a setup like this, and you usually end up with a sound that remains practically constant, then all of a sudden jumps pitch (I had LFO1 set to control pitch) then jumps back down and the remains practically constant again. This occurs at all LFO Rates below about 113. At 114 and above you get a triangle wave with a very high frequency. It seems there's some sort of threshold there. One neat thing though: Set LFO1 to a square wave, keeping the rest of the setup as above. Set the RATE to 115. You'll find when you adjust the LFO1 Rate you're actually adjusting the "pulse width" ( I use the term loosely) of a waveform that also has its rate modulated by itself. So the square begins low, and so does the PITCH (I'll assume you have LFO1 set to control PITCH). Because it's rate is controlled by itself it will spend a long time down here. Then at some point the LFO value will jump up (due to the high point in the saw waveform). All of a sudden the pitch will jump, but because the rate is also controlled by this value, it will stay only a microsecond at this high value before jumping back to it's low baseline. As you play with depth, you will adjust the ratio of high:low as well as adjusting the PITCH (because remember your LFO is still mucking with PITCH). At a depth=0 you get a 1:1 time of high:low, but also get a 0 depth wave, and therefore get no pitch change. As you lower the depth towards -63 you get a wave which spends most of its time at a high value, with only very brief clicks of low in it.
Don't know if any of this is useful to anyone...but I mention it as experimental crapola. :) It generally sounds too crappy to use in a sound, but hey! More options! :)
P.s. using LFO1 input to control Res actually sucks. It seems to only vary the resonance value by about 10 points, which really doesn't make much difference to the sound.
HIDDEN PATCH PARAMETERS 2 [drK]
For all of you who only have a MC505 to use, or only want to use it, you can still play around with these hidden parameters. Here's how!
Drop into Microscope edit mode, select the MUTE part, and use the INSERT EVENT to insert a SYSEX command into the track. Copy the command for the parameter from the back of the MC505 manual, in the sysex section. Do this for as many parameters as you wish to set. After doing this play the sequence and the part(s) you changed will have the latest values set by you. You may then save the patches or the pattern to USER or CARD memory. I know it is not easy but at least it can be done.
A brief introduction to the SYSEX format:
parameters are addressable by a 4 byte number, each byte 0-127. Values are generally only one byte and are always somewhere in the range 0-127 (sometimes a smaller subrange will be valid).
all numbers are entered in HEX notation and there is a chart on page 248 to help you convert decimal to HEX.
You will be using the following command string: (all shown in hex)
F0 41 10 00 0B 12 aa bb cc dd xx cs F7
The SYSEX insert command always does some homework for you. First it always gives you the F0 and F7 bytes so you need not worry about those. Second, the 'cs' byte is called the checksum and normally requires some calculation. Fortunately this command automatically calculates this for you so you can just enter 00 and the MC505 will replace that with the right value.
Hex numbers are entered directly using the chiclets, or if you prefer the Wheel can be used.
The place in the manual where the most interesting things are to be found is pages 242-245. Our discussions have been about parameters found on page 243 at the top.
One hint. The address that you enter in position aa - dd is easy to get but you have to know that what the manual shows are offsets from a starting location. Let me describe an example to illustrate.
Say you decide to change the analog feel parameter. Its address offset is shown as 00 30 (page 243 top). The base of this is obtained from page 239 at the top. If you want to change the patch in TEMP for part 1 you would use the start address of 20 00 00 00 and obtain the complete address to plug in by adding these 2 together 20 00 00 00 + 00 00 00 30 = 20 00 00 30. usually it is this easy, requiring no actual adding just substituting.
xx above is the data. Plug in the value you want here. Example, if you want to set the analog feel to 11 (decimal) you would plug in 0B (hex) which you can get from the hex conversion chart.
Not as much fun to do this as using the MC505 in its "intended" manner but this at least gives you a way to get at these 'hidden' features.
HIDDEN PATCH PARAMETERS [drK]
As noted in an earlier post there are some parameters listed in the MC505 sysex implementation that have no front panel control. I did some digging and some testing and here are my preliminary findings.
I tried a couple of the more intriguing ones - Analog Feel and setting a control source (more on this later). Both commands worked as advertised. I used my XP-80 manual as a guide to what these do. The analog feel gives the oscillators a random "wiggly" feel that becomes more pronounced at higher values. Different then the PICTH RANDOMIZE feature which gives each note a small, but static pitch variation. This one is more like a small amount of colored noise frequency modulating the oscillator.
The next one is a much more important find. In the JV engine three system wide controllers are defined per patch that establishes a three by four control matrix. These are given to the user in the MC505 as the MOD, BEND, and AFTERTOUCH controls (1-4). As you know each of these can control four different destinations - things like cutoff, res, level, etc with different bipolar depths each. So, for instance you can set the Mod Wheel to increase cutoff and res at the same time.
Now one would have thought that these three controllers, the MODWHEEL, PITCHBEND, and AFTERTOUCH are fixed in the MC505 but they are not. Rather each can be set to any of 16 controllers on a per patch basis. The list of controllers is in the SYSEX section and most are pretty standard stuff. The SY-CTR1 and SYS-CTRL2 are assignable midi controllers for the entire instrument. Haven't yet gotten around to seeing if the MC505 offers settings for these. The LFO ones are intriguing but I have not yet gotten to those but my XP manual implies that this control source would be the current LFO rate. Keyfollow is a tracking of the key value, low to high, much like keyboard scaling. The final one, PLAYMATE is actually a hidden gem.
This parameter generates a value that gets larger the longer the time interval between two notes being played. So two 16th notes have a smaller value then two 4tr notes. This is a very useful tool for TB303 emulations as you can use it to gain that little extra sweep of filter if you play notes quickly one after another (by inverting the control sense). I tested this with cuttoff and resonance controlled by one of the three controllers set to PLAYMATE (I reset the BEND for grins) and this work pretty cool. More investigation needed.
SETTING WHICH TONES GET CONTROLLED IN REALTIME [Jose]
I don't know if this in common sense (mentioned in manual) or I've noticed it .... After creating a patch you can modify it but before saving the patch in memory you can select the tones (1 to 4) that you will control in realtime !
One example :
Creat a patch using two tones , Tone 1 : Saw/Square wave ¦¦ Tone 2 : White/Pink Noise .
Then select a lowpass filter for tone 1 and bandpass to tone 2 (use this sound in the low octaves) filter the two tones to desired values and before saving patch select the tone 2 (white noise) . Now if you use this pacth in a pattern and modify it in realtime you will be controlling the tone 2 (white noise) !
Adjusting cutoff and ressonance will change only the bandpass filter of tone two !
This is good for some sounds when you have a patch based on two tones and want a third to play with ...
TRANSIENT ATTACK TIP [drK]
Building on rEalm's Structure tip.
The old Roland D50 did a great deal with little pieces of the attack of a waveform to give otherwise mundane samples some sparkle. The way this would work is that the short attack piece would be added to the base waveform and then the whole thing sent through the D50's (lame) filter.
When you use any of the 2-tone structures you have the same facility right at hand. Look at STRUCT 2 for instance. In all of these "pair" structures Tone 1 has its amplitude adjusted before it is combined with Tone 2 and then sent on to the filters. Tone 1 is therefore special in that it can facilitate an automatic mixing of it with Tone 2's wave.
This has a lot of creative uses but one of the first to try is the "D50 Approach".
First of all set the filters wide open or to the "NO Filter" setting and Tone 2's AMP ENV to a fast on, full sustain. Adjust release to your liking (I like it long for doing sound development). Next adjust Tone 1's AMP ENV so that it has *no sustain*, somewhat long release and fast attack. Adjust Decay by ear so that you just hear a "blip" of the wave assigned to Tone 1. It helps when doing this initial adjustment to mute Tone 2.
At this point you have a primary wave from Tone 2 and an attack transient from Tone 1. Now select your waveforms. Pick something that appeals to you for sustaining for waveform 2 and then augment its attack with almost anything that works for Tone 1. You'd be surprised what neat transients come out of some of the waves. This effect is good for adding punch, doing little pitch bends (use the pitch ENV on Tone 1) and other things of interest to the ear. The ear loves transients and actually bases most of its judgements about a sound on these transients. So even a lame emulation of an acoustic instrument can seem very real if it has the right attack "grafted on".
Get crazy with this and it is sure to spice up your patches!
And, after you have your arms around this first technique, then follow rEalm's suggestion and try different STRUCTs.
PATCH: TNTB [Rob]
It started out as an attempt to recreate the TB303 on the 505. Not an easy task as you probably know, but I did come up with some interesting stuff trying. It doesn't sound 'exactly' like the 303, but seems a bit more versatile than the presets. When arpeggiating, I think you can hear a 'pseudo' slide or accent on certain patterns. The filtering of the patch is absolutely wicked (be careful)and the patch really gets nasty with the overdrive EFX (input 100, drive 127, 3stack, pan 0, output 127), sounding like the nastiest overdriven distorted guitar ever heard. Ok, set the EFX to ON and set to distortion as above. Jump down to the -3 OCT, set cutoff to 5 o'clock and resonance to 3 o'clock. Press the #11 chiclet and sweep the cutoff backwards. When you get around 12-2 on the cutoff, adjust to your taste. Have fun, and play reckless! Please post any comments, suggestions (good or bad). "UN-Copyright 1999" Feel free to put this on your pages, in your songs, in your gas tank.....;)
USING MIXER FADERS TO ADJUST RECORDING PARAMETERS [Serge]
Another fader tip, that some/all may already know :) While in grid-step rec mode (REC-REC-PLAY), part 7 fader allows you to raise gate time up to 200%. That way, 1/16th notes (default resolution in grid-step when in standart scale) will be tied to have the same length than 1/8th notes, ... er ... that was a bit confused, or wasn't it?
USING MIXER FADERS TO ADJUST PATCH PARAMETERS [drK]
When doing patch editing and the LCD is showing any parameter group, like for instance the cutoff freq for all 4 tones, normally you have to select a tone to edit and then tweak either the control knob or the wheel. Well, the right-most faders in the Mixer also control the active parameter, one per tone. So you can easily adjust all four tones independently and at the same time. great for getting balances right between muti-tone patches.
KLOWN'S "AIR VALVE" DRUMS [drK, quote by klown]
>So i'm trying to get more involved in patch creation. does anyone have
>any tips to get these sort of sounds...
>
>1) Air Valve Drums--i'm not sure what these are actually called, but
>you here it from time to time in industrial music. its where the snare
>and/or hi-hats sound like there pushing out a big gust of air when
>struck...or maybe it sounds like an old-school locomotive starting up.
>Im not sure if im describing this so well, but hopefully someone will
>know what i mean.
Try using one of the tones with the waveform being whitenoise. Use the filter to adjust the sound and the envelop on the filter to create the gushing sound. This can be used for anything from percussive noise hits to wind types of sound. Removing the highs (high pass filter) gives a more rumbling sound while removing the lows make sit more like compressed air. Try also with bandpass and peak just for some other effects. Also, resonance can make a big difference, adding a haunting suggestion of pitch. This will even sequence if you have keytracking on the filter set to 100%.
PATCH CREATION [CCBOY]
<< Don't be too slaved to this because sometimes the more interesting sound come out of left field. >>
Yeah this is where unique sounds usually come from.
I posted on creating patches for the 505 some time ago but as its my favourite topic the following maybe of interest:-
I think the `sound generation' side of the 505 is much overlooked because of all the pre-supplied patches. They make us lazy. I often wonder what the list would be taling about if all we had been supplied is a box with loads of pre- loaded waveforms and lots of empty patches & patterns.
When you start to look the 505 sound creation approach you will amaze yourself with the depth of tools available for you to create unique soundz.
If you are really keen on getting to your own unique sounds heres my suggested approach.................
Now take 5minutes & just ponder this.
You have been `globally tweaking' the whole patch.
But each patch can be made up of up to 4 different waveforms (tones) and each of these can be tweaked, filtered, panned, FXM'd etc etc. independently.
This is the next level. Start with a patch and select your `tones'. One by one you can manipulate each tone and build the patch up. Do differebt things to each tone & make the sound move about as its played.
Worked example. Take the pad line in pattern P592 (one of my preset faves) this is a beautiful string pad & phrase that just about brings a house crowd to tears at the end of a long set.
Cool eh ? well groovers we will make it even cooler (set it playing while you tweak) select the patch B018. Now press the waveform button
The patch is made up of two tones T1 & T2 both using waveform A062 Orch strings. Tone select Tone 2 and change its waveform to A058 ( Juno rave.) Now turn on T3 by pressing the T3 tone switch (tone A062 again) and then turn on T4 and select waveform A60 (Fat JP-6.)
Hows it sounding?
Now de-tune T3 to -12.
Next cycle the Amplitude of these two new waveforms with LFO and using PAN put them at opposite sides of the stereo spectrum.
Now you have a patch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Practice synthesis using your fave patches. Experiment with different waveforms in each tone slot try different things happening to them. Use LFO and ADSR, See what happens when you apply different filters to each tone of the patch, find out about tempo locked LFO, FXM and other stuff keep listening & see how your actions affect the sound.
Just keep experimenting........ pretty soon you'll be starting from a blank canvas with each patch. Selecting your own waveforms rather than the `painting by numbers approach' that you get by starting from presets.
Before long you'll be into the real depth of this box and cancelling the need to buy more gear.
My final personal tip? Always see how far you can get with the `synthesis' before you start adding EFX & reverb. Respect to Doug re: filtering & EQ its a good tip try to `position each your patches to fill a bit of the sound spectrum don't try to make every patch cover a wide spectrum or you'll never pick out the seperate sounds in the mix. (People buy enhancers to fix this.)
Keep saving your work & soon you will have a whole load of self generated sounds that become a unique `fingerprint' to your own unique music.
PATCH CREATION [drK]
Being able to go from imagined sound to actual patch mostly requires practice and experience. In many cases there are multiple ways to the same sound so its hard to have a "right" way. When trying to get a particular sound browse your existing sounds (presets, etc) for ones that are close or have aspects that fit with what you imagine.Sometimes you can pull pieces out of one sound and use that in your new creation, shortening the time to do one from scratch.
There are some idiomatic aspects of sound design. For instance, metallic sounds are produced by creating harmonics that are not simple integer series. This can be programmed by using frequency modulation (FM) - like the cross modulation between two tones. Alternatively amplitude modulation (AM) between two audio rate oscillators produces inharmonic harmonics. AM can be obtained using the ring modulation routing. Either of these approaches is good for bells, chimes, and even deep bass hits when the starting VCOs are in the low or subaudible range.
Crystal like sounds are usually also inharmonic harmonics just with a lot of high frequency content. When doing any sound you can use the various filters available to emphasis the region of emphasis (or cut). One good trick to try is to create a complex sound at very low frequencies using FM or AM and then high pass filtering that. This removes the low frequency harmonics and creates a sound with what the ear perceives as very complex harmonics - nearly inharmonic. Sometimes the mind will "fill in" the missing low frequencies, especially if the sound is not inharmonic. Try it with a very low frequency sawtooth wave. This makes a unique bass sound.
Other hint. Blown instruments have slow "mushy" attacks in both the amplitude (VCA) and the filter (VCF). Most acoustic sounds get duller (less high frequencies) when they are softer. So a blown instrument (trumpet) builds up the frequency content as the sound attacks.
Percussive sounds are usually rich in inharmonics. Good place for FM/AM.
The available waveforms in the MC505 provide starting material that can serve as shortcuts to a particular sound. Using a wave from an instrument in the same type is usually a good first attempt (use a bass wave to do a bass). Don't be too slaved to this because sometimes the more interesting sound come out of left field.
Use EQ filtering when ever possible. Most "natural" sounds exist within a particular acoustic space. These spaces tend to be somewhat fixed in their frequency response. A guitar body is an example. Sometimes all it takes to get the desired sound is the final step of a fixed frequency response obtained using the EQ. This is a case where separate outputs on the MC come in handy because you can run a sound out of these into a mix-board and use the EQ there if you have used the internal effects elsewhere.
There's more but already this post is a bit long.
NICE HARP [Smorebrod aka Tahini7]
This is not a tip - more like a chrismas greetingcard with sound :-)
REALM REMINDS US ABOUT TONE MUTES [rEalm]
These are the best patches to make. It's cool when you have one patch that can be an entire song by itself. DFon't for get that not only can you mute and unmute patches in real time, you can also mute and unmute tones as well. That's 28 more mutes than you thought you had!
[and, in a response e-mail]
It's a real time technique in that you can't record those mutes into a pattern. BUT, you can do some prework that expands the possibilities. Say you create a patch that uses four tones. The 505 will save the patch and all the tone parameters, regardless of which tones are active. So, you could set up a patch for four tones, then mute all but 1. Save it, then when you're playing, unmute the other 3 as you see fit. Using this method, I think it would be possible to set up key splits that would turn the 7 non-rhythm parts , into 28 (polyphony not withstanding). I haven't really played around with this too much, but it seems feasible. If someone tries it and it works, let us know. Of course then your effects, reverb, delay, etc...would be the same for the four tones on each part.
BOOM THE BASS DRUM [?]
I found you can boom the bass drum on your R tracks by setting your cutoff to the bottom button setting "PKG" (?), and setting the cutoff at about 10 to 11 o'clock. This usually puts the emphasis on the bass drum's low frequency, creating one hell of a punch. You can use the Resonance filter to do your exact dialing. Of course, if you aren't careful you'll get the "blow-up-your-speakers" cutoff/res combination we're probably all familiar with.
ANOTHER BOOMED BASS DRUM [?]
COOL SOUND EFFECTS [?]
I found it very easy to make cool sound effects with the 505 using the following method:
It plays best on the lowest key.
Other good sounds to try this with are:
PATCH ROUTING OPTIONS [J]
(From the manual - rewritten for convenience)
(The W/P pair 1,2 refer just as equally to the pair 3, 4)
W/P 1 --- Filter --- Amp ---> W/P 2 --- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Amp ---\ /--- Filter ---\
---/ \
W/P 2 -----------/ \--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Amp ---\ /--- Filter ---\
---/ Booster
W/P 2 -----------/ \--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Amp ---\ /--- Filter ---\
- Booster -/ \
W/P 2 -----------/ \--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Amp ---\ /--- Filter ---\
- Ring Mod -/ \
W/P 2 -----------/ \--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Amp ---\ /--- Filter ---\
- Ring Mod -/ \
W/P 2 -----------/-----------/ \--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Filter --- Amp ---\
- Ring Mod -\
W/P 2 ----------------------/ \--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Filter --- Amp ---\
- Ring Mod -\
W/P 2 ----------------------/-------------\--- Filter --- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Filter --- Amp ---\
- Ring Mod -\
W/P 2 --- Filter -----------/ \--- Amp --->
W/P 1 --- Filter --- Amp ---\
- Ring Mod -\
W/P 2 --- Filter -----------/-------------\--- Amp --->
THEREMIN TECHNIQUE [Discreet]
> So far I have tried it using a sinewave based patch, but the d-beam
> controller in ad-lib mode does not seem to let me use legato mode portamento
> to make the sound slide from note to note. Another method I have tried is
to
> assign the d-beam to pitch bend, but that still means that you have to strike
> and hold the note first in order to get the sound going... So far I have had
> the best (if not inconvenient) results with this method. It seems to me that
> using the d-beam as a theremin should be an obvious application... I am
> interested to hear if anyone else has any other ideas on how to do this.
use the "spooky sine" patch (a053), put the dbeam on pitch bend, add portamento to the patch (this helps only a little) with a time you wish, then put the amp D, S and R envelopes to full so it wont decay. push a button and have fun with the tractor beam. hope this helps. i think a delay would sound nice on this, maybe? (but the dbeam still has no real use in the end, there should be a clock instead. or a little hash stash. or a place for a sticker. or a little minibar. or a coffeecup holder. or...)
TIBIDIBIDIBIDI SNARE SOUND
[nico] i found something funny, last night. but it was late (very), and i woke up early, but i'll try to explain (if i remember correctly) :
i selected a jungle snare patch (in the D bank), then put maxxximum delay for this part (feedback around 90-95%, delay time ... one black note i think), i selected octave +1, set arpeggio mode (the standard basic one, 1/16th i think), and then ... i pressed the maximum of chicklets with the palm of the hand (i told you it was late...) and played with the cutoff, to raise and calm the waves of snares (which did'nt look anymore like snares...). with a big heavy delay, it became pure psychedelia... (if some of you know "Pierre Henry", the sound produced was close to his typical "tibidibidibidi")
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