Jump to content

New Synth Day - "V"


Karma1

Recommended Posts

  • Members

I've been wanting a Roland V-Synth since they came out around 2003, but since they were originally about $2700 it was totally out of my reach at the time. I figured I'd wait a couple years and see if I could find a good deal on a used one. Yesterday I scored an absolute mint condition V-Synth (ver. 2) for $850 on Craig's List. The price was perfect because I had just sold my Triton Rack for $550 and had recently gotten my government "economic stimulus" rebate check from George W. for $300.

 

The V will be perfect for the kind of trippy ambient electronic music I do. I was originally planning to get a Korg M3 61 key workstation, but now I'll use the V-Synth and eventually get the M3 module instead - should be an incredible combo. Now I've got to sell some other gear to afford that. I'm reluctantly selling my beloved Korg Karma and Wavestation A/D as well as some other recording and guitar gear. If any local SF Bay area forumites are interested, let me know (sorry, no shipping).

 

Any hints, tips, or tricks regarding the V-Synth would be most welcome. Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I'm not a V-Synth expert (i have the XT), but i found it to be the perfect tool for vocal stretching, in terms of making a sampled vocal phrase to match an existing groove. For this rule, it's perfect : you can sample the vocal, then assign the 'stretch' parameter control to your favorite hardware controller (i'm using a Microkontrol, i guess you will get the key-version, so no probs), and can record - as MIDI events - your 'stretching' performance in a sequencer. Then you manually correct the recorded MIDI control change values, making the sample to play faster or slower as needed, and you've your vocals matching perfectly the rest of the music...Immense :thu: !!

I think this can be a very powerful tool for any kind of music (i like a lot to sample any vocal source and make it to fit the tempo of a techno groove - loads of fun !! :thu:)

 

Diametro : nice shot (the synths, not Woityla and that soccer player :facepalm:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

*cough thread derail hows that SQ80 astraeus cough cough ahem*


:D

 

 

:lol:

 

the SQ-80 is brilliant.....I'm actually in shock at how cool it is....

 

Attention everyone !!! Electric Puppy does the best synth packing I have ever seen !!! Ultra-fast shipping !!! Ultra-low prices !!!

 

BTW......is the Polaris for sale yet ??? I used to have one and it kicked ass until the membranes fried....:cry:

 

Now, back to the thread.....:cop:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

as far as tips...

 

get a compact flash to pcmcia adapter and a 2 Gb compact flash card.

dump the presets entirely and start with your own samples inside and use them as either groove loops or "instrument" samples. build up your own sounds first before you even try to use the onboard ones. save em all to the compact flash card as one large bank. you can easily restore the v-synth to factory patches (samples and all) in the global menu. now you can simply switch back and forth between your own custom sounds and the factory presets by loading from the compact flash card and later just initialising the patches to factory defaults.

 

seriously you do not want to even try to modify the existing patches, it will frustrate you that you have no sample ram left to speak of after the factory bank is loaded and it makes it far less painful than trying to store individual patches and loading them one at a time as you will find that you loaded over the sample ram you need for another patch you wanted to use and it now sounds completely off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I have watched the Vsynth videos on Roland's site and listened to sounds, but I still don't completely grok the idea. It seems to me that the board is designed primarily for playing and warping orchestral and vocal sounds and in particular to put the articulation of each instrument into the hands of the keyboardist in various ways. I am not sure how this differs from the sample playing capabilities of a workstation keyboard (by any of the big 3). Is the level of the synthesis more advanced? The AP synthesis is touted as a modeling method, but it is not clear to me how that is done. There are modeling methods that use mathematical models of the instruments and also modeling methods that rely on multi-sampling and hybrids of the two. The price puts it in the range of a workstation keyboard. I guess the signal processing hardware, programming, and interface required to do whatever it does is at the same level. Frankly it amazes me how much I can get in a workstation keyboard for ~2K US.

 

So how do you guys who own this board (or the module) use the unit? Do you use it like an uber-sampler/player/mangler compared with a workstation?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

So how do you guys who own this board (or the module) use the unit? Do you use it like an uber-sampler/player/mangler compared with a workstation?

 

 

Yes. To me, it's a special kind of sampler. The idea beyond it is not new, of course (stretching audio), but the implementation stands above the competitors.

It has a VA section, maybe you knew this yet, and it sounds pretty nice (unless you're trying to emulate other analog synths' sounds), but are its sampling features that shine.

Long story short : the sampling abilities of the V-Synth allow it to be used as a sound-shaping tool, rather than a bare playback machine. I never tried to shape a sampled sound on my Triton, not that one can't do it, but it's not so exciting (after all, it's a 'standard' sample-playback machine). On the XT, there is also that fantastic visual step-sequencer which spices up things - not functional as on the PEK, but fun-tastic indeed...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

I have watched the Vsynth videos on Roland's site and listened to sounds, but I still don't completely grok the idea. It seems to me that the board is designed primarily for playing and warping orchestral and vocal sounds and in particular to put the articulation of each instrument into the hands of the keyboardist in various ways. I am not sure how this differs from the sample playing capabilities of a workstation keyboard (by any of the big 3). Is the level of the synthesis more advanced? The AP synthesis is touted as a modeling method, but it is not clear to me how that is done. There are modeling methods that use mathematical models of the instruments and also modeling methods that rely on multi-sampling and hybrids of the two. The price puts it in the range of a workstation keyboard. I guess the signal processing hardware, programming, and interface required to do whatever it does is at the same level. Frankly it amazes me how much I can get in a workstation keyboard for ~2K US.


So how do you guys who own this board (or the module) use the unit? Do you use it like an uber-sampler/player/mangler compared with a workstation?

 

 

It does sample mangling like no other, the vocal designer and vocal shaping capabilities are great, and I love the VA sounds from it. The VA sounds digital, but it's flexible, and I think it sounds great. I would categorize it as a proper synthesizer that happens to also let you play back samples rather than a sample playback device.

 

-D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

think of the v-synth as a jp 8000 with tb 303 filter emulation and d-50 waveforms and part of a jv 1010 and a variphrase sampler and a vocoder all in one keyboard and you'll start to get the idea.

 

you can streatch and pitch shift samples in realtime and mix that with a single osc jp8000 or d-50 and run them through the jp8000's synth engine that has additional filter types even amp modeling. realtime expression via a d-beam or the xy pad. plus it has a sequencer designed for realtime playing like an arppegiator.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...