Good Synth Forums?

Can anyone recommend any synth forums where artist's gear is discussed. Embarking on a major research product.

erm here

I know that goes without saying... but any others? Especially in the artist's gear department?

i wouldn't think such a specific forum exists.. and if it did it may be a tad exclusive? i'd look at the artists in question gear list if possible.

Does it have to be artist's gear? I know some places where they discuss wanker's' gear and hopelessly-untalented gear, but maybe those don't meet your criteria.

I'd like to know a little more about your major research project. Upon which you have embarked. Before I can comment. So as to maximize the effectiveness of my responses.

Yeah.

did you really have to bring vnv nation into this?

snicker.

I have a few va synths and modules: K station, microkorg and emu classic keys but i need more. Such as realistic strings and ambient atmospheres alla Coldplay, Radiohead and TV on the Radio. Everything I find on radiohead is outdated and there's minimal information on the other two bands in the way of what they use for various atmospheres. Was considering a nord. The nord's "engine" seems a bit stronger than the boards i have now. I've looked at triton, radius, and motif modules but the sounds seem too "traditional".

I recently bought a laptop and plan on getting the m-tron software for mellotron, since it seems to have best mellotron samples i've heard. Would anyone suggest softsynth software over hardware for my atmospheric needs?

Coldplay's piano player posts here. Daily.

Check out the Hai Guyz thread to find him.

Oops..... a micro korg...

I'm sure Elton John, Jan Hammer and Rick Wakeman used several of those.

Mark

GForce just released MTron Pro - a long in the making update of the MTron. I'll likely buy it for myself for Christmas if it's around by then.

This is going to hurt, but one thing I would suggest is to run softsynths on a regular desk computer instead of a laptop. The reason is that a good sound card will handle ASIO and VST drivers better then the sound chip on a laptop's motherboard.

You can experiment with free plugins here: HitSquad Links

Softsynths are getting better all the time, but hardware is nice as you don't have to worry about midi-lag, dropouts, driver conflicts, etc. However, if you're just recording, softsynths should work fine.

Hardware.

No. It's not whether soft or hard, but what you do with it.

At first I thought this was for school, then you mentioned you just have GAS wanting to get some new synths. What's this about? Your own personal exploration trying to find the synths other bands use? Or is this a school project?

The former

Go check out VSE forums, they spend an inordinate amount of time discussing who used what and where, there are members that can tell you how much protein was in Tony Banks' diet at any given time in the 70's and 80's let alone what keys he was using.

Or, as mentioned before you could just blaze your own trails with your Microkorg and some cheap nasty pedals. If you really need to sound like the latest trendy band you're gonna need alot more than just magical keyboard X. Get yourself a producer, top mixing engineer, mastering engineer etc. , and book some time at abbey road or some equally bull{censored} studio, and don't forget to turn either the talent or suck some commercial dick knobs up to 11.

Personally I'd love to get the same tones as Stevie got on "the secret life of plants" but a GX1 is slightly out of my price range at this point in time, not even considering the fact that *cough* Mr Wonder might be a wee bit more talented than I.

As for Radiohead I do know they used a Mutronics Mutator for filtering purposes.

see i told you at the start of all this

did you really have to bring vnv nation into this?

My Hero!

Kontakt 3.

Omnisphere.

Because it doesn't matter.

Eh, those are a cover-all-bases sample library with a big hardware dongle/playback engine.

This is not the question you should be asking.

It'll be more rewarding to find out how these sounds are made rather than using a specific device. For strings - well, okay, you're pretty much forced to use a good sampling library because it means all the hard work has been done for you already.

For atmo pad sounds you can do a lot of things yourself. It requires a different method of building sounds; instead of very basic stacking and subtracting like subtractive synths do, you need to craft each element separately.

For instance, one could reason as follows: a pad sound has a "basis" (which could be a simple analogish string-like sound), an airy top (using a high-pass filtered sample with enough harmonics to be breathy and noisy) and an evolving middle (a wavetable with its position controlled by a pseudorandom LFO). Put each of these components in their own frequency range, add a reverb effect on the airy bit, give everything a long attack and release, and you have something neat.

This doesn't come out of a single synthesizer, though (well, it does - but it's usually a ROMpler because they allow this kind of soundbuilding). One big problem is to expect that all of the things come out of a single box, machine or plugin - they generally don't. Another problem is to expect that once a sound has gone through the signal flow that's it - it's not. (Re)sample your effected sounds and add more layers. Sample long reverb tails - it's amazing what you can do with them. Craft and mix the components in detail; if all part volumes are equal you're doing something wrong. Most importantly - don't go overboard. Big, impressive pads don't sit well in the mix if they have to compete with other sounds for space.

Hi D!

Welcome to this thread!

I feel very good about this!

Did you know that Coldplay's piano player posts here daily.

Thanks!

did you really have to bring vnv nation into this?

that would be funnier if your avatar were different...

vnv is no worse or better than any trance act other than he refuses to shut up and quit ruining his songs with his crappy vocals. his writing is okay and once in a while he actually does something decent (although not recently).

as far as wanker bands there are several thousands to choose from. radiohead and coldplay being some of the more popular.

as far as emulating them goes...

don't.

try something new or at least original and what you can call your own.

I know for a fact that Liberace posts here daily.