1 Reply by rolf kasten

(4 replies, posted in Audio Production)

Part 5 of my series of tutorials about SoloStuff´s “SoloRack” modular VST synthesizer is available now. It is all about frequency modulation – linear as well as exponential – and phase modulation. The video introduces and explains the S321 FM/PM oscillator module.
https://youtu.be/RvYGUoalGE0

1 hour and 40 minutes long, more than 39 hours of production time, 54 graphs and pics, 69 short clips, and here is the

Timeline:
0:00:00          Introduction
0:00:33          Basic Terms and Principles of FM/PM
0:01:15               FM versus PM
0:04:00               Exponential versus Linear
0:06:23          The GUI (FrontPanel)
0:08:33               Pitch Range and Tuning
0:12:16               The Matrix
0:23:30          Algorithms
0:38:04          Feedback Loops
0:39:53          A Kind of System of FM Patches
0:40:10               Creating SAW Waves
0:42:20               Creating Square Waves
0:43:30               Creating Triangle Waves
0:46:38               Leaving the Field of Pure Sine Wave Modulation
0:50:04          Certain C : M Relations
0:54:30          Real FM (at last)
0:59:35          Comparing PM, Linear FM and Exponential FM
1:15:32          Modulating the Strength of FM and PM
1:27:00          Patching Complex Sounds: Slap Bass
1:33:03          Patching Somplex Sounds: Harpsichord plus Bass
1:34:50          From the Montains of Madness (sorry, Mr. Lovecraft)
1:36:18          Some Words at the End
1:39:04          The End

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2 Reply by rolf kasten

(3 replies, posted in Audio Production)

“Softube Modular the Tutorials part 12: the Buchla 259e unit” is available now:

https://youtu.be/fNMA_91xRxQ

2 hours and 40 minutes (and 54 seconds :-) ) full of explanations, demonstrations and experiments. Probably the most comprehensive guide to this twisted, crazy and complex west coast module you will find on the web (so far, 3 March 2018).


Content and Timeline:
0:00:00     Introduction
0:00:40     Buchla and Moog, West and East
0:01:22     Are They Crazy In California?
0:02:10     Basic Structure
0:03:33     The Principal Oscillator
0:03:38          Frequencies and Pitch
0:04:23          FM and CV Modulation, Similarities and Differences
0:14:08          MIDI
0:26:30          Green and Red Wave Shapes
0:28:30          Morphing Wave Shapes
0:29:39          Warping Waves
0:31:00          Modulating Morph and Warp
0:42:08          The Wave Shapes In Detail
1:24:35          The Waves a, b and c or: “How to Drink the Attic”
1:28:20          The Memory Skew Mode
1:50:05     The Modulation Oscillator
1:50:54          Modulation Shapes and Frequencies
1:55:25          The Pitch Track Mode
2:05:00          Modulating the Modulations
2:15:52          The Modulation Types
2:17:27          The Modulation Index
2:19:45          Softsync
2:26:45          Hardsync
2:29:34          MIDI Sync
2:31:23          AC Coupled Outputs and DC Coupled Outputs
2:34:55     Buchla 259e, The Hardware and the Software: Differences
2:37:25     Some Words at the End
2:40:54     The End

Enjoy your day!
Rolf

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3 Reply by rolf kasten

(4 replies, posted in Audio Production)

My last “modular” video in 2017 is out now, SoloStuff´s Solorack part 4, talking about three of the oscillators.

https://youtu.be/-pXcD0D6V08

It´s about saw, supersaw and hypersaw, about linear frequency modulation, about exponential sine wave FM, about noise and “Radio”, about Karplus-Strong and about a mysterious patch.

Timeline:
00:00     Introduction
01:18     Some Questions concerning Video 3
05:43     The S304, An Overview
07:23     Phase Shifts
08:48     From Detune to Hypersaw
23:11     Linear Through Zero FM
33:00     The S302 Dual Sub/Sine
36:24     Phase, Phase, Phase
38:44     FM like in 1984
47:13     Noise, Noise, Noise
50:35     Is Karplus Still Strong?
              (Sorry for the bad joke!)
53:09     A Patch to puzzle about
53:47     Some Words at the End
55:06     The End

I´ll be working on my album for the next 6 weeks. So, please don´t expect my next video before the end of January 2018. I wish you all a merry Chrismas and a happy New Year.
Enjoy your life!
Rolf

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4 Reply by rolf kasten

(2 replies, posted in Audio Production)

Part 3/100 of Grandpa Soundstone travelling through the world of computers, coding and sound is online.

https://youtu.be/i2AsurwSAUo

After roaming through the operating system and some applications he manages to squeeze the first sounds out of the Raspberry Pi. First analogue then HDMI. Then – at the end – Grandpa gives us a kind of forecast of what ways he´s going to take, which roads he´s going to go into coding sound and building sound machines like synths, sequencers or simply controllers.
Well, may I call this series: “watching somebody making 1 Million mistakes in 100 parts before getting great results”?
Have a good time!
Rolf

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5 Reply by rolf kasten

(2 replies, posted in Audio Production)

The second part of Grandpa Soundstone´s expedition to the realm of sound, computer and music is online:
https://youtu.be/N7bdCN3jDuY

In this part Grandpa Soundstone gets his Raspberry Pi to work (after making some mistakes). He hopes to be well prepared to start coding sound now. Let´s all hope with him and wish him “Good Luck, Grandpa Soundstone!” So, the next video – video 3/100 – will (hopefully) be about how to “make the Raspberry Pi sing”.

By the way: Isn´t that series (going to be) more interesting than one of those soap opera´s? Or shall I call it a “soap opera of sound” ? Or is it simply a documentation of the difficult and rocky way of an old man to building sound machines, the bumpy road to “enlightenment” (or may I say “ensonification” :-)? Anyway: Have a good time! Rolf

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6 Reply by rolf kasten

(4 replies, posted in Audio Production)

Introduction to modular synthesis: SoloRack Tutorial 3: The Oscillators Part 1 is online now:
https://youtu.be/Vaa3Jzt56kc

Please see the timeline below for further details.

Timeline and Content
00:00     Introduction
01:18     The SA 310 VCO
02:00     Pitch Range
02:24     1 Volt/Octave
03:19     Trigger, CV and Gate
04:38     “... and it´s this jump to the left ...”
09:07     The Waves
11:22     Analogue Exponential Frequency Modulation
18:35     Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
20:16     Duty Cycles
22:28     Phase Shifts
27:20     PWM and Oversampling
28:55     Hardsync
40:05     “Bend”
42:28     Half-Wave Rectifier (RA)
45:25     About Phase Shifts Again
49:47     PATCHING! PATCHING! PATCHING!
52:08     Some Words at the End
53:45     The End
Enjoy your life!
Rolf

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7 Topic by rolf kasten

(2 replies, posted in Audio Production)

Hello my friends!
The first of 100 (one hundred) parts about the entire realm of music, computers and sound is online now. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sound But Were Afraid to Ask.
Grandpa Soundstone Video 1, Raspberry Pi Part 1:

https://youtu.be/ypvSwTIVgVE

Let me tell you, what grandpa Soundstone has to say about this project:

“Hello,
I´m grandpa Soundstone and I´ve decided to learn something new. I´ve decided to learn coding sound, building MIDI controllers, building sequencers and even synthesizers and samplers, programming microchips and a lot more.

I want to know what´s going on under the hood of my VSTs, my DAWs, my hardware synths, my controllers and my computers. I want to understand this and I want to influence and master it yself, want to build, to change and to optimise the goings on, which make my speakers vibrate.

I´ve decided to learn everything about computers, that´s relevant for making music and sound and building equipment.

And – my friends – this is no show, no fake learning! I´ll really be learning myself in this series.
I will learn, I will let you watch me learning and getting experiences and I hope – and think – you will learn as well. I may coincidentially come across something I already know, know well enough to explain it to you. But mainly it´s going to be a “learn it yourself by doing it yourself”.

So – this series is going to be an adventure, a journey through hardware and software and sound and music and music production equipment and instruments and computer languages and physics of sound and and and...

It´s going to be a “learn it yourself by doing it yourself”. I´ve ordered a Raspberry Pi to start with.
I don´t now anything about it. I ordered it following the advice of a friend of mine.

And here it is.
It has just arrived.

Let me have a look, what I´ve got here.”

So far the words of grandpa Soundstone. For me there´s only one thing left to say:
Enjoy the journey! (And don´t forget to tell everybody about it.)
Rolf

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8 Reply by rolf kasten

(4 replies, posted in Audio Production)

The second part of my series of tutorials about SoloStuff´s modular softsynth “SoloRack” is online now:
https://youtu.be/UdJcsPAemNs

In this second part of the series I talk about the menus and the hidden functions of SoloRack, give some explanations about oversampling and aliasing and build up a famous patch step by step (please see the timeline for details).

The whole series is meant to give you not only a profound knowledge about the modular softsynth SoloRack, but also a remarkable amount of knowledge about modular synthesis and even about sound synthesis in general. It makes it easy to step into the matter, even if you are a complete beginner (You are a professional? Well, you may like the series nevertheless).

Timeline:
00:00     Introduction
00:19     The Preset Menu
01:58     ASpecial Group: Sequences
03:27     Managing Presets using the Windows Browser
05:46     SAVE, LOAD and Alternative Preset Libraries
07:40     The Preset Description and the Authorship
               (or: Albi Soundstone attacks Rolf Kasten)
11:40     Oversampling and Aliasing
22:30     About Cables and LEDs
24:38     Expanding and Reducing the Rack
25:25     Fine Tune
25:55     Cable Art
26:45     Copy and Paste Values
28:00     Understanding the Front Panels
33:05     PATCHING! PATCHING! PATCHING!
34:50     Building Up a Famous Patch Step by Step
42:45     Some Words at the End
45:56     The End

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9 Topic by rolf kasten

(4 replies, posted in Audio Production)

I´ve started a new series. And – again – it´s about modular synthesis. I thought SoloStuff´s modular softsynth “SoloRack” worth a whole series of tutorials – and concipated one. Here is the first part: Installation and Overview
https://youtu.be/mnQk2uvMW08

It´s a public part. Enjoy it! Rolf

Timeline
00:00     Introduction
01:15     Download and Installation
02:42     Four Versions of SoloRack
03:15     Loading a Module
03:45     Placing, Replacing and Deleting a Module
04:31     Module Information
04:51     “Always on” and CPU
07:12     Groups of Modules
14:50     Load and Save
15:48     My first Real Patch
24:38     Some Words at the End
Enjoy it!
Have a good time!
Rolf

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10 Topic by rolf kasten

(3 replies, posted in Audio Production)

The series is growing and growing: Part 11 of my series of Tutorials about the modules of Softube´s Modular is available now.
https://youtu.be/xVyj9nv4DNs

It´s all about Intellijel´s multifilter “Korgasmatron II”. 2 hours of explanations, examples, experiments and patches (well, only 1 hour 59 minutes and 32 seconds, to be precise). And like always: instead of a lot of  words, here is the
Timeline:
0:00:00     Introduction
0:00:35     The Family Tree of Korgasmatron II
0:01:40     The Overall Architecture and the GUI
0:02:16     Internal Signal Paths (A and B), Part 1
        (incl. Seriell Mode and Parallel Mode)
0:08:44     XFADE
0:12:56     Seriell Mode
0:16:15     XFADE Modulations
0:21:35     Cutoff Modulations
0:24:20     Internal Signal Paths (A and B), Part 2
                  (incl. FM2)
0:29:25     1V/OCT and Tuned Self-Resonance
0:34:03     Internal Signal Paths, Part 3
0:36:35     Audio-In, Gain and Clipping
0:43:07     The 2 Lowpass Filters
0:48:00     Q and Q-drive
0:53:10     Distortion and Self-Resonance
0:54:10     Miss Marple and the Case of the Mysterious Partials
1:03:33     The Bandpass Filter
1:17:04     The Highpass Filter
1:22:13     The Bandreject Filter
1:32:15     PATCHING! PATCHING! PATCHING!
1:32:30          Patch 1: “Zizzle-Grizzle”
1:40:27          Patch 2: Surfing the Ocean Waves of Partials
1:47:05          Patch 3: A Kind of Canon
1:52:10          Patch 4: A Selfmade Drum Machine
1:55:45     Some Words at the End
1:59:30     The End

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11 Topic by rolf kasten

(0 replies, posted in Audio Production)

Thank you for 7,407 minutes of watching my 17 tutorials about accSone´s granular sound engine CrusherX in the last 365 days. https://youtu.be/wyugqG5mPio
Enjoy your time!
Rolf

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12 Topic by rolf kasten

(0 replies, posted in Tutorials, Mods & How-To's)

Making a windscreen for my ZOOM H5 recorder. This first part of my new series of videos called “DIY Corner” shows how to easy make a cheap but very efficient alternative to expensive windshields. I call it: A (not completely serious) story, a construction manual and some tests (spectrum and sound). Enjoy it! Rolf

https://youtu.be/3Vb1NrHERiA

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13 Topic by rolf kasten

(0 replies, posted in Audio Production)

The first part of my series of tutorials about the VST Ommarunn by iraisynn attinom is online now.

https://youtu.be/86N8QUm9E7s

Ommarunn is a quite unconventional synth – but a powerful one. Ommarunn shines with its (nearly) uncountable number of possible modulations (nearly every parameter has its own set of modulating subparameters) – just to name one of its fascinating characteristics. It´s a terrible GUI covering a wonderful piece of software. And here is the timeline of the video.

Timeline:
00:00     Introduction
00:53     Initial Status, Waveforms and Generators I
02:04     Phase and Phase Cancellation
04:43     Waveforms II
08:30     Control Functions
10:02     Global Structure
11:27     Reset and Initialise
13:38     Parameters and the Structure of the Modulators
14:08     Designing Our First Own Sound
22:57     Tune, FM, PM, AM
27:30     Reset and Random
29:38     Some Words at the End

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14 Reply by rolf kasten

(1 replies, posted in Audio Production)

It´s done again! The “Rubicon” tutorial is available (part 10 of my series about Softube´s Modular). With about 95 hours of production time (included some night shifts) it´s got the longest and most comprehensive – so far – tutorial I´ve ever made: nearly 3 hours of explanations, experiments – and some jokes. And it´s not only the most comprehensive tutorial I have ever produces, it is – so far – also the most comprehensive tutorial about “Rubicon” on the Internet (disprove it, if you can :-))!

https://youtu.be/_irEK7YB1FU

Timeline
0:00:00     Introduction
0:01:38     The Front Panel: Ovverview and Groups
0:02:15     The Outputs: The Waveforms
0:03:10     The Inputs: Groups of Functionalities
0:04:38     Ranges of Frequencies
0:08:33     The Waveform Switches
0:08:44          Sine, Sigmoid and Double Sigmoid
0:12:30          Pulse, Centered and Edge Aligned, Merging Waves, PW, PWM
0:29:19     Pulse Width Modulation
0:32:17     Softsync (“Flip”)
0:33:48          Terminology
0:34:42          Relations of Frequencies, Master and Slave
0:40:00          Non-Integer Relations
0:41:47          Different Waveforms of the Slave
0:52:55          Different Classes of Spectra
1:16:00          Different Waveforms of the Master
1:18:48     Hardsync
1:20:11          Comparing Hardsync and Softsync
1:24:26          Master-Slave Frequency Relations with Different Kinds of Master-Waves
1:30:14          Rubicon as Master and Rubicon as Slave
1:33:10          The Magic of Zig-Zag
1:35:03          Rubicon-Square versus A-110-Square
1:43:34          SUB: Syncing to Death
1:44:58          Networks of Masters and Slaves
1:46:40     Exponential Frequency Modulation
1:47:05          Just for the Beginners: Some Explanations of Basic Terms
1:48:00               Frequency Modulation
1:49:43               Exponential Frequency Modulation
1:51:42               Linear Frequency Modulation
1:53:07               Through Zero Frequency Modulation
1:58:42               First Exponential Frequency Modulation with Rubicon
2:02:02          Attenuating the Strength of Modulation
2:03:44          Modulating the Modulation
2:07:49          A “Melody of Sounds” with MIDI-Notes as Modulators, Microtonal Scales,
                      Macrotonal Scales
2:10:25          Some Typical Littler Patches
2:15:07     Through Zero Frequency Modulation
2:15:25          SYMMETRY
2:20:40          INDEX
2:26:10          And again: SYMMETRY
2:28:17               Detour: The 20% Principle
2:29:40          SYMMETRY and “Negative” Frequencies
2:34:38          “A Singing Modulator” or “Rubicon Gets Rid of Its Voice”
2:46:58          Reflecting Partials and Splitting Partials
2:48:30     Future Prospects
2:51:40     Some Words at the End
The End at 2:52:38

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15 Topic by rolf kasten

(1 replies, posted in Audio Production)

I´ve started working on Tutorial 10 about Softube´s Modular. This time I´m going to talk about the module Intellijel “Rubicon”. It´s a prety complex beast and the tutorial will probably be the longest one I´ve ever produced (looks like something about two and a half hour, perhaps even up to three hours). I suppose it´s going to be available at the end of July. For those, who have missed the beginning: Tutorials 1 to 9 start here https://youtu.be/0wEKRCOPTFI

Have a great day and a good time!
Rolf

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16 Topic by rolf kasten

(0 replies, posted in Audio Production)

“The Word is Sound” part 2 is on: “Reverb and Reverb Tails”
https://youtu.be/wHKW0l0LORo

Just an appetizer of how to creatively use reverb to get new and individual sounds for your projects. Whether using the early reflections, the middle part of the tail of the reverb or its far end, whether doing some volume sculpturing or a deep level granular surgery or just some easy layering: good sounds are meant to get into your projects.

Have a great day and a good time!
Rolf

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