The Synthesizer Thread: Show Us Your Rig And Your Drones, Leads and Pads

nightlight

Roadie
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I'm a big fan of electronic music acts like Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy, so much so that I used to have some very large synthesizer rigs that were so much fun.

Take this track for example. Conventional wisdom would tell you that you'd either have to have multiple musicians, or record in layers in order to achieve this sound.






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The merits of the track notwithstanding, this is all played using just a single guitar with a Fishman Triple Play in a single take. If memory serves me correct, it was just my pedalboard rig with an Access Virus TI Snow, a Waldorf Blofeld and a Yamaha Motif XS rack.

In these days of live music losing out to DJs, I'm always looking for ways to compete. In addition, smaller bands mean more take home pay, which everyone needs to consider if they want to make a living off music.

I finally retired and sold most of the rig because it was too unwieldy. Can you imagine lugging those two boards on public transport in India without a car? Of course, I was in Singapore at the time, but still.

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On top of it all, while the Fishman is a great tool for screwing around with synths, there is no way I'd use that live. There is just way too much latency to be in sync with other musicians. And there are tonnes of issues when it comes to all kinds of screwed up notes and sounds, which would just make the whole thing an embarrassment to play on stage.

Tried to keep going with just a laptop-based rig, but what I hate about the whole thing is that it's not a really tactile experience. You just have virtual everything, and it really kills the feeling of spontaneous creation. That's just my view.

Anyhow. it got to a point where I was getting really bugged with my laptop and so I bought a synth and now back down the rabbit hole I go. In particular, one of the tools that I am bringing to Synth Adventure 2.0 is a Misa Digital Quadwave.



It's kind of like one of those toys where you just press a button and it makes a sound. Very plastic feel, and uncomfortable to play.

That said, there's zero latency, and that's what I like about it. This was just an early experiment with two sounds layered on a Waldorf Iridium Core.

While I also have a souped up laptop, brought some new stuff to the game, but haven't really figured out how to patch stuff or anything.


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All about the music at the end of the day, I look forward to seeing everyone's setup and their sounds. I'll leave you with a few more interesting sounds I created:



 
Fancy running into you again Brother AJ.

I mean, who'd've thunk it? :D


Sister site, I guess?

Wicked stuff (and setups).

I'd like to have a kinda synth-ish guitar setup myself, still considering whether I should slap something together one day. But it'd likely only be for home usage.


I think the coolest thing is if you play keys. Two hands making sounds is better than one fretting and the other picking.

A Chapman stick also really intrigues me, but I don't have the chops. Can barely keep track of what I'm doing with my fretting hand as it is.

Whatever route you choose, I still think that a laptop-based rig is the best way to start, since it doesn't require as much investment as a hardware-based one.

Also, there are controllers that you can hook up which will give you control over the LFOS and other parameters on a soft synth. But once you start getting more of that stuff, the rig size will grow.

Hardware is a much more fun way to create sounds though and just experiment. You don't have to deal with as much latency as well.
 
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