Posted by Eric on February 28, 2001 at 06:25:27:
In Reply to: Re: So we've put you through the changes... posted by Rod on February 22, 2001 at 21:23:17:
I've not done much sampling, no real-time sampling (if that's what you mean), but I do have a 4MB flash card and loaded some sound effects to use in some songs a cover band I was playing in was doing a while back, just a few things: Wolf howles, door creeking, thunder... ok I admit it, it was Michael Jackson's "Thriller". I must say, though, working on 80s rock cover tunes really taught me how to program mixes, controllers, and samples for real-time performence very well, it was one of my first times working with mixes, and one heck of a thing to orchestrate keyboards, horns, and effects on the QS to play similtaneously.
But for the most part, I'm using it as a composition tool these days, though I always set up the individual patches so that I can play things in real-time if I wanted to, because I expect to eventually do lots of my work on the QS in real-time.
Synths: QS8.1, my only one so far, but I'm hooked and am really eying that A6 right now, looks like a really interesting thing to work with. I used to have a DX-7 when I was in elementary school, but I was really too young to get into FM synthesis, so it lay untouched for years and I finally sold it.
Accessories: 4MB FlashROM Card, 512K SRAM Card, Volume type controller pedal set to Ctrl: 4 on Pedal 1, a home made foot switch (I took apart the crummy sustain pedal that comes with the QS and replaced the switch with a latching one) set to Ctrl: 80 on Pedal 2, Create 80W Amplifier (which I left back at Oberlin), old house stereo amp with kit cabinets (not sure what wattage actually, it's only temporary, but it works!)
Computer Hardware: AMD K6-2 400Mhz, Sound Blaster Live! Value (you guys are right, the A/D converter here stinks)
Software: CW Pro Audio 9.0, SoundForge 4.5, SoundBridge (the deffective one at the moment), Finale 2000 (I always write music here, save it to midi and transfer it to CWPA9), and tons of audio plugins including FX processors, autotuners, even a vocoder that I haven't experimented with yet.
My area of interest is, of course, composition, but since I'm really interested in 70s progressive rock, I'd really like to experiment with some old analog devices to use as leads and such, I always dig the old twangy sounds of Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman and Tony Banks, it just amaizes me how expressive many of the old analog leads are. In fact, when I experiment around with different lead sounds on my QS, I always find the analog sims to be the most interesting and expressive. Right now one of my favorites used to be the upper half of the patch called "Discotron", which I removed and made a whole patch dedicated to that sound, it's sort of an analog synth saxaphoneish patch, very much like something Tony Bank (old Genesis) used to use.
Sorry for my rambling, the details of sound just interests me so much and I can't get enough of it!
- Eric