posted 05 October 2000 01:17            

jarrepad.kym

The soundfile has 16 MIDI voices enabled, and that will load an 8-DSP Capy about 50% on each DSP. Back off on the number of voices to reduce the load.

Each voice starts with 3 sawtooth oscillators, one at the fundamental, and two detuned oscs at the first subharmonic. These are each controlled by one ADSR for amplitude modulation. The ADSR uses optional velocity control (toggle from the control panel).

These oscs are mixed and sent through a user controllable LPF where keyboard tracking, nominal filter cutoff, velocity sensitivity, and filter ADSR sensitivity (-1x to 10x) are controllable from the control panel.

At this point a MidiVoice module enables N of these filtered osc banks, and all voices are combined and sent through a pair of phasers set to 536+/-230 Hz and swept by an LFO of controllable amplitude. The phase swept signal is recombined with the main signal.

At this point the combined signal is sent through a pair of L-R chorusing delays driven by a quadrature LFO. The depth of chorus and LFO rate are user controllable from the panel. The two channels of chorus are recombined with the main signal in the final mixer.

A couple of digital readouts (dBFS) track the peak absolute amplitudes of the signal coming from the combined MidiVoices that feeds the phasers, and the signal feeding the chorusers. A level control on the MidiVoice allows you to tune the basic oscillator bank so that at max voices, you avoid overloading the subsequent filter chains.

A bunch of presets are available in the control panel. "Jarre" is the default preset. A short attack version is "Jarre 4".

Attached is a soundfile containing the Jarre pad, the PeakReadout sub-sound, and the QuadratureLFO. Also included is the Cosine waveform used by the QuadLFO. The Sine waveform is already in the Kyma waveforms folder.

Cheers!

posted 23 October 2000 21:36            

I tried out your Jarred Pad today, came up with some new presets and composed a piece of music with it. Thanks.

Obviously, you have studied synth design. Do you have a good reference source that is not strickly academic. I have not had a chance to request an inter-library loan for the books that you mentioned to see if they are of interest to me. By the way, what does Jarre refer to?

Sincerely,

posted 24 October 2000 07:14            

Thanks for enjoying my patch! Jarre refers to the sounds of the genre produced by Jean Michel Jarre (the famous synthesist!).

My Jarre patch was simply an experiment to explore the boundaries of the Kyma. The question I asked was, "can Kyma/Capy do conventional synth as well as all the other goodies?" My Jarre patch was a simple answer to that question. In fact Kyma/Capy can indeed do conventional synth...

It's so nice of you to say I know something about synths... After all these years I feel like I am still just learning the ropes!

As for books on synth design/programming -- in addition to the ones cited in my previous list that you mentioned, you should also get hold of the "Wizoo Guide to the Nord Modular" from www.wizoo.com. You should also get a Nord Modular -- no better way to learn conventional synth techniques!

Secondly, if you are mathematically inclined, (and I mean heavily!!) then you should definitely get a copy of "Discrete-Time Signal Processing" by Oppenheim and Schafer, Prentice Hall, 1989. This is the "bible" of signal processing.

Beyond all that and my other recommendations, I just try to keep my ear to the ground and learn from every source I can get my hands on -- the Web, magazines like Keyboard and Electronic Musician, the Computer Music Journal, Recording, ...

And finally, just experiment!! Got a wild idea? Then no better platform than a Kyma/Capy to try it on!!

Hope this helps!

Cheers, from Tucson,

posted 24 October 2000 21:08            

jarrepad2.kym

Well just to show that I am still learning (a lot!), I finally figured out how to pull the trigger without looking down the barrel at the same time!

Attached is a corrected JarrePad sound along with a new class of sound called a ResonantLPF. This JarrePad is what it should have sounded like in the first place. The ResonantLPF is a conventional synthesizer low-pass filter with controllable resonance at the filter cutoff frequency.

You can control the amount of resonance, and its bandwidth. Its bandwidth is measured in units of 10 Hz. The resonance level simply crossfades between a standard LPF and a single channel of a pair of formant filters. Crossfading keeps the output amplitude under control.

Enjoy,