Wondering what patch creation means? I’m still wondering, as in – why we do it, what we would want to achieve with it. Where earlier on, we wanted to emulate real world instruments, using concepts such as ‘physical modeling’. Whereas now, we seek to emulate vintage analog electronic instruments or make new, unique, musical sounds that would have been difficult to create with the practical restrictions of early analog equipment. Thus, we welcome sound synthesis in the digital domain with renewed enthusiam.
It involves taking a signal from an Oscillator which is a tone generator and patching it via signal cables to other signal manipulation pieces of electronic hardware.
With the availability and affordability of the modern software sound synthesizer its a whole lot easier to experiment with sound creation these days.
Some have the ability to manipulate your recorded sound samples.
So here I am in front of the computer again. Combining waveforms, running them through filters and envelopes. Very nice, I don’t have to be limited to the usual sine or saw waves. They have lots of digitally perfect and modified or distorted wave forms to work with.
I am working with the recently released Cakewalk Z3TA+2.1 and some waveforms from the FiSound Dark n Dirty 2.0 library release. I have to say that the filters in Z3TA+2 are crisp (comes with a resonance Boost that cuts) and the ability to adjust the phase of the Oscillators is appreciated.
These few weeks, I’ve been working on sounds that would work nicely, supporting vocals. I had a patch with isolated harmonics through a Formant filter all stacked on top of vintage saw and square wave forms. Then there is this other one that was based on the what I heard from the Omnisphere softsynth, basically plastering Oscillators an octave below and above, assigning Portamento effect to the lower pitched Oscillator.
Anyway, I’m still a fan of the JP strings sound, and stuff I heard on from Alphaville back then. Still laugh thinking about the 80s when I was in school and my band members were saying how yucky the Juno 106 sounded. Now bring an analog synth to a recording studio and even a rock band would want to track it into the mix. Suddenly, wow! That recording has a new dimension!
Back to the Z3TA, I must say that the Effects section is cool. I don’t really use the Distortion, but find the Chorus – Phaser – Flange, Delay and Reverb effects a plus for making a bigger sound.
I’ll post some about Camel Audio’s Alchemy sample manipulation soft synth, if I get the chance to experiment with it. Very powerful features there.
Have fun.
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