Sound Vacation part 2

When most people take a vacation in the truest sense, it means much more than a simple absence from the job. The word "vacation" stems from "vacate," which means in Beckham speak "Get Out!"

Considering that I've been working only in Thor (and FM8 as a analysis tool), it's only fitting that I completely get out of sticking with that synthesizer and move on to something else. I knew NN-XT was a joy to use before. Spending all my time there reconstructing the Casio MT-205 is something like a sound safari. I'm thinking about all the techniques I simply ignored or laughed at and taking them much more seriously. So far I'm pleased with the results.

The great thing about getting out and exploring sound in new ways is the time spent coming up with new ideas for future work. For example, the work I'm doing on the Casiotone involves distilling the decay and sustain phases down to a single waveform. Why not take that a step further? Using Absynth, I could analyze any given sample and split it into 12 different waveforms. With Absynth's morph waves and double oscillators, I could easily make wavetable versions of these same instruments! I doubt I'd use all 12 possible waveforms--the job should be done with 4 waves at most. Another possibility is using Absynth's sample-playback to get just the attack portion of the sound and fill in the rest with re-synthesized waveforms.

There are other lovely possibilities one can take from this. Re-synthesized sounds can serve as templates for other sounds using waves from other sources. Most of my work on the Thor FM sounds will be applied towards new sounds using the same architecture. Perhaps I'll also try transferring those same Thor sounds to Absynth.

Yet another idea I've had related to sampling is to take 1- or 2-cycle waveforms created in Absynth (additive synthesis, most likely) and load those in a sampler such as EXS24, NN-XT, or the Akai. This is similar to what I'm doing with the Casiotone except my goal with Casiotone is to try to capture some of its native chorusing and vibrato. The possibilities and opportunities are great.

So while I am trying to clear my head somewhat, I'm also trying to keep it from exploding sometimes. The MT-205 side-project is going well so far. Perhaps next time I'll report a little more specifically on what I'm doing with it.