My Dropbox public links have been suspended due to having exceeded my public bandwidth. Bah.
Piccies will be back soon-ish.
EDIT: Fixed now. Phew 😛
NoisyLittleBugger
There are 158 posts filed in NoisyLittleBugger (this is page 10 of 32).
Interactive Frequency Chart
Interactive Frequency Chart – Independent Recording Network.
Very handy EQ reference.
Ensoniq DP/Pro FX unit
I just scored a cheap DP/Pro. Only the battery was dead and that was easily replaced.
The DP/2 and DP/4 boxes always draw favourable comments for their ‘quality grunge’. The DP Pro is the less talked-about, but it uses the later generation ESP2 chips (24bit). I have no reference for comparison but I am surprised at how noise-less this box is. Great!
Initial run through the factory presets revealed the best digital reverbs I’ve yet heard, and they are extremely tweakable. This will be a slow-burne – it will tale a while to know this box, but I already know that it will pay dividends. I see lots of synthesis potential.
Manual can be found here.
The factory battery was soldered in place but easy to get at. Emboldened by my first soldering forays, I managed to remove the factory battery quite easily by heating the legs and pulling. I replaced it with a battery holder – just by re-heating the existing solder joints and pushing it in. Popped-in the battery and voila – a perfectly functioning unit.
The exact battery type is BR2330, available at Farnell, but you will probably get away with using any similar 3v coin battery (at your own risk though!).
Tempest Recipes: Hi-Hats, Shakers, Zaps
So, I was diverted away from drum syntheses and a fun time was had. But now it’s time to get back to kit basics, with at look at creating Hihats, shakers, maracas, cabasa and their ilk – important drivers of any rhythm.
It’s no big secret that noise is the major component of interest. There are no definable harmonics here – all frequencies are represented. We don’t create a tone, but rather we sculpt this block of frequencies with the filters to just those we want at any particular time.
Tempest Recipes: 1-voice chords
On the Tempest, as with any decent synthesizer, we can create 1-note – and thus 1-voice – chords by tuning our oscillators to the correct intervals. We can mix-and-match between these chord types as you play, and record them on-the-fly. In 16 tunings mode, notes pressed will play the relevant root chord.
This time I’m providing a template patch. (Download via right-click). The sysex is a Beat because at the moment the Slider FX configuration is not saved for individual sounds. The Beat has a Kick on Pad1 and the Chord stab patch is on Pad 16. Pad 16 is already set-up to output the following chords using the FX sliders:
minor (0,3,7) – Default – slider 1@0, Slider 2 centered.
minor 7th (0, 3, 7, 10) – Slider 1 affecting Osc1/2 mix, miniumum=100/0.
minor 6th (0,3,7,9) – Slider 1@100, Slider 2 affecting Osc2 pitch @ minimum (all the way down).
min/maj 7th (0,3,7,11) – Slider1@100, Slider 2 @ maximum.