Exerpt from thread so far:
"Aiken: I'm loving rapture's sounds and want to start programming it, but I'm at a loss. I can twiddle knobs with the best of them, but is there any kind of zero-to-master tutorial book/program/etc? I'm willing to spend the time, but there's got to be a better way than trial and error.
Frank Pro Sounds: Buy Simon Cann's "Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User" book.
Aiken: Awesome -- thanks for the speedy responses! I have it arriving tomorrow.
Aiken: Yep. That book rocked. I can now say that I mostly understand Rapture. Wow. It's pretty easy to kill hours and hours with various bleeps and bloops, though.
Nick P: So you learned it inside and out in one day? Pretty impressive, LOL.
Aiken: Hey, it's not like it was my first synth. It's an awesome instrument, but it's not conceptually all that different from the Juno 106 that I learned on. Most of the work is in figuring out what options and routing are available, and how to get the UI to do 'em. Now, writing good sounds will take a while longer, but for sheer understanding of what Rapture can do and signal flow, surely it shouldn't take *more* than a day!
Nick P: Sorry, not buying it. I've been around since the thing was released and I've seen B Rock spend many hours probing its inner depths. It's a lot deeper than a one-day synth. And I own a Juno 106 and learned on a Prophet 5. If you're talking about basic sound editing, yes. But when you get into all of the modulation possibilities and using the step gens, I think it might take more than a day or two. Not trying to diss you or anything. Have fun with it. When you're ready to go deeper, check out B Rock's tutorials and patches.
Aiken: I think you're taking offense on false pretenses, Nick P. I'm not claiming to have "mastered" Rapture, and I have no doubt that my sounds will take years to mature. It's an incredibly powerful synth. All I'm saying is that I ran through what Cann's book offered and feel like I have a grip on Rapture's capabilities. Surely step generators aren't that hard to understand? Likewise with the envelops, DSP routing, etc? That stuff may be difficult to use well, and producing good sounds is an entirely different thing from understanding how a synth works, but FWIW, yeah, it isn't that hard to understand how Rapture works. Sorry if that soudns snotty; I'm just surprised that anyone would think it would take more than a day of work to get it. And, hey, it's possible that Rapture has more advanced features that aren't documented in Cann's otherwise very good book. So far, though, the book seems pretty complete and the synth seems pretty understandable.
Nick P: LOL. Right, then. Let us know when your Rapture programming book is coming out. I'm sure BRock, Rene, Brandon, and some of the others will be able to learn lots from your fast-track methods of mastering this obviously unsophisticated synth.
Aiken: Ah, I get it. You're one of those people who puts words in other peoples' mouths so you have justification to be angry and condescending. Cool enough. Hope you find peace at some point. Until then, into the ignore bin with you.
Nick P: And likewise with your pretentious ‘tude, dude. I've been around here long enough to see how long it takes serious users to master this technology, and I can assure you it's more than "a day", LOL."
Selected quotes from Aiken:
1) "Awesome -- thanks for the speedy responses! I have it [the book] arriving tomorrow. Yep. That book rocked. I can now say that I mostly understand Rapture."
2) "...it's not conceptually all that different from the Juno 106"
3) "...but for sheer understanding of what Rapture can do and signal flow, surely it shouldn't take *more* than a day!"
4) "...Surely step generators aren't that hard to understand? Likewise with the envelops, DSP routing, etc? That stuff may be difficult to use well, and producing good sounds is an entirely different thing from understanding how a synth works, but FWIW, yeah, it isn't that hard to understand how Rapture works."
5) "I'm just surprised that anyone would think it would take more than a day of work to get it."
Why doesn't this user present us with a pallette of 20 or 30 of his best Rapture sounds. Let's see how they stand up to B Rock's work. Then we can see just how well he knows Rapture. To say that Rapture is anything like a Juno-106 (of which I am looking at a real one as we speak) is just ignorant.
post edited by Nick P - 2007/06/24 23:35:43