PSYN-tology 5 [Portamento Pad]
Time to take a good patch and really transform it's character with a minimum amount of moves. Prepare the Portamento Pad patch from the PSYN presets provided by the P5 programmers (then say that three times very quickly).
The Portamento Pad uses only one Sawtooth wave to generate it's sounds. It's single Lowpass filter is once again the defacto amplitude envelope, and the real EG A has a guitar-like fast Attack, moderate Decay, and long Release, though not as long or natural of a release phase. EG 1, controlling the CF of the filter, builds tension with similar settings, replacing the EG A Attack with 5 sec. slow one. Be aware that the Decay/Slope shape has also changed to Fast here.
Of course, the namesake sound comes from the Portamento section. Around a five second Port Time and a style choice of FFIX comprise the variables. So what's FFIX? Fingered, Fixed Time. Hitting F1 while PSYN is active in P5 explains these options very well, but what's important here is that you can control it's effect with your playing style. Legato playing switches on the portamento effect, while staccato notes pass uneffected. A little later, we'll butcher this patch to illustrate this more clearly, and completely alter the feel in the process. In the meantime ...
Hold a single note and follow it shortly with another held note. The first remains at pitch, and the second bends down (or up) until resolving at it's center; all while the filter delivers a frequency-dependent 'cresendo'. Fingering chords with this patch instead has a cool and somewhat unpredictable flavor to it. Although I'm not quite sure, I believe that by sensing slightly different timings per finger (due to human frailty), the portamento direction changes with each chord, even repeated ones. This is somewhat unsettling at first, until you realize this is a goldmine of 'happy accidents'. By alternating your playing techniques, and even by unintentional 'attack' differences, you can open up a world of possibilities, like finding some notes ascending and other decending in pitch at the same time.
OK, it's time to beat this patch up. The first move will be to drop that Port Time down to 200 ms. Set the EG 1 (the one controlling the filter) Attack portion to a fast (around 10ms.) setting. We're now at a modern synth piano-with-sustain-pedal type of sound. We'll tighten this up now. Drop the Detune to a reasonable 20%, and we'll keep the Unison on.
Add the second filter to the mix and Link the two together, so that altering a control in one filter causes a corresponding change in the other. Bump the Resonance in both to past halfway, between, say, 18 and 28 dB, the Cutoffs to about halfway, reset the Keys knobs, and drop the Velocity controls there to about -30%. Play a mix of staccato and legato notes and chords, like an old Elton John riff or similar. Only when you hold two notes simultaneously do you get a pitch bend type of glide. And it's controllable. Now to prove that Polyphony can also be a performance effect, drop the Polyphony count to three. See how the voice-stealing actually cleans up the long Release Times of the filter and EG A?
Let's get crazy and add a second oscillator, Osc 2. Reset the Fine control, leave the Saw wave, but raise the octave to +3. Subtlety be damned; we'll max ot the EG and LFO knobs under Mod Sens and the Oscillator Level knob.
Now go to the EG section and enable EG 2. Set the Delay, Attack and Decay to about 3000 ms. and the Sustain to 60%; these 4 sliders should all be a bit past half of the way up. Max out the Slope Release and Amount controls. Set the destination in the Modulation section to Lev-02 and the Depth to 100%. If you sustain a note, you'll hear a feed-back sound fade in 3 octaves up. Nice, and triggerable.
For the icing on the cake(walk), enable LFO 1 and set the Delay to half a second, the Depth to a few percent (certainly way less than 10%), and the speed to around 700 hz. [In LFO 1 only!
Attention: Cakewalk.
Fix this bug, please. I'm trying to
work here, and I'm giving out misleading information.) Set the Modulation destination to Pitch, and the Depth to 100%. Now we have a little 'whammy bar wiggle' on our feedback. Those of you with Aftertouch: don't hesitate to substitute some of that for modulation control. With a little practice, it can be both expressive and controlled.
This time around I didn't delve too much into the 'whys' of how things knit together. I thought this time we'd just bang one out. If I've left any questions unanswered, please let me know.
Now take a break now and play with the 'new' patch. Use a combination of legato, stabs, and some held notes to create a variety of performance sounds. And don't take my settings as gospel; some small tweaks can greatly customize this patch to your own liking. OK, I can't resist one last tweak: Try dropping all the Release Times on the three active EGs (1,2, & A) to zero. Knock the Polyphony down to Mono. Now the same playing techniques yield a radically different sound: more slurred and not unlike an analog monosynth (appropriately!). Add some Pitch Bend over an octave in random spots and really get freaky!
Enjoy the newly mutated "Portable Port Popper" patch.
Edit: One-handed spelling errors.
< Message edited by b rock -- 7/31/2004 8:14:16 PM >