Analogue-sequencer

Paul Nagle wrote:

> My System 100 has an A440 signal too but I prefer to tune it against 
> my digital synths.
> Whichever note you pick,  all you need to know is which note it is, 
> surely?
>
This is true, but I'm using my P3 with the 100M exclusively so it's 
hard to get a reliable C.  I have to walk across the room and hit C on 
another synth.  It's not a really big deal to me but I would think that 
if the software is going to be updated anyways this could be corrected 
unless someone is really against an A tuning.

I guess my point was just that everything else is standardized to A 
tunings, maybe the P3 should adhere to this standard.

One of the best things I have ever bought for my music was a Korg DT-1. 
Its my oldest piece of music kit I have.

The DT-1 is a chromatic digital tuner and when I had a lot of analogue 
synths it was permanently fixed to an aux output on mixing desk. Always 
to hand, and always very handy. I would never need to use beat frequency 
methods to tune synths, because using the tuner was and is just easier.

These days its sits on top of the modular, and can be plugged into any 
spare VCO output.

Having the P3 give out a note on/off command is jolly handy. I probably 
would prefer an A, but with a chromatic tuner any note is perfectly fine.

Tony

www.oakleysound.com

>>chromatic digital tuner.... permanently fixed to an aux output on 
mixing desk.<<

I've never found a tuner I really got on with- what's the resolution 
like on this korg? this is the 1U rackmount with the giant swinging 
display I've seen in so many bass-rigs over the years, I think. 

I tried the same sort of thing with the tuner in my boss se-70 while 
resampling some noises a few years ago & it actually made things 
worse than the old method which was to keep a stratocaster in the 
room. (e.g. does that note sound alright with /this/ chord, which it 
should go with? & what about /this/ chord..? overtones....)

if I can elaborate, without getting too mathy....

being a mellotron user has really opened my eyes to a whole 
mysterious world of micro-tuning, temperament, intonation, making the 
harmonic series work for you in the sense that the tuning is 
optimised for the selection of notes involved in the piece...

(rambles on for half-an-hour about microtuning & roger luther's 
modular moog, dave smith.... green hangover... sees sense, deletes 
the lot) 

ah.... so what I really want, I suppose, is to be able to send a 
command to my proteus modules every time I change part (key, in fact, 
round here). this would alter one of several things, depending what's 
actually do-able with the proteus midi implementation: 
master tuning or "transpose" (chromatic, of course, while the p3 
takes care of the actual notes played in the new range by changing 
scale at the same time). 
or possibly, globally, the master tuning table for the whole box. I 
don't think it can do this...

why don't I just use the part xpose? because there will be other 
things passing through the p3 & being F'd-T-S; I need them to do a 
corresponding /chromatic/ shift aswell, & part xpose won't shift 
incoming notes.
colin, how does the root note of a scale affect the processing of 
note numbers? 
what I'd /like/ it to do is offset all the midi note numbers passing 
through FTS processing. so if you start off in Cmaj & then change to 
a part using Dmin, all the notes that would've been C should now be 
D, while all the notes that aren't C also get moved up two semitones 
& then nudged again so that they conform to the new scale. this would 
work on all notes leaving the p3, wherever they came from, except 
where they are set to non-xpose.
this would make it possible to play any sequence of midi notes 
through the p3 & transpose them into any other key, by changing the 
FTS root & scale together (i.e. a full key change).

any thoughts?

d.

> why don't I just use the part xpose? because there will be other 
> things passing through the p3 & being F'd-T-S; I need them to do a 
> corresponding /chromatic/ shift aswell, & part xpose won't shift 
> incoming notes.

You know I quite often get annoyed by this - if I'm recording into a part
that is transposed, the right notes don't pass through so you don't hear
what the pattern is going to sound like until the next time round.
Maybe it would be more logical for the notes passed through to be transposed
by the current PXPos setting.

> what I'd /like/ it to do is offset all the midi note numbers passing 
> through FTS processing. so if you start off in Cmaj & then change to 
> a part using Dmin, all the notes that would've been C should now be 
> D, while all the notes that aren't C also get moved up two semitones 
> & then nudged again so that they conform to the new scale. this would 
> work on all notes leaving the p3, wherever they came from, except 
> where they are set to non-xpose.
> this would make it possible to play any sequence of midi notes 
> through the p3 & transpose them into any other key, by changing the 
> FTS root & scale together (i.e. a full key change).
> 
> any thoughts?

There's a problem with part transpose as it stands in that it is applied
POST-FTS.
To cut a long story short, it should be selectable, and probably default to
pre-FTS.
If that were the case, I think you'd get the behaviour you want by using
part transpose.
I'll add pre/post selection, and PXPos to thru notes, and post a beta with
it tonight for experimentation.

Best regards,
Colin Fraser
Sequentix Music Systems Ltd
http://www.sequentix.com

>>The reason I bought it was mainly for tuning a real analogue 
sequencer I built to drive my modified Moog Rogue. I sold the Rogue 
for 40 quid in 1989 when I got my D-50. [oh dear...]<<

indeed. the rogue is a sleeper, moog-wise, because of the apparently-
cheap build, the missing hardware, switch functions combined & so on. 
back in 1995 or 1996, I knew a band called Tiger, who used a rogue 
exclusively for basslines. I modified the little beast to run osc2 an 
octave lower... I think I did some other stuff to it... put a proper 
mains socket & transformer in it (& this led to me taking my own 
rogue all the way to nijmegen without it's wall-wart because I 
thought I'd rememered to do mine aswell). so Tiger's rogue found 
itself, with their cult-success, being responsible for all manner of 
structural damage.
I think I paid £120 for mine, & £69 for the mg-1.
but I digress.
one of my favourite things is a step sequencer driving an analogue 
synth /without any quantisation/. I know, after the posts about key 
changing & microtuning, this is probably a bit counter-intuitive. but 
there's a connection. for instance, I write "analogue synth" patches 
for my emu boxes, using not just the user tuning tables but also 
quite a lot of random pitch modulation & note-number>pitch skewing. I 
am very attached to the sound of the yamaha cs30's in-built step 
sequencer, or the roland 104 driving pretty much anything. these 
things are like screwdrivers next to the precision lathe of the p3.

I'm probably in some sort of denial if I content that this has 
nothing to do with a sentimental attachment to the first published 
rumblings of the TD-owned 960s on "phaedra". probably.

part xpose on through-notes? that ought to do it. I think I might 
stop after this build.... :-)

d.

--- In analogue-sequencer@yahoogroups.com, "ferrograph632" 
<ferrograph@a...> wrote:
>
> but I digress.
> one of my favourite things is a step sequencer driving an analogue 
> synth /without any quantisation/. I know, after the posts about key 
> changing & microtuning, this is probably a bit counter-intuitive.
> but there's a connection. for instance, I write "analogue synth" 
> patches for my emu boxes, using not just the user tuning tables 
> but also quite a lot of random pitch modulation & note-number
> pitch skewing. I 
> am very attached to the sound of the yamaha cs30's in-built step 
> sequencer, or the roland 104 driving pretty much anything. these 
> things are like screwdrivers next to the precision lathe of the p3.
> 
>

Hang on a bit longer - your ARP sequencer is being torn apart and 
cleaned up as we speak...

I use a Peterson VS-1 (virtual strobe) tuner when I working on gear 
repairs and calibration.  Seeing the strobes give me a much quicker 
and more precise view of what's going on (versus the Boss TU-12H 
which I used before).

I hated paying real money for "just a tuner", but it's like all my 
other tools - the right tool makes the job much easier and quicker 
and quality tools last and give good results.

Tuning osc's in the same synth, I'll typically use an oscilloscope 
and do the lissajou pattern thing.

> I've never found a tuner I really got on with- what's the resolution 
> like on this korg?

Its has a row of little surface mount LEDs to replicate meter movement. 
Each little LED represents 2 cents. Its quite easy to find the centre 
position even though in theory that central LED covers +/-1 cents.

> this is the 1U rackmount with the giant swinging 
> display I've seen in so many bass-rigs over the years, I think.

No, thats the really expensive one. I think they call that the DT-1 Pro. 
As an eighteen year old cheapskate I bought the cheapest one I could 
find that had the full chromatic scale on it. It fits in your pocket and 
is exactly the same size as a compact cassette. It even fits in your 
cassette drawers.

Here's a wee pic of it:

http://guitargeek.com/gearview/1155/

I bet it has exactly the same electronics in it as the more expensive 
rack one. :-)

The reason I bought it was mainly for tuning a real analogue sequencer I 
built to drive my modified Moog Rogue. I sold the Rogue for 40 quid in 
1989 when I got my D-50. [oh dear...]

Tony

> part xpose on through-notes? that ought to do it. I think I might 
> stop after this build.... :-)

It's a bit tricky.
Soft-thru doesn't track the status of any held notes.
If you change part xpose while through notes are held they get left hanging.
There is a software solution to this, but it might be a little unwieldy...

The choice of pre- or post-FTS part xpose works nicely though.
Up until now, if you set FTS to C major, a pattern of a C major arpeggio
PXPos'd up by 4 semitones to an E root would still be a major arpeggio,
since the part xpose was happening after the force-to-scale.
With pre-FTS PXPos enabled, the arpeggio becomes minor, as it would be in C
major.
There are uses for both modes. A lot of the 'chord memory' type effects I
like need post-FTS PXP.
I'll post a beta with this stuff once I sort out the hanging note problem.

Best regards,
Colin Fraser
Sequentix Music Systems Ltd
http://www.sequentix.com