Posted by Daniel Gardner on November 26, 1998 at 20:09:07:
In Reply to: Re: Synth Programming Help - WHO: Fooled Again posted by Keith Gardner on November 25, 1998 at 15:15:10:
: I'm not going to quote the previous messages in this thread... but since I'm here in this forum, I wanted to put my two cents' worth in on this item. About a book... I can't recommend one highly enough: "The Midi Files," by Rob Young, available from both amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com (or local bookstores). It was a total life-saver for me; my years of computer and music experience failed me when I put them together, until I read this book.
: As far as analog synthesizers are concerned, I would encourage you to listen to the Yamaha CS1X and AN1X. They do some really nice fat analog-like sounds, and even the controls are "recognizable" to someone familiar with the old analogs.
: - KG
Thanks to both Keith and Marcus for the follow ups. After several long nights I hit upon a sound that is a reasonable facsimile of the Who's - Don't get fooled again. It uses a combination of AMP and FILTER LFO's to get the tremelo and wah-wah effect of the song intro. (My guitar player plugged me into one of his effects pedals to get the same sound)
The newer synths I've looked at all have the same basic set of controls; Pitch, Filter, Amp LFO's and a standard set of effects. I was hoping that some entrepenurial musician had taken their new Korg or Alesis and compiled a recipe guide of how to mimic classic analog synth sounds using this standard signal processing technology. It still wouldn't be a perfect replication of analog synths but most 'rookie' synth players wouldn't care.
I'll check out this book that Keith recommended. I did buy the Practical MIDI Handbook by Penfold and was very disappointed. I'm not interested in how to send signals back and forth between systems; what I need is a signal processing guide for creating synth sounds with available signal processing nobs.
Anyway, the QS-7 is starting to make more sense and a couple more years of late night programming should put me in good shape to start contributing to the band without having to spend a fortune on a variety of boards.
Thanks for the feedback.
Dan