First off, I am ignorant of subtractive synthesis. I bought the Analog Keys because I wanted a powerful synth with a short keybed, but I am honestly just an idiot who is overly eager with money. So now that I have it, I have hooked it up to a Streichfett and I generally bliss out on string harmonies 4 nights a week while the four midi tracks on my Zaquencer play the analog voices.
So now that you know what kind of jerk you are dealing with, I’m interested in mixing an additional analog synth into what I am doing with my AK and Waldorf. Not so much interested in creamy analog warmth and/or Moog-ish sound, I am looking for something colder and more metallic.
My research initially drew me to become interested in Analogue Solutions’ Leipzig-S and the Nyborg-12. Those synths appear to be geared towards producing sounds that are along the lines of what Alan Wilder or Brendan Perry would utilize. But I was hoping for other ideas on synths that are suited towards this kind of thing.
The Evolver is a beast. You can get really grungy and industrial sounds with it. I would have kept mine if I didn’t have an assortment of other aggressive gear. It would be a good candidate for sequencing with the Zaquencer too.
Waldorf Pulse 2 is your friend, cold and tough and also very ambient many possiblities with the LFOs and envelopes, has great noise generator and also can do paraphonic
The Monomachine has virtual analogue, wavetable, and FM synthesis machines that you can use interchangeably across its six tracks. Obviously, it is not a true analogue synth, if that criterion is important to you.
I’m not married to analog at all. I was just impressed with the Leipzig and the Nyborg because they sound like Darkwave incarnate. But the Monomachine has a ton of options in one box.
Monomachine is weird, but it’s my kind of weird. It’s great for crazy metallic stuff, even harsh noise stuff (I’m using it in a noise show with the Evolver next week). With some of the FM+ machines and 3 LFOs, you can get some incredible sounds. Then you add in the FX tracks (once you figure out the routing, which can be easy or difficult) and you can really do some cool stuff like having stuttering reverb that blooms and disappears throughout the pattern, and add distortion to that reverb.
It doesn’t sound like a DX7 style FM machine. I’m sure it can go that way. But it excels at percussive alien metallic FM and I don’t know of anything else like it (at least, not that makes it so easy to dial in such sounds).
Here’s a short example (37 seconds) of a pattern that I’ll be using in that noise show next week. It’s 2 synth tracks (SID, FM-DYN) with a reverb fx track each, and the reverb (at least on one of them) has some of its own automations. I mute the SID track for a bit and hit pause on the sequencer a couple of times to let some effect and envelope trails play out. I’ve got another pattern I’m using that has an incredibly long tail such that when I pause the sequencer, it sounds like a huge sheet of metal being hit repeatedly and slowly fading out over a few minutes, with low metallic harmonics and a bit of crunchy distortion in the higher ranges.
That is stunning noise design. Thank-you for the preview of your set. It sounds like the effects package on that thing is expansive, and the FM is sick.
The reason I didn’t even consider it before is that it has no key bed. But now I’m considering trading in my AK for one of these.
Maybe you can find an old SFX-6! The original keyboard version of the Monomachine is a thing of strange industrial beauty. And it feels like there are some modes/options that were built for it. Joystick assignment is prominent in the ‘assign’ pages for the Kit; and there’s multi-trig mode which can do some combination of all six voices into a super-voice that requires a dedicated midi channel. I think the original SFX-6 had a button that could put the keyboard into ‘multi-trig’ mode.
It’s still usable without those things, but it can be a little rough to enter notes as there’s no traditional piano shape to the keypads. But it should work very easily with an external controller.
DSI Evolver hands down IMHO from that selection.
Though I’d take a Telemark Mk2 over the Nyborg myself - pretty sure Wilder does use one.
That said do you need a knobby interface or not ?
You could get great mileage out of either a Yamaha TG77 or EX5R for example.
I used the DSI Evolver all over the second half of this 3 part opus (it is a 21 minute long track) you have been warned.
That said it uses the A4, MS20, Nord Modular & Monomachine too but the Evolver always adds a certain something my other gear doesn’t truth be told. The Evolver parts come in at around the 9 minute mark on wards.
I can’t imagine life without mine Adam.
It is a great FM drum machine, fx processing box, sequencer, digital synth and all round oddball and wonky little noise box.
Probably why I own two of them.
Been tempeted to sell one to fund some Eurorack but can’t bring myself to go there yet.
Minibrute - the menu-less, straightforward, hands-on analog from Arturia. The waveforms reach extremes when only slightly above the half way mark. You said industrial - there is a Metalizer wave shaper for the triangle wave, an Ultrasaw wave shaper and above all else, in addition to wave shaping for each individual wave form, it has a raunchy knob called Brute Factor. And it is.
The filter, it is based on Nyle Steiner’s Synthacon filter. Here is an excerpt from SOS Magazine who argue in favour of your mechanized ideals unbeknownst to them.
“My concern with this is that the Synthacon is now deemed desirable not because it was a wonderful synth, but because it’s rare. And the reason that it’s rare is that Steiner-Parker didn’t sell many. And part of the reason that they didn’t sell many is because, while it was great for off-the-wall noises, strange tones and sound effects, its ability to produce conventional synth sounds and acoustic emulations was, umm… iffy.” - Gordon Reid
NIIIIIICE!!! The full article is worth a read if my 2 penny’s worth have floated you acquisitional boat and the synth is pretty darned cheap! Are you thinking what I’m thinking… Your dumb-clever balance will be restored!!!
