What Are The Categories Of Popular Synthesizers

[MACHINE]

Can someone please name me a few category of synthesizers around and define them for me ? Im very curious

[robd]

analog subtractive:

take some oscillators, cut out and accentuate various harmonics with filters, run it through a VCA so that the volume is not monotone. modulate all of the above with lfos and envelopes.
music: ALL kinds of stuff. from tangerine dream to parliament funkadelic to hiphop to coil and a lot more besides.
modern examples: moog, andromeda, technosaurus, lots of modulars, studio electronics, evolver(analog/digital hybrid).


analog modelling:

same thing but emulated on a dsp or in software without any actual analog components

modern examples: nord, novation, alesis ion, shitloads of softsynths.



fm synthesis:

modulating the frequency of one oscillator with another one. for more info, look up the yamaha dx 7 on wikipedia( a great resource for all kinds of tchnical stuff)

music: hits from the '80s

additive synthesis:
making timblres by adding a lot of sine waves at various harmonic intervals above the fundamental. the most basic implementation is a pipe organ or hammond organ. there are lots of modern hammond emulators. the one on the nord electro is really nice. more complex implementations can be made with software like max/msp or dsps like kyma.

granular synthesis:
Defining it would take a while, so I suggest googling it of you are interested. can be implemented in software like reaktor or max/msp. probably not used in any music you have ever heard. The results tend to be fairly "unmusical" so it is usually confined to academic music. Auto-tune and pitch shifting algorithms, however, are derived from granular synthesis techniques, and you hear those all too often.


Rompler workstations dfegad
use samples and sequencers to try to emulate a wide variety of acoustic and electric instruments (poorly)

music: all kinds of shit you hear nowadays. everything from crappy trance to crappy house to crappy hiphop to crappy pop to crappy bigbeats, and more besides.

examples: dfegad korg triton etc. etc. etc. all of the big companies come out with one of these worthless piles of crap on a yearly basis.

[ImJohn]

Originally Posted by robd

Rompler workstations dfegad
use samples and sequencers to try to emulate a wide variety of acoustic and electric instruments (poorly)

music: all kinds of shit you hear nowadays. everything from crappy trance to crappy house to crappy hiphop to crappy pop to crappy bigbeats, and more besides.

examples: dfegad korg triton etc. etc. etc. all of the big companies come out with one of these worthless piles of crap on a yearly basis.

Oh come on now, the writers, arrangers, performers, engineers and producers are the ones responsible for poor quality music, not the instruments.

[pounce]

modular - there's another one, just more of a niche now.

[robd]

john: I agree with you in pirnciple. however, with a workstation, there's often just a producer and a vocalist. no other performers. I would agree that if someone, hypothetically, scored really incredible music on a rompler, it could be good. It would not even be anywhere close to as good as if they got actual (good) musicians to play it, though, and if the music is actually that good, this would be more than worth doing. I can see those things potentially having some use as a composers sketch pad, but I can't offhand think of ANY music recorded with one that I've liked. (not to say there might not be some singular exception out there among all the millions of songs that have been recorded since these things came out. theres always an exception.)

Modular synthesis is great. There are other options available in modulars, but a lot of modular synthesis could be described as a very sophisticated implementation of subtractive synthesis. I really want a modular, but a: they are pretty expensive, and b: they are really really big. when I am in a more permanent living situation it would make more sense for me to put one together.

[johnnyvince]

Haven't ROMplers been around for a long time? I seem to remember Wendy Carlos getting his/her start as a child prodigy/actor on ROMpler Room.

[Cojo]

You also have wavetable synthesis. It's like ROMpler but you take only one cycle of the wave and store in a selectable memory so you can use it like waveforms. Then you can also combine different waves to create more complex waveforms. Typical exemple is PPG wave and Waldorf Wave or XT.

/Cojo

[Huntley Miller]

A modular is a type of synthesizer, not a type of synthesis. Most analog modulars use subtractive synthesis and some can do basic FM.

[Songhead]

phase distortion systhesis - another form of digital synthesis from the 80's, sounds similar to FM, made popular by casio CZ series synths.

linear arithmetic - combo of sampled waveforms and analog filtering and envelopes, made popular by the roland D-50 and successors - also called Advanced Wave Modeling (AWM) by Yamaha and Digital Waveform Generation System (DWGS) by Korg, these were the precursors to the current Analog Modeled (or other clever marketing name) synths

structured adaptive synthesis - pre-sampling, this was how Kurzweil got the piano's to sound as good as they did on the K250 - basically recreating a sample of a waveform using algorithms and sine waves

and lest we not forget the oft forgotton Karplus Strong Plucked String Synthesis Algorithm, or "How to create String Instruments out of Noise" (I know how to create noise out of String Instruments!) http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~amburns/...roduction.html

[Rufuss Sewell]

Don't forget Physical Modeling a la Sculpture in Logic.

As for ROMplers. I make all kinds of cool music with my Kurzweil K2600. Check out "A Little" on my MySpace page. It was actually done entirely inside my ROMpler. Even the vocals and guitar were sampled and messed with. The song features lots of sampled trumpets, bassoon, tuba, clarinet, and 808 for the drums. It might be better with real players... but my client didn't have the bread to hire all those people, and I kinda dig how it sounds just the way it is.

www.Nebulost.com It's the third song down.

[ImJohn]

Originally Posted by robd

john: I agree with you in pirnciple. however, with a workstation, there's often just a producer and a vocalist. no other performers. I would agree that if someone, hypothetically, scored really incredible music on a rompler, it could be good. It would not even be anywhere close to as good as if they got actual (good) musicians to play it, though, and if the music is actually that good, this would be more than worth doing. I can see those things potentially having some use as a composers sketch pad, but I can't offhand think of ANY music recorded with one that I've liked. (not to say there might not be some singular exception out there among all the millions of songs that have been recorded since these things came out. theres always an exception.)

Modular synthesis is great. There are other options available in modulars, but a lot of modular synthesis could be described as a very sophisticated implementation of subtractive synthesis. I really want a modular, but a: they are pretty expensive, and b: they are really really big. when I am in a more permanent living situation it would make more sense for me to put one together.

hi RobD,

Yes, I agree with what you are saying and sorry if my post sounded hostile! I just read what I said and I though, damn! sounds like I'm lookin for a fight!

I've long loved modulars too but I only ever had a PAIA system a long time ago. I do have an old Minimoog which is sweet. I have some '80's Roland and Yamaha stuff too. The more recent peices I have I like a lot and I'm impressed with, the Korg MS2000R and the roland Fantom XR.

[robd]

hi rufuss. I can't say that song is totally to my taste, but its definitely not the kind of stuff I was bitching about. there are definitely exceptions, I was just talking about a general pattern that I loathe, I probably came off a little too strong. As far as it goes, the K2600 is the king of romplers. I was listening to a bungle album once and I asked my riend "damn, who'd they find to play accordion, he's really good." and my friend explained that their keyboard player was playing it on a 2600. He was actually playing it, though, not sequencing it. I still think there is world of difference between a musician playing an acoustic instrument and a sequencer playing samples. In my book, the purpose of synthesizers (which I love, by the way) is to make the kinds of sounds only synthesizers can make. Not to attemt to emulate acoustic instruments. That's just me, though. If everyone always had the same opinions as me (or anybody else), the world would be a pretty boring place.

john. I am curious about how you think the ms2000 compares to the alesis ion or the nords, sound-wise. There is a used one in a local store for about $450 and I am kind of debating whether to get that or an ion.

[robd]

hey rufuss. I just looked at your website, and it says you ran as a libertarian for state rep and got like 27% of the vote or something. that really rocks.

[ImJohn]

Originally Posted by robd

john. I am curious about how you think the ms2000 compares to the alesis ion or the nords, sound-wise. There is a used one in a local store for about $450 and I am kind of debating whether to get that or an ion.

Hi,

I haven't used the Ion or Nord syths (other than a quick tap on the keys at Guitar Dump) so I can't compare. Since the Ion is a more recent design than the MS2000 it may have some advantages (more voices maybe . . .if that's 'really' an advantage! ) I do remember thinking the Ion didn't seem to sound significantly different enough compared to the MS2000R to justify getting it also, for what that's worth.

I love synths! I'd love to have one of everyone ever made. (same goes for snare drums, mic pres, microphones, Playboy playmates . . . . )

[robd]

thanks for the tip. If the sound is that close, I will probably go with the ion, as it seems like it is a little bit more flexible in most(but not all) ways. It is also much smaller,, which is a plus. It "only" has eight voices actually, but that doesn't bother me. I actually like monosynths just fine. the ion is four part multitimbral, which is nice. I personally value multitimbrality much more than polyphony in a synth.

[Dave Peck]

Originally Posted by ImJohn

I've long loved modulars too but I only ever had a PAIA system a long time ago.

You may want to check out the modular stuff from Doepfer (http://www.doepfer.de/home_e.htm). Very affordable, tons of modules and options, and it doesn't take up half of the studio. Only downside is that they use minijacks instead of the larger 1/4" patchcords and some folks report occasional intermittent connection problems with them.

The other affordable modular to be aware of would be Arrick modulars at www.synthesizers.com (also called "Dotcom" synths), which are similar in format to the original Moog modulars. I'm taking delivery of a large synth next week, with over fifty modules, about 80% Dotcom and 20% MOTM (www.synthtech.com). There are lots of others these days, some are pretty unusual, some more expensive. These are good days for modular synthesis.

The other option is the Nord Modular and Nord G2 modular, which are virtual modulars in DSP and allow you to create patches by dragging virtual modules onto the screen and drawing patchcords between modules. It's not the real thing, but these are incredibly versatile and deep instruments and can actually do a ton of stuff that a real analog modular could never do, and for a fraction of the price. I'll be interfacing my Dotcom/MOTM beast with my Nord G2, using the real modular for high-quality true analog modular synthesis and the G2 for complex control patches and massive FX processing.

DP

[Songhead]

Originally Posted by Dave Peck

... I'll be interfacing my Dotcom/MOTM beast with my Nord G2, using the real modular for high-quality true analog modular synthesis and the G2 for complex control patches and massive FX processing.

DP

YEAH!

That is some real Gear-sluttiness

[pounce]

Originally Posted by cepia

A modular is a type of synthesizer, not a type of synthesis. Most analog modulars use subtractive synthesis and some can do basic FM.

of course, but the original question was catagories of synthesizers - not types of synthesis. and it looks like it was a precursor to a purchase recommendation to boot.