sudden urge to syncopate

[kensuguro]

Took the day to test out Podium free, and a handful of free synths and effects. My usual set up is at work, so I have pretty much a blank PC laptop at home which I got to eventually move stuff off the old setup. Anyway, I got the "do stuff with free stuff" itch I get once every few years. Here's what I used:

instruments:
Plogue sforzando to play some sort of GM soundfont for drums
Kamiooka modular synth. I'd call is semi modular. You have a limited number of slots to put modules into. Then you can freely wire them up. It's pretty well thought out, and very capable as far as creating "traditional" synth stuff is concerned. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I was able to get stuff done in it, much like with Scope Modular. Half way into recording, I realized the oscillator module had FM functionality so went back and FMed up the main clav and bass patches. The biggest gripe I have is that I couldn't figure out how to control the polyphony on this thing. It seems to be at 10 or so, and I can't figure out how to increase it.

So everything other than drums is coming from a bunch of Kamiooka synths that I patched.

fx:
cockos reaper eq - standard para eq type, does what it needs to do.
cockos reaper comp - very clean sounding comp, does exactly what you tell it to do. Not much of a personality tho. Exactly what I look for from a "default" comp.
cyanide 2 - waveshaper distortion. I love this thing.
blockfish - funky comp. It's not very clinically controllable, not transparent at all.. but it's a quick one knob comp. It has a character of its own so that's why I like it. Been using it over 10 years now.
W1 limiter - George Yohng's (4front guy) Kind of works.. just to tame things at the end.
Podium's free reverb - it sounds okay. I just stuck in in a send channel and just used it as is. Didn't bother tweaking parameters.
I also used some sort of M/S management thing which I forgot the name of. It's just a standard M/S based stereo widener with a crossover so low end goes to mono.

The DAW I used is Zynewave Podium free, it worked pretty well. It's sort of like using Reaper. You can tell it's been very well thought out, but there's something not MIDI friendly about it. It's got some issues, like only way to quantize something is to open piano roll and select all notes and then apply.. But for $0, it's much more than I'd expected. It's actually quite good. Particularly, I like the mixer. It's sooo very customizable, and you can tell the author really understands the many different ways people like to work while mixing. Podium is very mixing friendly. This guy really "gets" mixing. (the creator is a former TC Electronics UI guy)

So all in all, I think Kamiooka was a good find. Podium's pretty cool for mixing, but the composition related functionality leaves a bit of a bad after taste. I'd say it's usable in a pinch.

And the clav/slap style playing.. ya, it's quantized, my hands won't survive going raw this long unfortunately. But the cuts are tight as hell man. I'm pretty glad to have gotten my chops for this style to where it is.. lots and lots of practice, and lots of studying. Counting from when I ever tried doing some tight cuts, I'd say the journey was a little over 15 years. (and still continuing!) But ha, this is something you don't see you 'uns imitating to any acceptable degree. Synths have progressed and creating patching has progressed, but playing killer synth bass lines is a dying art form unfortunately.

[Nestor]

It sounds pretty cool to me Ken, particularly if you think everything is free there, cool.

Composition wise, those sweeps in the back sound great.

Great baseline, nevertheless, I would like to relax eventually from its timber, and a few different basses would be cool for the different sections. I mean, it sounds a bit too shark for the whole song, just what I like, but everything sounds pretty nice.


What I most like, without talking about the technical side, is the joy this music has

[kensuguro]

ah, true. Seems to be an issue with very "up front" synth bass in general where eventually, it just becomes tiring.