as i see it, a dj mix is about the records and the order in which they're played. mixing itself is of secondary importance, although it shouldn't be so bad as to attract attention. personally, i like to beatmatch because it involves me in what i do. but i have no problem with dj's who auto-sync everything, as long as they're involved in what they do. that's so much more important than being a real dj™, whatever the crap that means.

please 'right-click -> save' to download the podcast. here's the tracklisting:

1. dirt rhodes - theo parrish (sound signature)
2. closed circus (nick hoeppner rmx) - lee jones (cityfox)
3. my world – sei a ( missive music)
4. abyss – manoo (deeply rooted house)
5. pilgrimage – mri (resopal)
6. under the sycamore tree – marcus worgull (innervisions)
7. time for decisions – daso vs. ofrin (connaisseur)
8. train to nowhere – ripperton (green)
9. borbola – steven m (two-b-music)
10. skogen kaller – of norway (connaisseur)
11. me & you – burnski (dessous)
12. lights go down – mymy feat. emika (aus music)
13. ganzfeld (lee jones) – minz (ransom note)
14. dernier amour (ripperton rmx) – van hai (natura sonoris)

my favorite track of the set has to be the last one, where ripperton shows once again how delicate and beautiful electronic music can be.

first up is my collaboration with ripperton, which was released in march on suruba x. 'crack' was the result of a jam session at my place. it was great to work with ripperton as his way of working is totally the opposite of mine: whereas i usually like to calmly sit down and take my time to get everything perfect, he likes to jam around, record live sounds and work fast. in 'crack', we managed to capture something of both.

at the end of april, my 'positive streamers ep' saw the light of day. i must have driven the mastering engineer and label nuts, because i rejected the first 3 masters. much to my surprise, the fourth came out nothing short of perfect. luckily, the label was ransom note, who are as dedicated to the small things in life as i am. so they were very supportive all along the way.

to top things off, ransom note not only got lee jones to do a wonderfully melancholic and intimate version of 'ganzfeld', but were also willing to release the epic 16-minute original of ganzfeld as a digital bonus. the result is an ep of which i'm really really proud.

finally, my remix for ken hayakawa's track 'can you feel' was released 3 weeks ago on kina ltd. records. i stayed close to the original, making it a bit moodier and cranking up the hypno-factor. all in all, i'm really happy with how this one came out.

this is the sleeve in about 1/36th of its full glory:

click to enlarge to 1/4th of its full glory

delmar, the designer of suruba, told me he took his inspiration from pixação, a style of graffiti that originated in sao paolo, brazil. the art of pixação is not so much in the letters themselves, but in the locations where the pixadores put the graffiti. the harder to reach, the better. sometimes with lethal consequences.

here's a cool introduction to pixação:

so here we have an old viking alphabet, taken by rockbands from the 70s, re-used in a brazilian graffiti style in the 80s and finally ending up in abstracted form on a techno record sleeve design from the beginning of the 21st century. and on the record itself is a track that takes an ancient arabic scale, which combined with electronic production techniques, ends up on dance floors world-wide. a fine lesson in both historical and geographical global interconnectedness, i would say.

hey fellas, guess what? i got a fever! and the only prescription... is more kick drum!

using an fm synthesizer like operator for kick drums might seem a little odd, as fm is primarily known for precise and sharp - some would say thin - sounds. it's for instance how the kick drum in elektron's machinedrum is synthesized. considered by some to be its achilles' heel, others have embraced the refreshing take on kick drums. fm surely allows for a wide range of non standard kickdrums, but that might not be what you're looking for when you simply want your kick drum to have that dynamite sound.

unfortunately, if you want to use the obvious alternative, subtractive synthesis, you'll need a few features generally only found on modular systems, like multiple oscillators with dedicated amplitude envelopes and a few spare envelopes for pitch and filter modulation.

but this is exactly what even the most basic fm synth offers, and operator adds a few useful extras. you need a few special tricks though, to come up with a kick drum that can compete with the genre defining 808 and 909 kick drums. and it helps to know how those were created.

according to the waldorf attack's manual, the 808 feeds an impulse into a ringing analog lowpass filter with resonance, which gives the 808 kick drum its booming character. the 909 is a bit more elaborate and features 2 analog oscillators, one of which is a sine oscillator with a quickly decaying pitch. it's this trick that gives the 909 its punch. it's also the trick used in bazzism, the vst kick drum plugin that i raved about last time. over time, i have found though that it is a bit too techy to cover all my needs. so that was one of my reasons to have a try at it with operator.

to turn operator into a useful kick drum synthesizer, i started with a sine, set a short decay on the amplitude, and used the pitch envelope to quickly drop its frequency. to create a click at the start of the sound, i used another sine to briefly frequency modulate the first sine. finally i used operator's ladder lowpass filter with a quickly dropping frequency to beef things up a bit. this is quite important, as you will find out for yourself when you deactivate the filter or choose a different mode.

after that it was time to listen and tweak. this is especially important with fm, as a small change of a parameter can hugely change a sound. this is the beauty of fm, but also what makes it difficult.

to make this kick drum generator usable for others who don't want to delve deep into fm, i set up 8 macroknobs. the goal was to create a wide range of sounds, but also a big sweet spot: almost any setting should yield something usable. i also added some dependency on velocity to make things more alive.

to give you an idea, here's a couple of them. no compression or saturation was used, although that could be a useful addition.

keep in mind that with this patch, contrary to most drum synths, it does matter how long you hold a note. this may need some getting used to, but the advantage is that you can program patterns with some long and short kicks, which can help to funk things up.

after downloading the zips, you can just open the ableton live project. it will have a track with the operator patch and a few clips to get you started. if you want to use the additional presets, you can either drag them onto that track directly, or place them somewhere in your live library and load them from there.

once you have everything up and running, i recommend you just turn those 8 macroknobs, play around with velocity and note length and really explore the studio space.

quick download:

• minz operator kick patch (live 8)
• minz operator kick presets (live 8)

more downloads and terms of use in the goodies section.

suruba x is dedicated to the deeper shades of electronic dance music and, as is custom with the suruba label itself, no corners were cut on the design. they opted for a more abstract and darker look though, which makes me feel right at home. the fact that the good people of suruba hail from móstoles, a madrid suburb where i spend a good part of my childhood, helps as well.

the a side, 'maqam', is build around the exploration of an arabic scale, or maqam. in contrast to the western tradition, where harmony underpins everything, traditional arabic music builds its larger structures on melody. to that purpose, an elaborate system of maqams has evolved over the ages. a maqam is not just a collection of notes, it is also a set of rules on how to explore those notes. a similar system, called ragas, can be found in traditional indian music.

as a true child of post-modernity, i took what i deemed usable from this tradition and integrated it with my own perspective. here's a part of the track where i start the main melody on a note and slowly expand the range of exploration until i hit the same note an octave higher:

after that, i return to the root note only to get ready for another exploration of the maqam in the second part of the track. this is a way simple melodies can be used to build larger structures. and it shows what music is all about: well dosed tension and release.

i'm quite proud of the result. but at the same time, i feel that a track as conceptual as this is bound not to make a very big impact on the dance floor, where instant gratification and a focus on surface texture reign supreme.

it represents where i come from though. i am trained as a composer of electronic art music and as such used to conceptualizing music. nevertheless, 'maqam' represents a turning point for me. it made me realize that if i wanted my music to have more direct appeal on the dance floor, i needed to rethink my strategy.

in that light, it's insightful to listen to the first final version of 'maqam', or 'persian miniatures' as it was then known. this version is almost 1.5 years old, and as you will probably hear, it focuses more on atmosphere and less on drive and impact:

the b side, 'personality is a disorder' is much more recent and moves away from the conceptual style of 'maqam'. the focus is more on the groove and the surface texture, even though i couldn't resist to lose myself a bit in the composition and the sound design.

there's not really that much to say about the track, except maybe that i put my recently acquired shitload of small percussion instruments to good use. the amount of usable sounds that can obtained from recording live percussion never fails to amaze me. if time permits, i'll share some homebrew percussion samples in the near future.

if all this talk has made you curious, here is a preview of both tracks in good quality:

the ep is available digitally on beatport or as vinyl in your local record store.

i used ableton live's operator, an fm synthesizer designed by robert henke, to make a set of 60 fm drum and percussion sounds. the samples are available in both native instruments battery format and as an ableton live drum rack. in addition to that, i made a simple instrument rack which gives you 8 knobs to make your own fm drumsounds without any knowledge of fm synthesis.

the samples span 5 octaves and have been organized as kicks, snare, hihats and percussion. the percussion samples are mapped out from low-pitched to high-pitched. as you'll discover, fm drums have quite a special character. to my ears, they sound precise and snappy, but at the same time can resemble acoustic sounds. with a twist, that is.

i use synthesized fm percussion very often, as a complement to fuzzy analog drums and acoustic samples. it's quite easy to give your drum parts something unique. and as everything's synthesized, you can tweak the sounds during a track to obtain results not possible with samples. or with analog drums, for that matter: instead of just tweaking the tune and the decay, as is common practice with analog drums, with fm you can for instance morph sounds from wood-like to glass-like by turning one knob.

to use the samples, download either the zip with the battery kit or the ableton live drum rack. you'll need battery3 and ableton live8 with drums racks installed respectively. to use the drum rack: unzip, double-click the live pack, choose a folder and everything will be installed. the zip with the battery kit contains a folder with all the separate samples, in case you want to use a different sampler.

to use the fm drums instrument rack, save it as an .adg file and drop it on a midi channel in ableton live. you'll need to have live8 and operator installed.

quick download:

• minz operator drums battery3
• minz operator drums drum rack (live8)
• minz operator drums instrument rack (live8)

more downloads and terms of use in the goodies section.

when i remix tracks, i usually start by jamming around with the material i receive by cutting it up, re-pitching it, and processing it heavily with effects. to this i add some parts from the original and some new parts and then i try to puzzle together something cohesive from it.

with remixes, it's always the question whether you'll just augment the original by highlighting its strong points or whether you'll completely rework it. i generally end up on the reworking end of the scale, because i think it's more fun. or better said: it seems i'm not that skilled at keeping things basic.

here's the remix i ended up with:

for this remix i used a typical ableton live technique to generate material. i loaded up an fx loop from the original, set the appropriate warp mode, assigned the clip starting point to a knob, and then changed the starting point while the clip was playing. i resampled everything and then edited the interesting parts into something that i used as the main melody.

here's the original fx loop i used:

here's the kind of material you get when you apply audio scrubbing to it:

and here's what ended up in the track after i edited it to taste and added a big reverb to keep everybody happy:

the remix and the original are available digitally on beatport or as vinyl in your local record store.

i already own native instruments' pro-53, another prophet5 emulation, so in order to keep my toolbox as clean as possible, i wanted to find out which would be my go-to prophet5 emulation. searching the internets didn't result in any clear general accepted opinion about the two plugins, so i ran a few tests and decided to publish them here. hopefully, the next person asking google the question that is the title of this post, ends up here and finds an answer of use.

meanwhile, in a parallel universe called photoshop

keep in mind that this isn't an in-depth review or that i'll finally reveal which emulation comes closest to the original. i just hope to make clear what sets the emulations apart sonically. because while quite similar in character, they sound quite different.

i played around with both plugins and ended up with these 2 examples, which for me quite clearly demonstrate the difference. to get roughly identical sounds, i started by setting the knobs in the same position and then tweak by ear.

that's an arp starting with 4 rounds of pro53, then 4 of prophet-v, 4 more of both, and then 2 rounds of each alternating.

that's 4 bars pro-53, 4 bars prophet-v, 4 bars of each again and then 1 bar of each alternating.

to my ears, arturia's emulation is not as buzzy as native instruments'. it sounds cleaner and at times even has a glass-like quality. i would describe its sound as 'pointy' and controlled. the pro-53 has a bit more balls, but it also sounds blurrier. as a consequence, i think it would be easier to make arturia's prophet5 stand out in a mix. but if you're after a ballsy sound, pro-53 might be a better choice.

overall, the pro-53 sounds good to me, and i wouldn't be surprised if most people like it better because it seems to sound phatter. maybe the pro-53 also comes closer to the original. i'm not in a position to judge that, but i've played with the sequential circuits pro-one, and that's one mean little monster. so maybe the original prophet5 sounds fuzzier than arturia wants us to believe.

but in my opinion, the pro-53 somehow has an edge that reminds me of softsynths i've heard before. besides the impression that arturia are more dedicated to making emulations than native instruments, arturia's emulation simply sounds more unique to me. combined with the fact that i generally prefer cleaner sounds, it gotz 2b the prophet-v fo' me.

that means doing without the nice things that native instruments added to their emulation: velocity sensitivity, a highpass filter and the possibility to inverse the filter envelope. the prophet-v allows you to set up similar things in hybrid mode, where you combine the prophet5 and the prophet-vs into one big instrument, but it's just not as straightforward. and i found the range of the velocity sensitivity to be far too small to play sounds expressively. hopefully this will be fixed in arturia's upcoming summer update.

you should see that cover in its full-color and glossy glory... it's hard to believe in these times of plummeting vinyl sales. the only explanation i can think of, is that it's a labor of love. and that's good enough for me.

as for the remix itself, i really enjoyed working with vocals. but i ended up not using too much of them as i didn't like the lyrics. they pushed me in a deephouse direction though, and getting selected for this weeks' beatport deep house selection tells me i did something right.

here's a 4 minute excerpt from my soundcloud page:

get your own mp3 at beatport, or visit a record store near you for some vinyl goodness. ]]> minz 2011-02-09T00:59:00+02:00 2009-06-26T15:12:00+02:00 tag:minzmusic,2012:minzmusic.28

for years i've been the not so proud owner of a korg se300 tape echo. it's hard to find any info on it, but people who own it, generally prefer it to the hallmark of tape delays, the famous 1973 roland re-201 space echo. my own se300 sounded pretty lame though, so i didn't understand what all the fuss was about. until i had it repaired last week.

the se300 was supposedly build in 1979, a year after korg made the se500 stage echo. it lacks 2 unique long delay features found on the se500, but adds a spring reverb. both units are very well build and sonically compare to what i've heard from the roland re201 and re501. that the korgs are relatively unknown units, might be because they came out in a time when the world was already moving on to digital delays. my guess is that korg just didn't sell too many for that reason.

tolex + wood = vintage, baby! (click to enlarge)

the se300 is quite similar to the re201: it features a 3 tap delay with variable tape speed and feedback control, a spring reverb and control over the amount of bass and treble of the wet signal. korg have made some clever design choices though.

for instance, you can engage and disengage a delay tap by simply pushing a button, something that is achieved on the roland space echo by a rotary switch that lets you choose between 10 predefined configurations. so it's a lot easier on the se300 to choose which taps you want to hear and to switch between configurations directly. on the korg, it's also possible to feed the spring reverb with a variable mix of the dry signal and the echoes, which makes for a unique washed-out effect not possible on most other tape delays.

above is a roland 101 sequence played through the se300. i've purposely chosen melodic material, so that any tape speed fluctuations are apparent as audible changes in pitch. here's what you hear:

[0:00] dry sequence
[0:10] wet signal added (only tap 2 engaged, no feedback)
[0:25] feedback turned up
[0:40] tap1 added momentarily
[0:48] tap3 added momentarily
[0:56] reverb added to the dry signal
[1:20] reverb fed with more of the echo signal
[1:29] tap1 and tap3 engaged
[2:00] reverb fed with more of the dry signal
[2:23] reverb turned off
[2:29] tap1 and tap 3 disengaged
[2:42] tape speed changed
[2:55] wet signal turned down.

as you can hear, the sound of the se300 is quite rich and the timing of the echoes is rather tight. the splicing tape that closes the tape loop causes the tape speed to wobble occasionally when it passes the pinch roller, but this can probably be fixed with some careful alignment of the tape path or different splicing tape.

and maybe it is just part of the deal. because despite the tight timing on the se300, tape echo in general is still a pretty lo-fi effect. apart from the inherent noise, wow and flutter and signal degradation make each subsequent echo less defined. so with high feedback, the wet signal quickly becomes a warm reverb-like wash of sound. i think this is one of the reasons why tape echoes are still in high demand, together with the possibility to overdrive the tape.

i doubt that the ability to sound like an air raid siren is a unique selling point of tape delays, but the se300 won't let you down:

yep, that's the se300 feeding back on itself with some virtuoso tape speed knob fiddling by yours truly.

]]>

ms20 picture by regueifeiro

korg stayed quite true to the original hardware for the emulation. they've added polyphony, unison, tempo- and key sync for the lfo and a simple control matrix. while this matrix allows for some tricks not possible on the hardware ms20, korg have basically just updated the synth to modern practice, without really changing the heart of it.

as to whether the emulation sounds like the original, i'll just say that in my opinion, current digital technology isn't able to capture any (semi) modular analog synth. emulations of synths with a fixed and simple signal path, like the polysix, have come pretty close and are getting closer every year. but when there's a patch panel to change the signal path or do things you're not supposed to do, then the difference between digital and analog becomes obvious.

i experienced this first hand when i played a real ms20 alongside the emulation a few weeks ago: be a good boy and use the original without patching and the emulation comes close, start having fun and put that patch panel to good use and the emulation bites the dust. i'll dedicate a separate post to this issue soon, as i think it's worth it. and hey, i have some arp 2600 samples to share.

but that's not to say the emulation is made of fail. just like the original, monstrous bass, distorted guitar-like leads and quirky fx is where the virtual ms20 feels at home. to give you an impression, here's an audio demo made with some of the presets i did:

as i said in my post on the polysix emulation a while ago, i don't care too much whether an emulation sounds 100% like the original. as long as the emulation comes close in character, sounds good of itself and is fun to program, i'm happy. i'm not looking to fool myself and others into thinking i own synths that i don't, i just want to have good sounds and have fun programming them. if i wanted the real thing, i would get the real thing.

of the extra options that the emulation offers, i like the control matrix the most, as it allows for velocity sensitivity, filter keytracking, pulsewidth modulation and a few lfo tricks. polyphony is nice too, but as exciting as a polyphonic ms20 may sound on paper, i wasn't too impressed with the pads and strings i got out of the emulation. without unison detune and spread to hide behind, they mostly sounded thin and static, lacking the lushness of say, the dry polysix emulation.

this is not a bad thing though. the original ms20 was a monophonic, 3-octave synth, and i wouldn't be surprised to learn that the analog circuits designed by korg wouldn't work that well for polyphonic sounds covering the full keyboard. since korg's marketing department claims that the emulation contains accurately modeled components, one would expect the software to exhibit similar behavior. and indeed, a lot of patches of the emulation seem to fall apart in the higher octaves.

so while i generally like the emulation, i dearly miss the ability to connect other modules to its patch panel. in the real world you can connect external step-sequencers and lfo's to the patch panel of the ms20, effectively turning it into another synth. i know that in the virtual world, this could probably be hacked together with some bidule or reaktor midi trickery. but as long as it's not really integrated into vst, it will be limited to midi resolution and never be as simple as connecting some output to some input. may i suggest for the next version of vst something like high-resolution virtual midi, with corresponding inputs and outputs on every vst synth?

this would for instance help overcome what i consider the biggest limitation of the software ms20: it only has one lfo whose rate can't be modulated. with virtual midi™, you'd simply use an lfo from another synth or from a dedicated vst lfo. but right now, you're stuck with just one lfo, and as a result, modulation on the virtual ms20 can become very static.

there's a trick though, to get sort of an extra lfo: connect the envelope generator 1 out on the patch panel to the eg1 trigger in. this makes eg1 loop. now connect the eg1 rev out to any parameter you want to modulate. you can set the shape and rate of the "lfo" by changing the attack, release and delay of eg1. it's crude, but it helps to give sounds some more movement. here's what it looks like:

ms20 extra lfo trick (click to enlarge)

if you need more tips on programming the ms20, look no further than the videos of youtube user newueel. s/he pretty much covers all the cool things you can do with an ms20. and then some.

quick download:

• minz ms20 presets

more downloads and terms of use in the goodies section.

the process usually starts with just fooling around with the synth in question, to get a feel for all the possibilities it offers. after that i thoroughly read the manual, to find out about less familiar functions and non-standard implementations of basic functions. the latter is especially important in emulations of voltage controlled synthesizers, and the ms20 is full of it.

after i feel i know my way around on the synth, i start looking for tricks that other people have come up with while it's been out. in the case of the ms20, we're talking about 30 years of collective experience, so it would be dumb not to drink from that fountain. a particularly fine source for this is youtube, which hosts hundreds of videos of enthusiasts showing what cool tricks their synths can do. finally, i go through preset banks of others, just to see what they've done.

after these preparations, i'll start creating presets, guided by three goals: to show what the synth can do, to show what i can do with it and to give users usable patches.

when showing what a synth can do, i mainly look for sounds that are typical for that synth. many presets i come across rely heavily on the unison spread and unison detune, which can be found on almost all synths nowdays. take them off, and you're left with a bland sound that could've come out of any synth. i'm aware that due to the demands of modern day production, unison is indispensable, but i prefer to get a good, typical dry sound first and then use unison as icing on the cake.

the same could be said about effects, but i treat them a bit differently, as some of them are part of the basic structure of a synth. the chorus on the roland juno60 comes to mind, as does the ensemble effect on the korg polysix . my rule of thumb is that i don't use generic on board effects to define a sound, but only to sweeten it. of course i use unison and effects, but in my presets i want to emphasize the elements that set a synth apart, not what it has in common with other synths. unison and most effects don't set a synth apart, it's the synthesis engine that does. so that's what i focus on.

looking for typical sounds combines nicely with the desire to show my skills as a synthesist. i keep in mind though, that people are inspired by the audible result, not by how a sound is made. no matter how smart a preset, if it sounds like teh suck, it is teh suck. to prevent that i get blinded by my own cleverness, i let fresh presets rest for a while until i forget how i exactly made them. that allows me to just listen to how they sound.

the final step is deciding whether the presets are usable, which means balancing my preferences with that of the target audience. most synths cater to a wide audience, so making some good bass, pads, lead and fx sounds is usually a safe bet. when a synth has been hijacked by a certain genre, it's advisable to research how the synth is typically used and take that into account.

in the end, i hope my presets either inspire users to build tracks with them or motivate them to explore the synth's possibilities for themselves. maybe my upcoming ms20 preset bank holds something for you.

update: whoomp, there it is.

you will need: a myspace band page and a soundcloud account with some tracks on it. a myspace page is quite common to have, but soundcloud is a rather new phenomenon. if you need an introduction, check out one of my previous posts in which i talked about the advantages and disadvantages of soundcloud. most problems have been overcome since then, so soundcloud could be a winner. even if you don't intend to use soundcloud to manage your contacts, you could just use their superior audio player and make it available on other sites by means of the soundcloud audio player widget.

the resulting minz myspace page

to insert that widget into myspace, first create a soundcloud set with the tracks you want on myspace, click 'share' and grab the code. now insert that code into the 'bio' section of the 'musician details' on your myspace profile and you'll have a page with both the default myspace player and the soundcloud player. if, like me, you want to get rid of the myspace player, insert the following code as well:

unfortunately, this code also removes the freshly added soundcloud player. so you also need to insert <div class="scplayer"> before the soundcloud code, and </div> after it. finally, you can set the width and height of the player to taste by adjusting them in the code above.

the results seem to work fine in both firefox and ie7, and on both windows and mac. of course, this might not work on your own myspace page, as there are too many variables. but probably, with a bit of fiddling, you can get this to work. if you like it quick and dirty, soundcloud also offers a way to easily share your soundcloud audio on myspace. it's as quick as clicking a link. the dirty part, though, is that it doesn't remove the default myspace player.

so there you go: an easy to update, nice looking and high-quality audio player on your myspace. and with a free soundcloud account, you can add up to 10 tracks, each with their own 'buy' button. so you can remove that beatport player from your myspace, too.

as you can see on my myspace, i've also added springwidget's rss reader, to feed my blog to it. getting it to work was a bit tricky, but very similar to the soundcloud widget. and now that i have it all set up, i can feed my blog and audio to every social networking site out there and keep everything up to date easily. or at least, that's the theory.

update: oliver chesler of 'wire to the ear' pointed out to me that safari for mac still shows the myspace player. the reason is a bug in safari that can't be worked around. it's a shame, but given the fact that only 3% of the browsing population currently uses safari, you shouldn't worry too much about it. i know i don't.