New Timetable? Updates frustrating?

[kidharpoon]

Awesome. Great stuff.

For me, I find some of the patching very confusing, and am not 100% confident I'm wiring things correctly.

I also find the LFO quite aggressive and as I tend to use it very subtely find I'm underconfident I'm patching correctly.

Any guidance on that most appreciated.

Another request from Arturia would be much more in depth video tutorials for those of us who aren't as knowledgable about the patchwork. I find the manual confusing, and generally rely on how my other synths are wired to guide me. Although I'm sure there are major flaws in the way I'm doing things.

For example: in my Odyssey patch I've got my ring mod patched up as such:

Audio Input: Osc 1 Audio
Output: to mini mixer (which also has the three oscillators into it)

After the mini mixer, its filter 1, filter 2 and output

For the Sample and Hold module, I've just got the output connected to Filter 1. I've found this produces some sort of sound that I can use, but I'm not sure its the standard patching. I can't seem to figure out what to patch the clock too.

The point being, I know this stuff is completely open to experimentation, but its a lot easier to have knowledge of the "standard" patching as a starting point.

I've read tons of modular tutorials, but finding it hard to translate to Origin.

You're helping me get a lot more out of this unit than the Manual, that's for sure. Some basic patching tips would be most welcome.

[DrJustice]

...I also find the LFO quite aggressive and as I tend to use it very subtely find I'm underconfident I'm patching correctly.

Any guidance on that most appreciated. ...

You're not the first to wonder about that

The good news is that any modulation can be made as subtle as you wish. Check out this thread where that exact issue is being discussed. Hopefully this may provide the solution for you too.

DJ
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[kidharpoon]

Cheers Dr.J, thats already my method. Just wasn't sure if that was the right method.

On my Prophet, the LFO starts at 0 and you work upwards, on the Origin its the opposite. Took me a while to figure out though, I thought it was my patching at first.

What I was saying before is that some in depth youtube tutorials on the origin would really help me use this with confidence. With the LFO thing, I thought that was my little workaround until you just mentioned it there and now I know that's definitely the way to do it and I must be on the right track.

For such a deep complex machine, there's a lack of explanation I find. If arturia could expand their video tutorials to be a bit more in depth, that would really help out. Not enough people seem to have this unit to have posted tutorials on Youtube yet.

I find the manual very confusing, and not that useful.

That's why I'm a regular on this forum I guess.

[DrJustice]

^ I was also somewhat confused by the manual at one point, and I agree that it could be better. I assume that somewhere on the timeline there is a new manual. The latest one is already outdated by FW 1.3.

DJ
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[Niccolo]

Currently the manual is being updated in order to include explanations for the new features of the 1.3, the new one will be available soon on the website (within 1 or 2 weeks I guess).

Anyway I can answer directly about the Sample & Hold connections:
the way you connected it kidharpoon is OK: but if you don't connect anything to the input of the Sample & Hold then a default noise generator is used as the input (like on the ARP2600). So the effect you obtain is the same of what you get when using an LFO with a "RANDOM" waveform. It is more interesting to connect some signal (LFO, envelope...) to be sampled.

The "clock" output generates a series of periodic impulses that are used to sample the signal inside the Sample & Hold, but since there are no other modules that can be synced this output is not so useful for now.
About the "clock" input, generally you don't need to use it, since you already have the "rate" parameter. Anyway, if you don't want the sample & hold to have its own frequency, you can synchronize it to an LFO by connecting the LFO to the "clock input" with a Bipolar polarity. You can also do some more exotic things like connecting it to the Galaxy (the frequency of the sampler will be unstable), or even to the modulation wheel (with a Bipolar polarity) to control the opening of the sampler by hand! This can give interesting results.

[kidharpoon]

Thanks Niccolo, starting to make some really interesting patches with it now.

Sorry to ask a total dumb question, but I don't quite understand how polarity affects things (Bi-polar or Unipolar).

[Philippe]

Sorry to ask a total dumb question, but I don't quite understand how polarity affects things (Bi-polar or Unipolar).

An example can explain it better than a long explanation.

Suppose you want to apply a tremolo to an oscillator. You may want a tremolo which is applied around the basic tune, like when you move your finger on the neck of a violin. You may want instead to apply a tremolo similar to what you get on a guitar when you push the string up or down with your finger. I that case you can only increase the tension of the string and you get a tune which is always equal or above the basic tune.

The "polarity" attribute of a connection is there to emulate these different use cases. To obtain a tremolo around the basic tune set the polarity to "Bipolar", to obtain a guitar like tremolo set the polarity to "Unipolar".

There's something a little bit more tricky when using a polarity other than "Bipolar" and a connection gain not equal to 1.

Suppose you use a LFO to generate the tremolo. The LFO - like most of the modules - always generates a signal which is in the range -0.5, +0.5. Let's see what happens with different combination of polarity and gain.

- Bipolar and gain +1:
Then the signal applied at the input is in the range -0.5, +0.5.
- Bipolar and gain +0.5:
Then the signal applied at the input is in the range -0.25, +0.25.
- Unipolar and gain +1:
Then the signal applied at the input is in the range 0, +1.
- Unipolar and gain +0.5:
Then the signal applied at the input is *not* in the range +0.25, +0.75 but instead in the range 0,+0.5. This enables to correctly emulate the "guitar like" tremolo.

[synthguy99]

Good grief... thank you Phil.  I should have understood this.  Either the manual didn't explain this well, or I scanned over it too quickly.  I've been using up a mod source when I didn't have to!  Unfortunately, my manual wandered off somewhere in this mess of a house and I've been working from memory.  

By the way, I was wondering if you or anyone have decided to go through with creating some Arturia made "template" patches for us.

[Philippe]

By the way, I was wondering if you or anyone have decided to go through with creating some Arturia made "template" patches for us.

Not yet. Anyway I'm on the technical side so I have no power to make a decision regarding these points. What I can do - and I do it - is to forward your requests to "marketing" people who have the power to take one decision or another.

[synthguy99]

I appreciate the good word, Phil.  In my case, I made several instrument "templates" and about 50 patches so far.  I still have a few to go.

[kidharpoon]

In my case, I made several instrument "templates" and about 50 patches so far.  I still have a few to go.

Can't wait til you upload these bad boys!

[synthguy99]

I'm going over the ones I've made so far and cutting back on things like velocity on synths which don't have that capacity.  I'm cheating just a bit, and adding a touch of velocity expression on those patches too.  Effects are used sparingly.  All have a light reverb, some have a light chorus, a few a heavy chorus.  I'm still puzzling over what to do with the ARP Chroma and Oberheim Matrix-12, since both are essentially modular synths with a slightly limited range of modules, but I'll poke at them this weekend and see what I can come up with.

Hopefully I'll have a nice big upload ready early next week, possibly sooner if I have a good run.

Edit:  I'm thinking sooner, after all.  Between fighting yet another cold/whatever and wanting to get this project wrapped up and posted, I'm also thinking that giving everyone a bunch of patches with each "instrument" may be the wrong idea.  Besides the fact that synth patches really need to suit the music they're used in, I set out to do this with the intention of encouraging you guys to explore these "templates" and create your own sounds on them, as well as improve them where you see fit.  So it may not be much longer before you see these patches.  

I'm also dropping the idea of creating a bunch of modular instruments, at least for now.  I'm remembering that the whole point of modular synths is to cobble something together out of the many parts they offer to create a unique sound to suit a particular piece of music.  And this is where I've been coming from in my sound creation the past few years.  I'm not much good at making interesting patches that can fit a variety of material, so I'll revisit this subject another day.  Besides, you guys hopefully realize that all these templates I'm making are actually modular synths.

I'm probably going to throw in a few patches that use the MiniMg and Jupiter templates for those who find these guys intimidating themselves.  While all these patches are much like what you'd find when you poked buttons on these synths when they were on store racks, and thus are rather basic, hopefully they will be remotely useful, and good starting points to making your own sounds.

[kidharpoon]

Very cool.

[synthguy99]

I may be jumping the gun on this, but it's not like several hundred pieces of software aren't released prematurely every year.

In other words, I'm going to leave a little gift on the Patches and Templates board right after I post this...