Yes, you heard that right.

Synthguy's Vintage Synthesizer "Templates"

For sale... for FREE!!  And you can't hardly beat a deal like free.  

Anyhow, what I did was throw together some Origin modules of various types in a semblance of what I thought the original analog synth was like, then fussed with patches for almost three weeks until I thought they sounded fairly close to the Original, if you'll excuse a sidewise pun.  I think I did a reasonably good job.  Note:  these were made using the updated OS 1.3.23, and may not work right unless you update your Origin.  It includes the Jupiter-8 template created by Arturia.

Edit (March 5):  Two proper Prophet VS template parches have been added, mine and Sean W's, his is better.

What you get in this... well, these downloads are "templates" of:

• ARP Odyssey, 2600 and Chroma
• Prophet T-8 and VS (two VS patches, sorry, but they're templates!)  
• Oberheim OB-X, OB-1 and Matrix-12
• Yamaha CS-80
• PolyMg and MemoryMg
• Jupiter 8
• As well as one patch each of an ARP Odyssey and OB-1 wired up to a MiniMg

While I didn't intend to load this thing up with patches, I did, so there's a small assortment of sounds for these synthesizers, more than 100 patches total.  There are leads, pads, brass, strings, keyboard and synth sounds and more to get you started in creating your own patches.  Most have some light effects included, and are structured to respond to velocity, keyboard pressure and mod pedal.  Since many vintage synths had no keyboard response, I'm cheating a bit so I kept those instruments to lighter expression.

I'm sure I forgot to make a number of little tweaks, such as assigning the performance knobs to various functions, but I or some other helpful guy here can surely walk you through that, as well as changing or programming these monsters.

These aren't the most incredible sounds.  For one thing, I haven't programmed patches for the sheer fun of it for years.  For another, vintage analogs didn't have big effects chains - you were lucky to get chorus!  The sounds they offered up were also more basic, and it's been a while since I've been around any of these guys, so I've been doing a lot of head scratching to come up with sounds for these templates like you'd hear on a classic synth.  There are lots of brasses and strings, but I programmed all these patches separately, so you aren't getting the same three brass patches just with different oscillators and filters... although I wish I'd thought of that...    But I did make sure that these were patches good enough to use in my music, so they should be useful to you guys too, if nothing else as starting points for your own sounds.  And from the listening I've been doing, they sound very close to the instruments I was trying to capture from the wild.

I'll explain this mess more thoroughly when I recover.  Right now, I need a break!

Thank You! i don't have origin but for later

Thanks for your hard work on these! There are quite a number of gems here. I especially like the OB-X, CS80, JP8, and MemMg templates and patches. IMHO these outshine most of the factory presets! 

Fuc-King-AweSome!!!!

Downloading now!!!

Thanks guys for the praise.  I'm glad you liked them.    I do think they're really good myself, but thought it best to undersell them a bit, in case people were expecting big Origin style five oscillator, four filter monsters with lots of effects.  And heck, if I didn't like them, I wouldn't be sharing them.

I programmed all these templates from scratch, just making copies for each subsequent patch, and I have to appologize for nudging everyone, saying it only took 10 or 15 minutes to make one.  It's more like 20 minutes to half an hour or more on the tricky ones!  But there's no better way to learn how to program these bad boys than to start building them, and wiring them up the way you want them to work.

To start with, I'd suggest that everyone open up the editor on each one and delete the Poly LFO, unless you intend to use it.  I don't employ it on a single one, and should have taken them out myself, just in case simply being there eats up some CPU performance.  I recommend that everyone intending to program authentic synth patches, or ones they want to behave traditionally, to use the Dual LFOs in the PROGR page.  I think the only synth that might use Poly LFOs is the Matrix-12.  Poly LFOs are unique in that each note you play will essentially get its own LFO, and when you play chords, they will most likely be wobbling out of step with each other, rather than in neat even sync like each synth normally does it.  You can certainly use it for things like string synth sounds or special effects, but it will usually mess up your vibratos.  On top of that, the two PROGR LFOs are just sitting there waiting to be used!

In fact, I think every template but the CS-80 has a Ring Modulator sitting there unused, except for kidharpoon's very good ARP Odyssey template, named simply Arp Odyssey.  Unless you intend to use the Ring Mod units in mine, I'd delete them too.

Because of my playing style, I prefer the Last Note setting in the Mono Key Assign.  If this bugs you, sorry, but it's easy to change to Low or High Note Assign in the PROGR page.  Just about every patch uses some kind of key touch response, usually both velocity and key pressure, as well as mod pedal.  On those synths which never had touch response, I use velocity lightly, but most still have full pressure response.  Pressure moves up the filter frequencies in most templates, and in many patches also adds vibrato.  I think all templates use the mod pedal to open the filters.  The Origin Jupiter-8 template acts a bit strangely, always using key pressure and mod pedal.  Unfortunately, sending the pedal to the filter is the same thing as using the slider, so when the pedal is down, the filter is completely closed, and I don't know how to change that.  To use the pedal properly, it would be a good idea to build a Jupiter from modules.

Most patches use three effects though some are turned off, though I notice that a handful just have a light reverb.  Sorry about that, but effects are easy to add.  You might notice that very few of the Live Performance knobs are assigned.  Most of the time, the #1 (red) knob is assigned to an oscillator tune, allowing you to tune them to 5ths or octaves.  I wasn't sure how you guys wanted these set up, and it seems everyone prefers something different, so for the most part these are free to set as you please.  I took great care to set the volumes of all these templates and patches to sound close to what they should be relative to each other, and I programmed them on my speakers, so there should be no big volume jumps or dips.

I'll be back later on to explain the patches and how they work, such as that the PolyMg Pads are meant to be used with the expression pedal to open the filter, and the odd CS-80 patch, WrblSyn1?  Twist Live Knob #5 (red) while you play. 

To start with, I'd suggest that everyone open up the editor on each one and delete the Poly LFO, unless you intend to use it.  I don't employ it on a single one, and should have taken them out myself, just in case simply being there eats up some CPU performance.

As long as a module has no output connected it is not processed so it uses no CPU nor memory.

First, congratulations for your preset bank which is really great!

The Origin Jupiter-8 template acts a bit strangely, always using key pressure and mod pedal.  Unfortunately, sending the pedal to the filter is the same thing as using the slider, so when the pedal is down, the filter is completely closed, and I don't know how to change that.

By default, setting the expression pedal destination with the "EXP PEDAL" parameter in the JP8 template changes the modulation amount of the connections from expression to VCF and to VCA. These connections can be seen (and modified, but not deleted) in the Progr/PERF page. Here you can change the polarity and the connection gain of both connections. But after having modified them, if you click again on the "EXP PEDAL" parameter in the template page, the connection gains will be reset so don't do that!

Thank you for the kind words, Niccolo, and that advice.  I still haven't found my Origin manual, which I need to soon.  That definitely makes the Jupiter template super useful.

I still have work to do on my tutorial post, but it's coming.  I have lots of advice to offer on how to approach programming the Origin, and synths in general.  And as you can tell on my above posts, I like to hear myself type.    I would add that because of the heavy module count in the CS-80 template, polyphony averages seven notes rather than eight as on the synth itself.  I'll play with it to see how I can boost polyphony a bit and make suggestions for changes, but if you want an authentic CS-80 sound, my template may be as good as it gets.

Oh, and I hope you downloaders know that my templates are split up on those files, so if you only pick the first one, you're only getting the ARP and Prophet templates, I believe.

I'm hoping some of you guys in the team make their own template patches and share them, because I'm not exactly the ultimate authority on synthesizers, though I have familiarized myself with many of these historic instruments.  And I'm sure we'd all love more patches to play with.

Edit:  I went ahead and added in brief descriptions of each template, and a bit of how some of the modulation routing went.

The ARP Odyssey is a two oscillator synth with a 4 Pole Lowpass resonant filter coupled with a light Highpass filter, which I recall is a light 6db 1 Pole.  I included a third Origin OSC to use as a noise source.  The basic module chain for this synth is:

2 ARP OSCs plus Origin OSC for noise-> Mixer-> Origin 1 Pole Highpass Filter-> ARP 4 Pole Lowpass Filter-> VCA (Output)

One Progr LFO, Ring Mod unit, two ADSRs for modulation

Unlike many later synths, it used a basic Attack-Release (AR) envelope generator along with a traditional and much more useful ADSR, though I cheated and used two ADSRs.  Purists can set one ADSR sustain up all the way to make it an AR generator.  It has a Ring Modulator which I haven't messed with, as well as a very flexible Sample and Hold generator like the one in the Origin.  For the burbling S/H effects I just use a Random wave in the LFO because it's much handier than rigging up the S/H module, and is easy on the CPU.  I notice that the first two patches just have a light reverb programmed, while the rest have some combo of chorus, delay and reverb.  Distortion also works well on Odyssey patches, but I saved that for its big brother, the 2600.

It has the capacity to play two notes using the two oscillators separately, though I fudged this and so each note plays two full two OSC voices.  I happen to notice that I included kidharpoon's more complete Odyssey patch, which also happens to have the Ring Modulator wired in for use.  The OSCs can be hard synced, so if you want sync patches, I'd suggest swapping out the ARP OSCs with Jupiter OSCs.  I use the pulse wave for the basis of most of these patches, because it has full pulse width settings which gave it a different sound compared to the MiniMg.

The ARP 2600 is a big three oscillator synth much like an Odyssey on steroids, in that it has one more OSC and an extensive patch panel.  The Highpass Filter is gone, though it uses a Parametric EQ, which like a bonehead I didn't include.  The EQ effect is sort of useful, but I'd personally edit in an Origin Filter set to 1 Pole Highpass instead.  The first four patches use the Distortion effect to juice them up.  The patch 5thLead2 has the filter mostly closed, and is meant to be opened and closed while playing like a wah-wah pedal.  Like the Odyssey, it's also duophonic using one of the OSCs to play the second note, and I cheat this by allowing two full voices to play in a few patches.

The ARP Chroma isn't that well known, but it was a major effort by ARP to produce a monster polysynth, and was way ahead of its time with computer generated velocity envelopes and LFOs, a polypressure keyboard option, and a computer interface for programming and sequencing.  Gibson bought out all of ARP Instruments when it went bankrupt, and some later versions were produced under the name Rhodes Chroma.  Anyway, this is a highly configurable synth, much like the later Oberheim Matrix-12, or a modular, with two OSCs and dual 2 Pole multimode Filters.  In dual OSC mode, the way it sounds best, polyphony is eight note.  I chose three basic configurations for it, as these are the most musically useful.

• OSC-> LP FIlter-> Output, doubled up in two layers
• A one layer 2 OSC-> Mixer-> HP filter-> LP Filter-> Output (one patch, Chro PolySyn5)
• A one layer structure which is a little trickier.  One OSC goes into a HP Filter, which is fed along with the second OSC into a Mixer, which goes into the LP Filter, and this into the Output (one patch, Chro PolySyn6).  With this structure, one OSC is filtered in a bandpass response, while the other uses a basic lowpass filtering.
• Two Progr LFOs, Ring Mod unit, two ADSRs for modulation

It can also double the two filters into a 4 Pole Lowpass Filter (or Highpass), but this is essentially then a polyphonic Odyssey, so crank up the polyphony to eight or so notes on an Odyssey patch and there you go.  The OSCs can be hard synced, so again if you want it for sync patches I'd suggest swapping out the ARP OSCs with Jupiter OSCs.

On the Clarinet, Oboe and Flute patches, you'll notice that pressure closes the filters and introduces LFO modulation of it, as actual vibrato of pitch was very slight on the actual instruments.

The Sequential Prophet T-8 is one of the most sought after Prophets, due to the nice 76 note piano touch and polypressure keyboard.  It was so good that New England Digital licensed it for the Synclavier.  Anyway, this is a 2 OSC synth with multiple waveforms on both OSCs, along with a separate noise source, a Mixer feeding these into a 4 Pole LP Filter, a VCA, two velocity driven ADSRs and an LFO.  I chose Origin OSCs and 4 Pole LP Filter for it, as this does come very close to the sound of the... original.    The basic configuration is:

4 Origin OSCs-> Mixer-> Origin 4 Pole Lowpass Filter-> Output

One Progr LFO, two ADSRs for modulation

The reason for using four OSCs is so you have two OSCs available for separate pulse waves, one for sawtooth, and the fourth for noise.

The Prophets became the standard synth for many keyboard players for years, and along with the Jupiter and Oberheims, made hard sync cool, so a couple of patches feature hard sync prominently.  The "OW" sound is produced by routing a modulator like an ADSR only to the synced OSC.

The Sequential Prophet VS is a rare synth, but perhaps one of the most sought after, as it was one of Sequential's last instruments before it went belly up.  It uses four digital Wavetable OSCs run through a two axis joystick just like the one on the Origin, and used something very like the Galaxy modulator.  It seems that the VS was a big influence on the Origin.  In fact, even though it wasn't a success, it's used religiously by their owners in music, and it's my understanding that entire film soundtracks were done just on the VS alone.  It's 16 voice polyphonic, and has a number of modulation routings, though in the heart it still sounds like a Prophet, so again I used the Origin 4 Pole LP Filter.  I gave it one extra ADSR, because the VS's envelopes are very complex five stage affairs. and the extra one, ENV 1, can be mixed with the other two for more complex shapes.

Unfortunately, coming up with patches for it was a brain teaser for me, as I just got to play with one several years ago for only an hour or so, so all I have right now is one basic sound.  Someday, I'll see about coming up with some more patches for it.  I have some notes to help with programming it in a post below.  The signal path is:

4 Wavetable OSCs-> JoyMixer-> Origin 4 Pole Lowpass Filter-> Output

Two Progr LFOs, S/H unit, 3 ADSRs for modulation

The Oberheim OB-X (going slightly out of order here) is an eight voice polysynth, and very popular with many keyboard players over the Jupiter-8, as it had a sound that suited certain styles, and a few more OSC parameters to play with.  Like the ARPs, the Oberheims have full pulse width settings, and on later models like the OB-8, pulse width and modulation could be set separately for both OSCs.  This is more of a family of Oberheims, combining the OB-X, OB-Xa and OB-8, and although all had slightly different features and sound, the flavor is very similar.  I used Origin OSCs and multimode Filter for it, and though the Oberheim oscillators sound different to the Prophet's, I didn't have many options.  Though both instruments began to eventually use Curtis synthesizer chips, as many synths did at this time, there's good reason to resort to the Origin modules as they capture this sound well.  I used four OSCs, as you could have more than one waveform available on later revisions of the OB, as well as a separate noise source.  The signal path is:

4 Origin OSCs-> Mixer-> Origin 2/4 Pole Multimode Filter-> Output

Two Progr LFOs, Ring Mod unit, two ADSRs for modulation

The Oberheim OB-1 was a one voice lead synth, essentially one voice card from an OB-X in a compact synth, so once again, Origin OSCs and Filters were used.

The Oberheim Matrix-12 is much like the ARP Chroma in that it's a very configurable synth, but even more like a modular, in that just about every element has a computer controlled switching and routing system, which was insanely powerful for its time.  And it has scads of functions, which means lots.  Because of the ridiculously complex routings you can do, I basically took an OB-X and gave it a few more functions, as well as full velocity and pressure response.  Again, at some point I'll see about making some proper Matrix-12 templates and patches.  The signal routing is mostly like the OB-X, though a couple of patches are the same as the ARP Chroma.

The Yamaha CS-80 is a unique instrument in just about every way.  It was the first polyphonic synth with a piano touch and polypressure sensitive keyboard, and that pressure could be routed a number of ways.  It was both very cool and rather strange, both in its quirky design and sound, much of that due to the unique dual 2 Pole resonant Filters each voice had.  And it had two complete separate synthesizer voices, each with its own OSCs, Filters, Envelopes and VCAs.  The signal path is:

CS-80 OSC-> CS-80 HP FIlter-> CS-80 LP FIlter-> Output, doubled up in two layers

1 Progr LFO, 2 ILAL envelopes, 3 ADSRs for modulation, and Ring Mod in effects unit

I managed to create a fairly authentic CS-80 with two full voices, though because of all the modules needed and CPU to run them, polyphony can drop to six notes.  If much of the TAE processing is used, patches can sound distorted, so I tend to turn it all the way down.  This is located at the lower right in the PROGR page.  As Niccolo pointed out, the CS-80's Ring Modulator is in the effects unit, so the first effect is this Ring Mod unit.

One note I would make is about the patch, WrblSyn1, which on the face of it sounds kind of dorky.  But I've programmed mine based on the unusual lead patch used in Matthew Tyas' interesting CS-80V mp3 in the Audio Demo page, named Winterhat.  His lead uses one of the techniques some CS-80 users developed, in that the filters use heavy slow LFO modulation, and the rate is increased as notes are played until the filters almost begin to beat in their own tones.  I assigned Live Knob #5 (red) to the LFO driving the filters, so turning it yields this effect.  Other patches use another effect characteristic of the CS, a slow OSC vibrato.

The PolyMg Synthesizer was Bob Mg's first attempt to give fans of his synths a polyphonic instrument.  It was based on a concept roughly like an ARP Omni, but considerably more advanced, and had a lot of input from artists such as Keith Emerson, Herbie Hancock, and Larry Fast of Synergy fame.  A series of synthesizer chips generated sawtooth and modulated pulse waves, and had nine basic synth patches programmed into them, as evidently each chip had a simple one voice synth unit with its own lowpass filter, VCA and envelope generators (I got this from a UK based PolyMg website).  These nine presets can be further modified with a single lowpass filter, an advanced parametric filter, LFOs and envelope generators.  One preset was wide open, giving you full access to all the synthesizer parameters in the instrument.  It was a thinner sound than Mg fans were used to, but it did offer full polyphony, as well as a six and a half octave velocity sensitive keyboard.  And while basic, it could produce some lovely textures.  To recreate this behemoth, I used the following signal path:

3 Origin OSCs-> Mixer-> Origin 4 Pole Lowpass Filter-> Output

2 Progr LFOs, two ADSRs for modulation

I also used the Parametric EQ as the first effect, should you want to experiment with it.  It has an unusual oscillator design, in that the two saw and variable pulse waves can be mixed freely, but the two waveforms have different octave ranges.  The sawtooth is available in 8' and 4' ranks, while the pulse was set up with 16' and 8' intervals.  The sawtooth ranks could also be detuned +/- 6 semitones from the pulse ranks.  In addition, there were five LFOs, one for the saw rank vibrato, one for pulse rank vibrato, two for pulse width modulation on separate halves of the keyboard, and interestingly, pulse width could be set separately for both halves of the keyboard as well.   I decided to leave these oscillators in a more basic structure, but it might be fun to try making a full blown PolyMg arrangement sometime.  The fifth LFO was available for the filter, and included sample and hold.

I used the Origin Filter because the one used in the PolyMg sounded a little thinner than the one used in the other Mg monophonic synths.  I think a Mg 3 Pole LP would have been perfect for it.  I toyed with the ARP and Jupiter filters, but that Origin filter is really darn useful.  Apparently, I used 2 Pole LP Filters for all but the PolyMg Pad sounds and forgot to change them to 4 Pole, but it's easy to change them.  The filters do need to be retuned up a bit if you do this, so leaving it as it is is certainly no harm.  But if you want to program your own PolyMg patches, it's best to be authentic to use the 4 Pole slope.

The other patches are basic synth sounds, but the two PolyMg Pads are designed in particular with the mod pedal to open and close the filter as you play.

The MemoryMg was Bob Mg's second and proper attempt to give players a polyphonic Mg synth.  This one was done well, and included three full oscillators with saw, triangle and fully variable pulse waves available at once, as well as a separate noise source into a better 4 Pole lowpass filter and to a VCA.  There were two full ADSRs and two LFOs for modulation, and OSC 2 could be hard synced to OSC 1.  There was also an arpeggiator and a small polyphonic sequencer.  While it didn't quite have the character of the MiniMg, being based on Curtis chips, it did have a big, rich sound which was close, and with six note polyphony.

I didn't really make it the way I wanted to.  I intended to use the Mg OSCs into an Origin 4 Pole LP Filter, but found that they had fixed pulse widths, and while the MiniMg template could have hard sync, these OSC modules couldn't.  I thought I might have one Mg OSC and two Origin OSCs since the MemoryMg sounds slightly lighter than a Mini, but they wouldn't blend well.  In the end, I made do with four Origin OSCs into the Mg 4 Pole LP Filter - one for either noise or a separate pulse wave, and found this did sound very good, and close to the MemoryMg.  The Origin OSCs through the Mg Filter do give it a nice juicy, beefy sound, and with three separate oscillators, you can make it sound huge like a Mg.  The signal path is:

4 Origin OSCs-> Mixer-> Mg 4 Pole Lowpass Filter-> Output

2 Progr LFOs, 2 ADSRs for modulation

The two combo templates are examples of what many artists did such as Larry Fast or Jan Hammer, the prog/fusion keyboardist, trying to stretch the soundmaking capabilities of these venerable MiniMg, ARP Odyssey and Oberheim SEM (click for a link to one) or OB-1 synthesizers.  It took a bit of work from a keyboard tech, since they all used different menthods to trigger sounds, but you wound up with a very powerful two voice synthesizer with interesting combined characteristics.

• One use the modules to make an ARP Odyssey and a MiniMg
• The other use those making an OB-1 and MiniMg

The MiniMg in my templates are panned mostly right, the other panned mostly left, so you can hear them more distinctly.  Both are making a soft lead sound, so blending them rather blurs their individual sonic character.  But the intent is to give you a combo instrument with plenty of soundmaking possibilities, using multiple oscillators, filters and modulators, much like a custom modular synth.  The one problem with this combo approach is that each part of the template uses the same key assign, and uses the same glide and rate, which could be different on the actual synths for interesting effects.

The Jupiter-8 should be self explanatory.

I am a bit surprised that you haven't used the JoyMixer module for your ProphetVS template. This module allows you to control the mix between the 4 waveforms with the Joystick, and to modulate it with a 2D envelope, which was certainly one of the most interesting features of that synth. Maybe you didn't notice that module?

Uhm... no, it's because I'm lazy.  

Actually, I worked on this project after I came home from my dreadfully boring job, and it was often a struggle to have the energy to pursue it.  While the Prophet VS is one of the most fascinating instruments from the past, I'm not as familiar with it as I am the other synthesizers, and even though I recall that I was very impressed with it, I can't for the life of me remember a single patch!  I do know that it's remotely like the Wavestation, which I own, but that's hardly a proper comparison.

You're right that I should have plugged in the JoyMixer before I posted my templates, and in fact I was about to.  But since the one "patch" only had the first waveform on all four OSCs, and I knew I was going to put off programming any patches for it, I didn't see the point.  Of course I completely forgot that I was going to provide it for everyone to make their own patches on.  But I do need to brush up on the architecture Sequential gave it, and make a proper template soon, along with some actual patches for it.  I do get a bit lost in knowing quite what to do with digital waves in any synthesizer, such as my KORG M3, so I'm not dumping your Wavetable OSCs out of spite or anything.

Maybe Friday on my day off, I'll tackle that.

By the way, I added in descriptions of the remaining templates in my post above.  Let me know what you guys think of them, and how you're using them.  And if you're making any changes to them.

Prophet VS
Here's my Prophet VS template using the JoyMixer. (Program saved using OS 1.3.23)
It is set as "manual", i.e., use the Joystick 1 on the front panel to crossfade between the 4 wavetable waveforms.
For automated wavetable crossfading, simply enable the "2D Env" in the JoyMixer module.

Sean, that's a nice template, and a lovely patch.  Thank you for sharing it.  Unfortunately, I've been pondering those digital waves in the Wavetable OSCs for so long that... I fell asleep.  

The VS is a fantastic instrument, way ahead of its time.  It fascinates me.  But for some reason, I draw a huge blank when I start sorting through those digital waves.  And I don't want to just use the saw, square and pulse waves, those are already the basis for the Prophet T-8.  Those digital waves are what make the VS so special, combined with the 2D envelope which provides dynamic oscillator blending.  I guess I just need to go to bed, and mull this thing over after some morning coffee.  Then again, I seem to just come up with new patches anymore when new music needs new sounds.

Meh, indecision, indecision...  

Oh, if nothing else, I can start loading up random waves and see how they sound layered.  One thing I was thinking of doing was trying a dual layer with two OSCs and a Filter, since the VS can layer patches.  That would be fun too.

Before I head out, I'd like to pitch my requests to you guys once more.

• Get the programmers to create their own templates and patches for them.  Perhaps just play with mine.  But I would like to see what you guys can do with these kinds of template patches.  OH!  Here's a thought, convert over a few killer patches from Arturia's softsynths.
• Please sometime soon, produce Prophet V OSC and Filter modules for the Origin.
• A personal and rather intriguing request:  before you guys license Oberheim synthesizers to make a soft synth or three from Tom Oberheim's excellent instruments, produce OSC and Filter modules of these guys for the Origin first, like the OB-X, 8 Voice and Matrix-12.  Cool idea, no?

I thought I'd make a quick update.

I'm throwing in the towel for a while on the Prophet VS.  I spent several hours both last night and tonight fussing with waveforms, and... I'm just lost.  

I know what to do with basic waveforms; saw, square, pulse and triangle, and waves that sound similar.  But digital waveforms have arbitrary harmonics that I just can't wrap my head around, so making patches using them is kind of a die roll.  I figure you guys would have as good a chance as me at coming up with something.  I have a few tips to provide here.

For one thing, the waveforms, other than the saw- square- and sine-based, tend to lump into three basic categories, though some could be any of the three depending on pitch.  I made a list of them - they're numbered, to give you a ballpark idea of the raw sounds available.

Bell
35  37  44  48  52  54  58  61  64  65  69  72  84  89  91  93  94  100  107  109  112  113  114  118  125  


Buzz
36  38  39  40  41  42  43  45  46  47  49  50  51  53  55  56  62  66  67  68  70  71  73  74  75  76  77  78  79  80  81  82  83  85-87 (hack, very buzzy)  88  92  101  102  103  104  105  106  108  110  111  115 (saw harms)  119 (saw 5ths)  120 (saw oct)  121-122 (squ 5ths)  123 (squ oct)  124  


Organ
37  57  59  60  63  90  95  96  97  98  99  116  117  


Other
126 (silence, perhaps DC, pretty useless)  127 (noise)

I wonder if silence is there to add proper balance for four OSCs in the JoyMixer, but I haven't messed with it.

There is plenty of raw material available to use in creating unique digital bell-like, buzzy or organish patches.  It just takes some time to load these waves from the four Wavetable OSCs in the JoyMixer and blending them.

For the bell-like or organy patches, using the 4 Pole Filter lightly and with little or no resonance sounds best, since those few harmonics get squashed pretty hard by it.  The buzzy waves work better with a more heavy handed filter and resonance, as they have more harmonics for it to chew on.  While the VS has a typical 4 Pole response, there's nothing keeping you from turning that down to a 2 Pole response if you think it's too dark with your patches.

A few of the waves are much quieter or louder than the others, so careful balance is sometimes necessary.  Also keep in mind that just dropping a JoyMixer into a patch isn't going to make it active.  You have to go into it with the editor and turn it On, and if you want it to loop, you have to activate this function too.  Also be aware of what Mode you want to use, there are three of them.  And finally, since the VS has an intricate five stage envelope generator, you can add ENV 1 to the Filter and Output with different shapes to simulate the extra stages in the VS envelopes.

Oh, and I added a small update to my above downloads, providing my proper VS template patch, making an actual patch of it this time, as well as Sean W's much better patch.  These two patches give you some idea of how a Prophet VS sounds.  I wish someone in Arturia, or whoever has a copy of the Prophet V softsynth, would make up some patches on the Origin of the better sounds available in the Prophet V.  As well as the other marvelous Arturia softsynths.  If I have the money this year, I do intend to get the Analog Collection and see about this myself, but it would be nice if someone has some of these to share a few patches.

So... have fun with this beastie.  

Since I'm home sick from work and have a modicum of consciousness, I thought I'd post a bit of that programming tutorial.  It's hard to think of this like a beginner, having done it for so long, but I'll see if I can make this as easy for those who never opened an editor to those who have been doing this for a while.  Hopefully without sounding condescending.    There are plenty of tutorials around the net to show you how to make a brass or string patch step by step, so this is going to be more of a "philosophy of programming" synthguy style.

I just came across my manual as of writing this, so rather than repeat everything it says, I'd suggest you browse it, as it gives an excellent overview of subtractive synthesis, which is what analog synthesizers do.  It also describes the nature of the different oscillators and filters they provide in the Origin.

The best tutorial is most likely the Origin itself.  When you have a grasp of these different modules and what makes them different, then open up a patch you like and see how it's set up.  Because of the nature of modular synths, the thing could be wired up any number of ways.  To see roughly how the modules are connected, open up the Edit window.  It begins in the RACK view, which gives you a list of the modules in the patch and a rough idea of the knob settings.  But to get an idea of how these are connected, click on the PATCH tab at the top.  Hopefully the instrument was built in this window, because it enables you to place each module rather sensibly.  If you start in RACK view, the PATCH view of the modules can be a random mess, because they're placed in the order you selected modules.

In my "template" patches, since they're based on vintage analog synths, you usually have two or three OSCs running into a Mixer module.  This often feeds a Lowpass filter of some type, though on the ARPs and Oberheims, some of them have Highpass filters first.  The CS-80 uses its layout of one OSC running into a Highpass filter, into a Lowpass filter, and then to an Output, and this is doubled in two layers.

A major factor of what makes these patches so rich and interesting are the number of OSCs used, their waveforms, and their pitches.  There aren't that many hard and fast rules for using oscillators and waveforms.  A few are that sawtooth waves are good for strings, brass, flute, basses and lead sounds.  Square for sounds like clarinet.  Pulse for oboe, sax, harpsichord and clavinet, as well as leads.  Triangle is good for adding bottom end girth to sounds, or some organ sounds.  Sine is a very pure tone, mostly good for adding bottom to sounds when triangle adds too much "color" from the added harmonics, and is good for organ sounds.  Many natural sounds such as the winds like clarinet, oboe and flute, are best done with just one oscillator.  Strings, brass and orchestral sounds are another matter, and you can use as many OSCs as you see fit.  More OSCs give you more waves to play with, and richer harmonics for more complex sounds.  Big sounds are easy to get with the MemoryMg and CS-80, and very big complex sounds are possible if you take the combo ARP-Mg or Obi-Mg patches, pan the outputs to the center and make them polyphonic.

When I detune OSCs, if the oscillator will allow it, I'll tune one up, the other down, because the apparent pitch of the sound is going to be in-between the OSC pitches.  So say I want to tune two ARP OSCs with a detune amount of six cents.  If I left the first OSC at 0 and detuned the second -6, the patch would sound as if it was tuned down -3 cents.  So instead I tune one at +3, the other at -3.  If you'd rather not figure out where +/- 2.5 is on the Origin scale for a detune of five cents or some odd amount, you could tune one at +2, the other at -3.  The reason is that for most people, a slightly flat tone is more musically acceptable than one slightly sharp.

Another thing that makes synth sounds larger and cooler is how many complete layers each patch has.  A layer is going to be a whole synth voice, with its own OSC, Filter, Envelopes and Output.  Each layer, each doing its own thing, makes patches more complex and expressive.  The ARP Chroma and CS-80 templates, as well as the combo templates, are made of sounds with two complete layers.  If you go to these templates with two Outputs lit, and turn off one then the other as you play, you'll notice that many of my patches have slightly different sounds between these two layers.  With multi-layer patches like these, vary the parameters a little so they aren't making the exact same sound, just detuned a bit.  Change the envelopes slightly.  While synthesizers have definite settings that make templates authentic, feel free to change things up.  Add velocity response.  If both use 4 Pole Lowpass Filters, try making one 2 Pole if the filter will allow it, and see how it sounds, though you'll probably have to lower the cutoff as well.

One thing I do with filter response is keep keyboard tracking low, somewhere around 0.100-0.150, as this sounds the most natural.  If tracking is much higher than this, it seems that lower notes get too dark or muted compared to higher notes.  Also in many patches, I use keyboard tracking on the envelopes.  With many string patches on analog synths which have key tracking on envelopes, the higher notes have shorter attack and release than lower notes.  Also, pianos have shorter decay on higher notes than lower ones.  To do this, use negative keyboard tracking, because you want the parameters to have their times reduced by higher notes.

I love making my patches expressive, so I tend to have at least a little velocity and pressure response.  On the Output, this is easy.  You can make an envelope fully velocity controlled, or you can keep it standard, but turn it down slightly, to perhaps 0.700 output, then add in keyboard velocity as a modulator, 0.300 or more.  I tend to make the total greater than 1.000 to make sure the output is producing full volume without having to bang the keys.  You can do the exact same thing with the filters, adding in some velocity to open them, though I don't like using this method on filters.  Velocity will open the filter some, and then it will stay at that frequency, at least, for the duration of the note.  I prefer to use velocity to add more envelope.  I also use Expression Pedal in almost all my patches.

In many of them, I use key pressure to add vibrato or tremolo effects.  To do this, go to the Progr page and open up LFO 1, or whichever one you're using for vibrato.  Go to AM INPUT and add a source.  From the menu, select Keyboard near the bottom of the list and select Pressure.  The knob for this should be all the way up or so, which is good.  You don't want to have to crush your keys to add vibrato.  However, the Origin tends to add WAY too much vibrato when you select Output destinations.  It sounds more natural if you use very low amounts such as a range between 0.005-0.015 or so, and you need to use the Fine button to get those small numbers.  Set this to how you like it.

I mentioned that for doing natural vibrato such as on a violin, they tend to pull back from the root pitch, rather than wobbling up and down from it, which is how synth vibrato works.  For natural vibrato, use a sine wave and make sure the button to the right of the amount knob doesn't have a B in it.  This is Bipolar, the usual synthesizer style, and sweeps the LFO sinewave above and below root pitch.  Set it to I for Inverted, or U for Unipolar, but make sure if you're doing something like a violin that it produces a negative sweep, so Inverted is easier.  For guitar and bass, vibrato is induced by pushing and stretching the strings with the fingers (whammy bar is a different story), so make sure it's positive.  This causes the LFO to sweep from the root pitch, not across it, the way acoustic instrument players usually do it.  However if you add vibrato now, it makes the note sound off pitch.  This is because the apparent pitch of the note is now the center of the LFO sweep, which creeps down (or up for guitar).  To compensate, add just a bit of positive keyboard pressure at the OSC's FM input.  You'll have to adjust this carefully to suit your playing style and taste.  Frankly though this is easier, the best thing to do is to "play" the vibrato by hand with the pitch wheel or joystick of your controller keyboard, the way the original musicians do it.  Easy does it!  Actual vibrato is usually very light.

With winds like flute or clarinet, pitch vibrato is actually very slight.  The effect you hear is actually tremolo, which is changes in volume and timbre.  To do this, do the same thing as above, but route the LFO to the lowpass filter(s), and perhaps some to the Output, and again, Inverted or Unipolar, but make sure it's a negative signal to pull the filters down.  A tiny amount can also go to the OSC(s).

One thing I noticed on a few CS-80 patches people make is that the modulation only goes to the Lowpass Filters, the way many other synths are programmed.  On the CS-80, you have to modify it to achieve this.  On stock CS-80s, both filters in a layer are affected equally.  Personally, I think this is what makes a CS so unique, so I program all my modulation the way it works on the actual instrument, even if LP Filter mod alone might sound a little cooler.

Well, hopefully these few tips will help you a bit with your own programming.  Feel free to ask questions!

Hello , Patches is it ok with os 1.4 ?