Yes, that was very good, as is chimpy's piece I linked to. I think I'll go ahead and make that post.
First, about Klause Schultze's music track. To begin with, he has evidently interfaced a number of those synths to his Modular Mg, which you will notice as he begins adjusting settings on the MicroMg just after the 2:15 mark - and which he is clearly not playing. I suspect the MiniMg is interfaced to play voices on the Modular or something, perhaps even the ARP 2600, as when he begins playing it, there is a subtle phase shifter effect on the sound, so subtle that it sounds like the effect is on a separate synth voice. This wouldn't be surprising, as these vintage instruments were given basic interfacing capabilities back then in order for the true synthesists like Klause, Edgar Froese and others to link together synths into larger hybrid instruments. This is a possible part of the reason there are so many patch cables running all over the place, besides the fact that the Modular Mg needed to be set up for other songs too, but I digress.
In any case, the sequence is apparently not just playing a patch on the Modular, but a layer on the MicroMg as well. And the MicroMg doesn't sound very much like the Modular, or the Mini either. And if this is true, the sequence is a hybrid sound created by playing both instruments together.
Now, regardless of
what synth is making
what sound, it's pretty clear to me that any good synthesist can recreate Klause's entire performance just on the Origin, with the possible help of an effects unit at least for the reverb, because the 'verb on the Origin is a bit lacking in quality. In fact, even though the sonic character wouldn't be exactly the same, I think I could get very close to it with my KORG M3, which has the Radias board installed.
Like MoonP, I've been programming synths for decades, and I've been very lucky to be able to work on dozens of synthesizers; analog vintage, digital, romplers, VA - even FM and physical modeling which are the real hair-pullers, and grasp the capabilities of all of them. And I can safely say that the only stinker in the bunch is the Roland Fantom, the X in particular as it's the one I'm familiar with, as its filters are the worst of any synth I've ever used. Great for acoustic instrument shaping, pretty good at certain modern digital synth sounds, but thin and brittle sounding compared to digital filters on other synths, so making vintage synth sounds on it is sometimes an epic struggle. But even on it, I think I can handle a very good imitation of Klause's performance, especially the PolyMg which is essentially a glorified ARP Omni.
I can't tell you how many times on numerous message boards I've seen someone asking for a sound which ends up being something very basic. On occasion, there are certain characteristics which require some careful programming, or a certain instrument, like Rush's "Tom Sawyer filter sweep" which is done on a MiniMg. Now, only a Mg really sounds like a Mg, but on many vintage synths like an Oberheim, you can get close, as well on VAs like a Radias, Virus or Ion. There was a guy on the Sonikmatter boards who enthused about some of Tony Banks' Synclavier and other sounds he used in some performance from Invisible Touch. So he pointed us to a Youtube of it, and it ended up being, as usual, very simple patches almost anything could recreate. One was triangle waves in octaves with perhaps no filtering at all, just some vibrato, and another was a nasal pulse with perhaps some sawtooth, again lightly filtered or not at all. Really simple stuff, easy to recreate, if you know synthesizers.
And honestly - assuming you guys are still with me
- the Klause Schultze sounds may have been very fresh, new, engaging, lovely stuff in the late 70s, but these days are easy peasy to reproduce on a wide variety of synths, and as I said, even romplers. In fact, today you can buy any rompler from KORG (Kronos in particular), Kurzweil (K2600, PC3), Roland (Jupiter-50, -80) or Yamaha (Motif), and if you're careful with your programming and performing, you can recreate most every aspect of the performances of just about any electronic music group you care to name. If you're really good, ANY group of ANY nature.
I say this because I'm a careful programmer. I've been dissecting sounds for way many years before these big expose articles in magazines like Sound On Sound or Mix came along to pull back the curtain on certain clever studio techniques, or online tutorials on synth programming. I had to learn stuff on my own, and if I wanted a sound, and wanted to produce a song that sounded right, I had to roll up my sleeves and figure it out. And until a few years ago, I had to force my synths to sound like a wide number of other instruments Now, I will say that there are some crazy patches done on any number of synths which are pretty different, arcane, or just plain weird. Those will keep you up at night if you're trying to figure those out. And with configurable synths like a Yamaha FM, Roland, Kurzweil, OASYS/Kronos or a modular, you're some kind of a synth wizard if you can
remotely fathom how some of the exotic patches were created.
In comparison, the sounds Klause Schultze created in that video are kindergarten school simple. hermitnerd and chimpy among countless others here have done a great job of showing how authentic the Origin can sound. But if anyone still has doubts about it, I may just sign up on Soundcloud and do a little example of some "krautspace" music as chimpy and hermitnerd did, but with a variety of synths, and see if anyone can tell which is which.
