ricons là gì

This was an interesting one. I’d never heard of the Akai VX600 until a couple of weeks ago, so I came into it with absolutely no preconceptions.

When I saw it, I assumed it was a sampler. It’s actually a synth and surprisingly, given it only has 37-keys, it’s a six-voice poly synth. Perhaps most unexpected is the fact that it’s analogue.

So with the surprises out of the way, I fired it up and discovered you have to run a computer controlled calibration and let it warm up. It’s actually quite reminiscent of the Oberheim Xpander in terms of workflow and quirks.

You have two oscillators per voice with various combinable waveshapes, three envelopes, two filters, two LFOs per voice. It’s velocity sensitive and has aftertouch and midi. It’s also multitimbral and you can load different sounds for each voice (as you can on the Xpander).

There’s even a multi-pin connection to get all the voices separately and a whole setup dedicated for use with a wind controller. It’s quite an oddball!

I actually wrote three pieces of music on it before I found a direction that had some cohesion. I started with a warped magical thing, then did something dystopian and finally landed with the track heard in the video. I hope you like it and that it gives off the character of the synth.

Instruments:
Akai VX600 (1988)
Roland JX-3P + PG200 (1983)
Boss CE-2 and DM-2 pedals
Roland TR-77 (1972)
I sampled and made custom rhythms as it’s a preset machine
Fairlight CMI II drum samples
Abbey Road 80s Drummer
Fairlight Vocal Samples layered with my voice through a Voice Spectra Vocoder
String section – Spitfire Audio and LA Scoring Strings
End vocals recorded with an AKG C414s

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80s nostalgia.

Drums: Roland TR-707
Bass, arps & pads: Roland Juno-6 (synced to the TR-707)
Leads & FX: Yamaha DX7
Guitars: Ibanez JEM 7DBK, Earthquaker Devices "Organizer" pedal, Fender Blues Junior II, mic'd with an SM57
Vsts: Korg delta patch for sub-bass, Kontakt Abbey Road 80s drums for extra layer in the final chorus only

FX: U-he Satin, Waves EQs and compressors, Past to future Lexicon reverb impulses. TR-707 was printed to different channels for processing. Toms have gated reverb, clap and tambourine have a long tail reverb and delay, hi-hats, cow bell and snare have light reverb and the kick is totally dry.

Download a free mp3 of this track: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3o7nralix20...

Composition & recording © Alex Ball 2017

Finally got to have some time with the one Jupiter I've not played properly; the Jupiter-6 from 1983.

For starters, it's a big bulky instrument that matches the Jupiter-8 in terms of scale, but then there are quite a lot of differences.

Its sound is rawer and colder than the hi-fi Jupiter-8, most likely to do with it having different circuits and also digital LFOs and envelopes (combined with an otherwise analogue signal path).

It also has combinable wave shapes on both of the oscillators (rather than them being switchable as on the Jupiter-8) and various keyboard modes with some quite narly detune.

The verdict: I like it.

Sounds used:
Roland Jupiter-6 (1983)
Roland SH-101 (1982)
Yamaha DX7 (1983)
Oberheim DX (1983)
Sequential Drumtraks (1984)
Roland TR-606 (1981)
Roland TR-808 (1980)
Ibanez JEM 7DBK (2001) / Fender Blues Junior II mic'd with an SM57 / Boss CE-2 (1979)
Vocals recorded with an AKG C414s

Sequencer: Cubase
Plugins: Waves, IK Multimedia, Past to future, Steinberg, Goodhertz

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Following my Daft Punk synth tutorial, a number of people sent me messages asking for a demonstration of Mr Oizo's "Flat Beat" which was done on a Korg MS-20 and an Akai S1000.

In the video we look at the principals of setting up that sound and why I concluded that he likely created it from a composite of samples, rather than in one pass.

Charles Ferraro's great explanation of the unusual bi-polar nature of EG2 on the Korg MS-20 is here: https://youtu.be/4AMV7YgpEXE

Many thanks for watching and for your ongoing support.

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I’ve been leant a Roland System 500 for a video and so the first thing I wanted to try with it was a side-by-side with the System 100m (1978) and SH-5 (1976) as these are two of the heritage synths that inspired it.

The third synth it’s based on is the System 700, but I’m sure you can forgive me for not getting that one in there too!

All-in-all I think the System 500 is excellent, has the Roland family sound and stands up well against the classics that inspired it. Trying to be as impartial as possible, there are a couple of comments I had about it that could be improved which I also mention, but I genuinely think it’s a great sounding and accessible modular synth.

Let me know what you think about it.

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