Re: [LAU] looking for a midi recording softsynth

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 04:12:56PM +0000, andy baxter wrote:
> On 10/12/10 10:02, andy baxter wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was talking to a friend this morning about a project I thought we
>> could do together. He plays free improv piano/keyboard music - dense
>> patterns and textures improvised in live time. I was saying that in
>> principle it would be possible to record a piece of his music on a
>> keyboard as a midi stream, then feed it through a softsynth in a
>> studio and tweak the synth parameters as it's playing to produce the
>> final piece.
>>
>> He liked the idea, but I'm not sure if there's a linux softsynth that
>> would work like this. What it needs to do is:
>>
>> - produce sounds from a midi stream in real time, with the sound
>> altered by tweaking various parameters (knobs and buttons).
>> - the tweaks should be recordable so that you can play them back and
>> re-tweak them until you get the result you want.
>> - the feature I really want is to be able to set presets for the
>> parameters and then fade between presets in real time. E.g. if there
>> are two presets which both use a resonant low pass filter, I want to
>> be able to move a single slider that moves the filter value from one
>> to the other continuously to create a filter sweep. This is different
>> from a fade at the audio stream level.
>
> Thanks for all the replies so far.
>
> Has anyone seen a program which does anything like what I've described
> in the last item above? If not, I might have a go at writing my own in
> supercollider or python. The idea would be that you could play with all
> the parameters of a synth to get a sound you liked, tell the program to
> record those settings as midi CC values, do the same again to get a
> different sound, record those settings, and then be able to morph
> between the two with a crossfade slider. Then for live performance you
> would have a DJ like interface where you could load different patch
> settings into either end of the crossfade, start with one and morph to
> the other whilst playing, with the controllers all varying smoothly at
> the same time to take you from one sound to the other.
>

I used to use Seq24 for this. I'd record a part, just the notes, then I'd on a separate track, overdub in my messing around with all the knobs and buttons, recorded via MIDI CC's.

Was kind of useful for improv, since I'd have a few tracks of performance (notes) and a few tracks of various parameter tweakages, and I could mix and match them pseudo-randomly by muting/unmuting.

I also have had good luck with PHASEX for doing crazy synthy experimental sounding stuff. I think with Seq224 and an array of linux softsynths with good MIDI control capabilities (PHASEX, Amsynth, AMS, whatever), and a good MIDI controller with lots of buttons and knobs, you could really get out there with experimental improv stuff.

-ken
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Received on Fri Dec 10 20:15:03 2010