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synth sounds with ND2

Postby thejive » 16 Jun 2014, 08:35

hello!

i was wondering if it was possible to use the ND2 as a straight up virtual-analog / digital synth. for example:

could i use 2 channels for a 2-osc mono bass sound and the remaining 4 channels for a 4-voice polysynth sound?

any advice would be greatly appreciated!

thanks.
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synth sounds with ND2


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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby wartaler » 16 Jun 2014, 16:26

Hi,

It's 6 completely independent monophonic synths in one, each with it's own MIDI channel if you want
I made some patches where I have a minimal drumset, a monophonic bass, and a monophonic lead for example - the latter 2 I can play with a keyboard, an arpeggiator app and/or a step sequencer app

but poly won't work, that is, you won't be able to play chords on a connected MIDI keyboard and hear them coming out of the ND2, not possible..
perhaps if you're handy programming: let a computer split the chords you play into notes and send them to individual MIDI channels?
or create a couple of MIDI tracks in your DAW (4 in your example, but up to 6 if you like) - then split up your chords yourself into the separate monophonic MIDI tracks

Cheers,
Albert
Last edited by wartaler on 20 Jun 2014, 20:50, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby thejive » 17 Jun 2014, 08:15

Thanks for the advice! Much appreciated.
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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby clickclack777 » 25 Jun 2014, 09:14

Here is a track I did with the ND2 only. Separate midi tracks for two channels with synth sounds + some chorus on them. The rest has a light reverb on them. No compression.

Last edited by clickclack777 on 25 Jun 2014, 09:38, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby thejive » 28 Jun 2014, 16:38

Very cool! Thanks!

Another thing I can't figure out - is it possible to set the analog oscillators to gate mode so that they sustain as long as a midi note sustains?

Cheers!
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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby wartaler » 28 Jun 2014, 23:25

Hi, well,

-as you probably noticed - the lengths of the notes you send thru MIDI don't influence the duration of notes coming out of your ND2, there's no setting to change that,
of course, each channel is monophonic so triggering a new note on the same channel does stop the previous - but that isn't what you are after I think,
- you want to be able to stop a note playing whenever you want to, but that will require some additional programming;

my starting point would be a sound with quite a long decay, then:
- control the Channel level (CC 7), however there is a slight zipper sound artifact when you alter level a little bit already - not sure what happens if you go to 0 directly, but check that out first, or
- alter decay time(s) of tone (CC 50) and noise (CC 21), works smoothly even when a note is already playing, or
- if you only need to mute 1 channel: create a silent patch on another channel and put both in the mute group, triggering the silent channel will mute your note
Edit: see below...!
Albert
Last edited by wartaler on 30 Jun 2014, 01:08, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby wartaler » 29 Jun 2014, 16:18

Hi!

With Cubase I managed to get a 6 voice synth with note lengths as you play them; really cool!
I started by programming the same synth sound on all 6 Channels of my ND2 (group edit), also with identical pitch (set at 60 ) but each Channel got it's own MIDI channel (Ch.xx): MIDI channel 1-6

In Cubase I used 2 MIDI plugins 'midiPolyphony' and 'midiConverter3' that can be found here: http://thepiz.org/plugins/?p=pizmidi

1) When you play a chord, the 'midiPolyphony' plugin splits it up and sends the individual notes to separate MIDI channels, in my case MIDI channel 1 thru 6 are available, (see screenshot)

2) With 'midiConverter3' I let note-on messages turn the Decay time (CC50) to the maximum value (127), and let note-off messages turn the Decay time back to minimum value (0) - alternatively you first program a sound with a long Decay on your ND2, then let note-on messages turn Channel Level to max. (CC7, e.g. val.127) and note-off messages turn Level back to min. (CC7, val.0) - In any case, for each Channel of the ND2 I used 2 instances of this plugin, and I had to set up 3 tracks in Cubase to get it all working* (see screenshot), so I had 18+1=19 tracks in total! Of course, a MIDI recording only has to be placed on track 1 (the one with the midiPolyphony plugin), the rest of the tracks only serve to route and modify the MIDI messages before they go to the ND2..

- I got best results controlling Decay time of the Tone section (CC50), I didn't test it with Noise Decay time (CC21) but should work the same
- it would make more sense controlling channel Level (CC7) because then you control the whole sound (including Noise) at once.. but this method rendered some minute audio clicking as I expected .. (OS v2.x)

Conclusion: it can be done but it requires some software, any VST host will be able to do it as described as above
I bet Ableton is much better suited for these type of tricks than Cubase is - but it works, that counts
- any other ideas/improvements are welcome!

Have fun experimenting & playing!

Cheers,
Albert


*In Cubase third party MIDI plugins cannot be inserted like you would plugins on audio tracks, you have to use an instrument track, more on that here:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=299489
Attachments
ND2 polysynth MIDI setup Cubase.jpg
screenshot with the tracks and plugins visible for reference
ND2 polysynth MIDI setup Cubase.jpg (208.79 KiB) Viewed 3917 times
Last edited by wartaler on 04 Jul 2014, 18:53, edited 8 times in total.
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Re: synth sounds with ND2

Postby thejive » 30 Jun 2014, 06:34

Albert,

Thanks so much for that! Really ingenious and generous of you to share!

Best,

Jivraj
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