Wsm - February 2007 - Issue 010

Sound Magazine www.Wusik.com

February 2007 #010

Maestro Concert Grand Piano Artvera - Chord Examples HQ Synthetica Volume 4 Dijiridu Lite Set

Into the Core Microtuning on the Wusik JEN SX1000 Synthetone AraldFX DKSPro Drum Synthesizer

Special:

Creating Sounds Bonanza and much more...

Letterfrom theEditor

Sound Magazine Editorial Magazine Layout: MoniKe Editors: WilliamK and MoniKe

It’s funny on how a simple idea can turn into something big.

Thanks to all contributions so far, we were able to keep up the momentum of creating a better magazine with every issue.

This month we have a Creating Sounds Bonanza, with several articles on how to create new sounds, from simple to total chaos.

Also, we present some new writers and contributors this month. We hope to see this list growing every month.

If you want to help us out, drop us a line, I'm sure we can make you a good deal. For most situations, we offer a freebie in return. We are still a small non-ad oriented magazine, so we can't afford expensive stuff. But still, we are always open for ideas.

Have fun, and don't forget to tell us your thoughts about the magazine so far, and what you would like to see ion future issues.

WilliamK: Creating Sounds: Oh Sync, Bad Granular, Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine, Sampling a Filter. What's on Your Amp, The Voices and The Synth Romance.

Sounds: HQ Synthetica 4 (part of the sounds and extra presets) www.william-k.com

Dilom - aka DamBros: Flying Windows Special thanks to Claudia Picchi

Artvera How to Easily Generate Melodic Patterns - Part 1 Sounds: Chord Examples - www.artvera-music.com

Antonio Grazioli - aka Autodafe: JEN SX1000 Synthetone - www.autodafe.net

Zachariah Weckter: Into the Core - www.strict-9.net

Jeremy Janzen Sounds: HQ Synthetica 4 (part of the sounds) www.nucleus-soundlab.com

freeztar Samba Rhythms in W3 - Sounds: Samba Kit

Rick Christy - aka grymmjack/designermonkey AraldFX DKSPro Drum Synthesizer www.designermonkey.us

Warren Burt Microtuning on the Wusik Sounds: Tuning Examples and Timbres.

by Wouter - aka Kyran Manytone Upright Bass

WilliamK and MoniKe

Kevin Breidenbach - aka synthgeek Sounds: HQ Synthetica 4 (part of the sounds) www.skincontact.com/synthgeek Mats Helgesson Sounds: Maestro Concert Grand Piano

Proof-Reading: Peter 'Ray' Savage - aka Funkychickendance

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In This Issue: February 2007

#010

Creating Sounds Bonanza: AraldFX DKS Pro Drum Synthesizer

by Rick Christy

• Oh Sync

by WilliamK • Samba Rhythms in W3 by freeztar • How to Easily Generate Melodic Patterns - by Artvera

In to the Core

by Zachariah Weckter

• Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine - by WilliamK • Bad Granular!

by WilliamK • Sampling a Filter

by WilliamK

Manytone Upright Bass

by Wouter

Microtuning on the Wusik

by Warren Burt

and more...

Jen SX1000 Synthetone

by Autodafe

Flying Windows - by Dambros

04

What's On Your Amp

11

The Voices

22

What's New

29

Ask William

29

The Synth Romance

56

Sound List

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by DamBros

I have a fixed idea about the day we will learn how to do away with or have control over gravity. With this we could simply fly without wings or any other mechanism.

We would just need a light thrust, along with the mere desire to levitate and move up, down, and to any direction we wish, quickly or slowly.

This is something I have been thinking of for many years, maybe because I save many pieces of conversations, book chapters, scenes of films, articles and illustrations that insists over and over that our brain has an enormous capacity but that we use just a small part of it, or because we suffered a genetic accident some millions of years ago, or because we lost the key to knowledge. A small example: the legendary king Salomon and the mythical Queen of Sheba. Madly in love, but living far away from each other. When the queen wished Solomon’s company, she would just think and the king would arrive at the palace in a few minutes.

This is in the book "Wir alle sind Kinder der Götter - Wenn Gräber reder Könnten" by Erich von Däniken.

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Very well, the day in which we will be able to make use of all the knowledge gathered over the centuries, I believe that moving our heavy physical body over the earth and air will be easier.

Expecting this to be possible soon, I try to imagine what practical things could be done as soon as this power is at our reach.

Obviously the first idea was music. How could we take advantage of the marvel of flying, hovering, plunging, coming and going like a breeze, wind, windstorm, a storm?

Windows, flying windows, Why? Because they have moving parts that can be opened or closed, just like the holes in the wind instruments.

I’ve already seen myself flying through awning windows, using the crank handle to control the opening and closing of them, while I rehearse my stunning movements: fast, slow, in a straight line, in curves, plunges and loopings. The sounds change in every detail of these movements.

They are beautiful variations that range from subtle nuances of high notes to the horrible earthquake like low notes, aggravated or accentuated by the sensibility of the ears and also granted with sound much above or below the normal sound level.

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I’ve tried al kinds of windows, always with bright and new sounds. Complex windows with windowpanes, shutters and screens for example are more difficult to maneuver as I don’t use any electronic gadget to control the opening of each of these elements. The screens for example, produce thousands of different sounds depending if you are moving facing them or if on your side against the wind. The shutters produce lower sounds, but also change according to your position. And all of this is complemented when we open or close sliding windowpanes. There is a mixture of varying sounds, some nice, some frightening, some irritating. But all of them surprising for all of those like us (readers and I) that appreciate the sound.

I couple of times I exaggerated in very difficult or even high risk situations, but I don’t regret it. Once I chose an awning window for a special performance. I waited for a very calm day without wind, for a high speed flight 2 inches above the ocean surface minimally measuring the opening of the window. I then lowered to 11/2 inches, down to 1 inch, to ½ an inch and finally met the border of the water. The objective was reached with great difficulty, because, as it was expected, even though all was calm the water surface wasn’t totally leveled, there were irregular waves, which made me constantly correct the altitude.

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The music festival I heard during the long course was worth all the effort, since it would enable the composition of a very strong emotional symphony.

In another moment, I selected some situations to test my curiosity in different speeds. In a fast sequence I left the sea level and flew over several mountains amongst the highest of the planet, I plummeted into the craters of some active volcanoes (this in very high speed), in black storm cloud formations and even in the eye of a tornado (but I swear to you that I won’t do that again). Imagine the variety and quality of the captured sounds. Try these and other flight styles with windows.

They are breathtaking and demand all the adrenalin available.

The only negative part in all of the experiences is the fact that invariably I end up forgetting to take a recorder to save all the melodies of this work. But the next time I promise to record them and make them available to all of you.

Have a great month!

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Creating Sounds

Oh Sync

by WilliamK

Making complex sounds with the Sync option

This is a bit more advanced, but did you know that you can make one Layer re-start other Layers?

The Sync option does just that. We use it on the other tutorial, about Drums.

To make the Drum-Sound play again.

When you Sync a Layer OSC, it will re-start the sound.

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We also added a new Sync option to Wusikstation, called Sync Fade. For this case, it will Fade the sound Out, re-start the waveform, and fade in. This makes a cleaner sound compared to the regular Sync option.

But what happens when you use this with pure waveforms, like Sine, Saw and Pulse? You get from chaos to odd timbres.

Creating Sounds

Oh Sync

Lets start by opening the included preset "Oh Sync 7"

On Layer O1 we load the Saw waveform. Tuned one octave above.

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Creating Sounds

Oh Sync Layer O2 will have the New Sine waveform. (it’s better for this case, than a Pure Sine) Set it to Two Octaves below. And turn its volume Down. (unless you want to hear it along) On the Mod-Matrix, just set O2 Output to O1 Sync Fade.

Now play some keys, specially the lower-range. Change O2 Tuning and see what happens.

Now for a more complex patch, load up "Oh Sync 1" Here we got Layers O1 and O3 Synced by Layer O1. While O3 is set to play 4 octaves above the other layers.

We also added an LFO to Sample Start to make the sound deviate a bit, making a very interesting effect.

There you go, very simple, but it also gets very complicated once you start playing with it.

Don't forget to check the other included presets. For more examples.

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What's on

your Amp

by WilliamK I'm always seeking new stuff, and iTunes has been a great tool for this task. As I was browsing for the last Stereo MC's album, Paradise, I notice that people who purchased it also purchased an album from a group called Afrika Bambaataa.

I got curious and decided: "what the hey, let's listen to this..." Not that I care that others purchased it, nothing like that, I just wanted someone to show me something groovy like Stereo MC's, that's all.

So there I was, listening to this new beat.

Kinda of Stereo MC's meets James Brown sort of thing. Very good Hip Beat with some good movement. No boring stuff most of the time.

The track "Metal" is just perfect, reminds me of Devo somehow, go figure.

Listen to the whole thing with a good set of bass-speakers. Listen to it loud, or don't listen at all. Play some Kenny-G if you are just afraid of new things.

Carrying on, the latest Enigma Album, "A Posteriori", is also something worth listening to. Sadly, it’s not your average Enigma work. Sounds more like Ambient music sometimes, but it still has some good gems inside. Enigma fans, don't miss this one.

This is old news, but I really loved the first album (only one so far) by Les Rythmes Digitales: "Darkdancer". The track "Sometimes", if you can find the Video, its fun to watch. Also, the track "Dreamin'" has a very good vibe and beat. Fans of Electronica and Retro music will love this, although it was done on the new Millennium. If you love 80's music, check the video of "Hey You What's That Sound!", you will have a blast!

Another oldie but goodie: Art of Noise. Anything will do, but the album "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" is really good. Mixes a bit of Drum-and-Bass / Break-Beat with good melody to it. If you can find an old song called "Paranoia", get it, its just pure genius a la Art of Noise, as always.

Last but not least, Clan of Xymox, "The Best of Clan of Xymox", it’s just a ‘must have’ for those who love Dark Electro/Pop music.

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Creating Sounds

Samba Rhythms in W3 by freeztar 12 Wusik Sound Magazine February 2007

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Creating Sounds

Samba Rhythms in W3 Beats and rhythms are arguably the most essential elements of any musical work. Out of all the rhythmic styles available, only a handful are commonly used, and seldom does one hear a pattern that sounds foreign, or at least different.

Increasing the range of rhythmic knowledge can help an artist attain a more diverse sound, which might help in the stagnant marshes that are... "progressive".

Brazilian rhythms are magical and addictive. The influence of African rhythms and instruments is prevalent in Brazilian percussion and gives beats a very primal and lively

feel. The typical Samba Bateria (or drum group) is comprised of some or all of the following instruments: Surdos, Caixas, Ganzas, Repeniques, Agogos, and Tamborims. Other Samba instruments, used outside of paradelike settings, include the Pandeiro, the Timbal, and Caixixi's (sometimes with Birimbaos).

A MIDI file is included to demonstrate one of the main approaches to Samba music using the "Samba Kit" soundset included with this issue. This MIDI file demonstrates a style known as Samba Reggae.

So let's get started!

Midi File #1 - Samba Reggae Included in this example are separate MIDI files for each instrument so that is easy to see the group functionality of each instrument.

Open the MIDI files in your MIDI/Audio host of choice (I'm using Tracktion2 for this example).

Notice that there are 5 tracks labeled with the various instruments' names.

Route all the MIDI tracks to Wusik and ensure that the dry preset is loaded (the others are for later ;) )...ok... press play...give a listen!

This style of Samba is called Samba Reggae and is my personal favorite style of Samba!

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Creating Sounds

Samba Rhythms in W3

The backbone beat is played by the Surdo and accentuates the 1 and 3 beats (assuming 4/4, but most samba parts are written in 2/4). The Surdo is a large bass drum that stands about 3 feet tall. Typically, a Samba bateria will have three Surdo sections which are arranged by head diameter (16"-18", 20"-22", and 24"). The head diameter dictates the pitch of the drum and more advanced Samba arrangements make full use of different sized Surdos to create intricate bass beats. The Surdo sampled for this soundset is an 18" skin/plastic head. A bit of sampling trickery produced results that mimic the pitch differences of various Surdos by sampling both the natural skin head (lower pitch and more body) and the plastic head on the other side (higher pitch and brighter).

The Pandeiro is a descendant of a similar Arabian instrument. The Pandeiro resembles a Tambourine, but has a tunable head and has much less 'ching' and a lot more timbre. The Pandeiro part in this example is a simple rhythm as it hits on 1,2,3, and 4. What makes the Pandeiro so interesting, and consequently so hard to play, is the variation of sounds you can coax from it. The typical way of playing it (as shown in this example) is to play the beats in this order: thumb hit along the outside edge, fingers hit closer to the center, palm hit at the rim, and back to the finger hit.

Playing the Pandeiro in this way creates what some call "the perfect percussion instrument" as it is capable of creating low, mid, and high frequencies.

There are many other patterns that the Pandeiro uses for Samba, but this example demonstrates the most basic style. Feel free to experiment!

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The Triangle is sometimes used in Samba music so I have included it here. It follows the pattern of what the Agogo would typically play and is capable of open, half-muted, and muted tones.

Next track down is the Cuica. Originally used as a lion call in Africa, the Cuica is a unique instrument to say the least. Those familiar with "to-go cups" have most certainly experienced the phenomenon of moving the straw through the lid and hearing a crying sound. If you have, then the Cuica will not sound so foreign to you. Typically played in a group, the Cuica parts can have a range similar to that of the Pandeiros'.

Give a listen to the Birimbao lastly. The Birimbao (or Berimbau) is reminiscent of a bow (like bow and arrow), and has a hollowed out gourd at the bottom end which is the resonator. The gourd is pressed against the body and a metal wire (actually from used car tires these days) is struck with a wooden stick, producing a drone-like string tone which can be manually 'whammied' by pressing and removing the opening of the gourd against the body. This instrument is a mainstay of Capoeira, but in this example I chose to use it as a Samba instrument and play it in the Samba Clave (which is 3-2). The Clave is the most distinguishing rhythm at the heart of Samba music and needs to be felt to really get the groove. The Clave is typically played by the Caixas, but this varies. The Birimbao works quite well as a Clave in this example...however untraditional.

Creating Sounds

Samba Rhythms in W3

Some things to remember > Samba beats are meant to be catchy! > Listen to the grooves in good samba recordings! > Samba is partially characterized by the "falling into the 1" feeling. Have the percussion speed up slightly and leadin to the "1" beat. > Have Fun! :)

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by Rick Christy (aka grymmjack/designermonkey)

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I must have been about 8 or 9 years old when my parents bought me my first electronic keyboard. It was a Casiotone MT-500 and in addition to the standard keyboard and switches and buttons it had these 4 bright orange-yellow rubber hexagonal drumpads that were the coolest. The pads did not have any velocity sensitivity or tweakability unless you consider assigning a sound to a pad a tweaking option, but I had so much fun with those things.

complete with pre/post routing per pad and an array of effects at your disposal; distortion, bitcrusher, shell, EQ, compression, reverb, and delay with flexible modulation options. This is one mean bit of kit! Excuse me while I kiss my MT-500 goodbye.

I can remember wishing that my keyboard had a record feature so that I could play some drums in and then play it back while playing the keyboard. Well okay, that dates me a bit. But it's interesting to consider how the future already exists in an ambitious or curious mind.

I got hold of this sweet instrument for a very generous price because I own DK+, the drum sampler product offered by the same developer. It was a stellar deal and after trying the demo for a few minutes and getting my bearings on why I needed DKS Pro and what it could do for me, I jumped at the opportunity.

There were some preset rhythms on the keyboard, ones that I remember vividly were "Bossa nova" and "Rock", those two were my favorites. Once you tweaked the tempo up to about the 8th or 9th dash (it was a slider with slow on one end and fast on the other) you could get some good sounds out of those prefab drum accompaniments.

So let's discuss some attributes of the DKS Pro that I really like. Number one is the high quality sound and the incredible amount of versatility you have with the architecture of each pad. Common among OSC 1 and 2 is a 4 stage envelope for pulse modulation. Global to all the oscillators is velocity sensitivity and output level (for mixing the sounds). The first oscillator has options for sine, triangle, and saw waveforms as a base sound. You have controls to adjust phase, frequency, and frequency modulation on OSC 1.

You can achieve a vast selection of kicks, thumps, whacks, zots, and bonks with OSC1 alone.

Fast forward about 20 years. DKS Pro from AraldFX has arrived to save us from less-tweakable drum synths. This new drum synthesizer features 8 pads, 3 outputs (2 free to assign), 3 oscillators per pad with sine, triangle, saw, PWM, and noise waveforms and envelopes for each wired into a mixer with 2 aux sends

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The ranges of the controls for adjusting the envelopes and various parameters is balanced very well for drums. It's almost impossible to make this thing spit out complete silence. I think that's one of the nicer bits of a kit like this, all the work and forethought put in by the devs you immediately benefit from.

On oscillator two you have the same controls for phase and frequency as OSC 1, but also an FM ratio button which lets you achieve interesting FM results. I've found that OSC 2 shapes what OSC 1 spits out but can also stand on its own. It's like the resonant part of the drum sound, whereas OSC 1 is like the attack. Though you can choose to use them in isolation by cranking the levels down or up as you like, they compliment each other very well.

OSC 2 has the same 4 stage envelope sliders for adjusting pulse modulation as well as the same velocity and level pots. To achieve tomtom and conga, or bongo hits simply adjust the envelope.

Lots of flexibility here from short deep sounds to long melodic tapering types like those produced from a memory drum.

Oscillator three is the noise generator. You can choose white or pink noise as a base. There is a very good filter with cutoff and resonance controls to shape the noise and can be operated in LP, BP, and HP modes. A nice feature on OSC 3 is the envelope modifier type buttons; fast attack with normal decay, fast attack with slow decay, and pulsating attack. Obviously the noise can be used for creating snare drum sounds and hats and cymbals and so on and only

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two sliders exist on this oscillator for attack and release for this reason by design.

The stuff you can do with those 3 oscillators is pretty versatile and the sound you build with them can be modulated. There are two modulation slots per pad and you have plenty of sources and destinations which are chosen from the same popup menu (a nice feature for making it easy to understand and quick to build). The modulation sources are either velocity or random. Every oscillator parameter that matters is exposed in the modulation section and you can set minimum and maximum ranges. This serves as a probability modifier for the random sources.

The randomizer is quite cool. This thing has some very solid randomization algorithms quite similar in quality to fuzpils Oatmeal (Oatmeal’s randomizer is superb). First the scope of randomization is broad; you can choose between randomization of a single pad or the entire kit. How it works with the sound randomizer is a treat. You select from the popup menu a pad type; kick, snare, hat, 1 OSC, 1 noise, osc+noise, and then click the "RND sound" button. It randomizes everything very quickly and in my tests it hasn't once produced something I couldn't use. The same is true for the kit randomizer -- the difference being all 8 pads are randomized en masse as opposed to a single pad. The cool bit is this; the kit randomizer honors your chosen pad type. So you can keep your key mapping just how you like it and still get some wicked instantly cool variations on your existing layout.

The keyboard mapping is really slick. Basically as you would expect each and every pad can be triggered via an incoming note-on message. There is no latch functionality for repeating a pad over and over that I have seen so far and it makes sense not to have one in a purely synthetic drum machine, I would have missed that feature if it was also built to handle audio samples. Anyway, each pad displays a key and an octave. You can click and drag up or down to set the key that triggers the pad, or (and this is the great part) you can simply click a little keyboard icon displayed under the key and octave readout and press a key on your keyboard. It's a pretty freaking nice implementation for solving an old problem.

As you would expect, DKS pro also features exclusive groups. It works the same as you have seen before; you play a pad and if you play another pad after that one which shares the same group it silences the previous in favor of the new pad. There is a neat implementation to provide for 'one-shot' types of drumming where you trigger it and regardless if you trigger it again, it will continue to the end of it's envelope all the way through it's release stage.

Each pad has its own large trigger button that animates when you trigger it via MIDI or when you click on it. Mute and solo buttons along with level and pan sliders are also present on each pad complete with stereo metering. The architecture of the pads allows for 4 effects and 2 sends.

The distortion effect is quite good.

It isn't overly fuzzy, but there is a "fuzz" button which you can turn on to get that kind of sound.

There is simply one "level" knob control to tweak for distortion. It is a nice distortion and has an overdrive like effect on the sound. The "fuzz" option warms it up a bit giving it a saturated sound. The bitcrusher effect is also available per pad.

You have quantization options for 4, 8, and 12 bits to make all the MPC users happy. The "shell" effect is an interesting one as it's intent is to emulate the body of a hollow enclosed space. To my ears it sounds more like a filter and I have been using it to give a more realistic sound to some of the kicks I've created.

Two controls are provided to help shape the shell level and size. Last on the pad effects chain is an EQ which provides for low-shelf, hi-shelf, and notch frequency tweaking. A nice graphical control is available for dragging and listening as you tweak. It would be cool if using right click on the graph and dragging up and down allowed adjustment of the bandwidth, but it doesn't.

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Each of the 2 sends has a slider on the pad and can be routed post or pre-fader. A nice attention to detail is that you can also turn a send off without taking the slider down to zero, allowing you to compare what a pad sounds like with and without the send effect without altering your send level. Each of the sends has it's own separate level pot and pan slider which you can adjust for overall effect at the output stage.

Additionally there is a send 1-to-send 2 routing toggle which allows for some more creative possibilities.

The effects for the sends themselves are multitap delay, compression, and ambience. The delay has up to four taps and an LFO which adjust the taps. The LFO has controls for rate and depth and they are in good ranges.

Each tap has controls for pan, time, gain, filter cutoff, filter q, and the possibility to be configured as a tempo-synced tap independently.

When tempo-sync is engaged, the tap time turns into a unit measurement. The options for temposync are 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and eighth note and sixteenth note triplets. Units for this range from 1 to 20. So you can get almost any combination you desire per tap and independently. Each tap can be toggled on and off, another nice attention todetail. There is also an FX wizard provided which when clicking on the label provides a popup menu of choices for presets for the multitap effect. It was slightly confusing to use the multitap delay until I experimented with it, and the wizard helped me to realize how it worked. I did not read the manual in advance though. Last parameters on the multi-tap is the wet/dry mix

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and global feedback. These do just as they should. Setting dry to negative infinity allows for traditional aux send/return behavior.

Next is the compressor. I was very happy to discover it is just as good and easy to quickly setup as the one in DK+. The same nice stereo metering with gain reduction is present on DKS Pro as well. The compressor controls are gain, threshold, attack, ratio, and release. You know what they do. The compressor sounds good to my ears.

Last in the effects array is "ambience" which I like to think of as reverb. It is a pretty good sounding effect with controls for shaping the ambience/reverb size and putting a filter on the tail as well as the expected dry/wet mix.

You will be delighted to know that with all the effects and sends turned on running a pretty average demonstration beat provided on the AraldFX website, and a really unusual but interesting setup of maximum release times on all 8 pads on all 3 oscs per pad and everything enabled the CPU use on my rusty old P4/1.9gHZ was topping out at 20%. A preset called 80 in 2k played the same loop over and over for an hour while I wrote this topping CPU at about 10%.

Very lean and mean considering what the hell this thing is doing :)

Ok so it's got a bunch of good stuff, is that where this review ends? Not at all.

The presets that come with the full pro version are pretty well made. At the time of this writing there are 15 kits ready to go out of the box covering a pretty good variety of sounds. A nice attention to detail is that the open and save dialogs for the plugin automatically point to the right locations without having to go looking around in a clunky dialog. In addition to the kits are several well organized presets for each pad type. I counted 192 individual pad presets.

Rounding out this great new drum synthesizer is it's wonderful interface. But if you don’t like it, or want to change a few things about it, you can do so as it is entirely skinnable. It comes with 3 skins - the default white one, and one called earth and one called fire. The earth one is earthtoney -- a nice tan and green blend.

The fire one is brighter and more vivid red and some yellow. Changing the skin is very simple, via a menu by clicking on the AraldFX Logo. You can bet your bottom dollar that designermonkey skin suite for DKS pro and DK+ will come in the future.

Lastly this plugin uses all XML, for all the presets and configurations and randomization settings and even the effects wizard. So anyone handy with a text editor could do some customizations and extend on something already great.

For the measly price I paid for this drum synth (being a DK+ customer has its benefits) I am stunned at the quality and the attention to detail put into this fine instrument. I understand there are crossgrade offers that are equally as generous for owners of microTonic and Waldorf Attack. It's just dumb luck that DKS pro was my first commercial drum synth purchase, and I will boldly wager it will be my last.

Try the demo at the AraldFX website (it's got noisebursts and limited presets) and see for yourself why the DKS Pro is a drum synth for the future.

Resources: Casiotone MT-500 page on Synthmania.com (mp3s available): http://www.synthmania.com/mt-500.htm

AraldFX homepage: http://www.araldfx.com AraldFX DKS Pro page: http://araldfx.com/dks/ DesignerMonkey: http://designermonkey.rekkerd.org

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s a e d i y r a n Visio K m a i l l i W by

Since I'm a big fan of Games, Nintendo, Arcades, whatever involves having fun... I decided to create the first Wusik Internet Game.

Maybe we could call it Wamesike: An Internet Game Experience.

Its just a silly simple idea, maybe some will like, and the rest will say this is just a waste of time. But what Game isn't?

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The Voices Anyhow, it all starts at the Wusik site, and ends up there. We don't really have any prizes right now, but maybe with time, if this proves to be a success, we can walk the extra mile.

1) Visit Wusik.com, find out the page, which first paragraph shows "OSC Layers".

The last phrase/paragraph of the whole page, starts with which letter?

2) Now find a site called "CD Baby", google will help you. Find the page with the text "We know it's hard to buy a CD online". What is the title related to this phrase? (its above the actual phrase, in big bold letters) Take the first letter of this phrase.

3) With google, search for herbienaka, it will say its a typo, the real name of a Korean Hotel. On the page that says "Hotel offer", (not offers) the first letter of the phrase right bellow it.

4) The menu of the site above, it has 5 mainitems, one is a name of a city, the last item. Do a search for it with Google.com - one of the results will be the famous free online enciclopedia. Visit that link. What's the first letter of a famous Theather the city seats?

Now visit www.wusik.com/wamesike and fill up the form. (lowercase) If you get it right, it will give you back another clue on how to continue.

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INTO THE CORE

INTO THE CORE

by Zachariah Weckter

They say the best things in life aren't free, but whoever came up with that slogan obviously never had the chance to explore open source software.

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INTO THE CORE During the years, computers get more powerful.

They become faster and more reliable. More flexible and alot easier to manage. Any one who's been at the upgrading game for a while has undoubtedly accumulated spare parts. Old RAM, small hard drives, outdated processors and the like. With all of these powerful programs we use to fuel our creative compulsions we all run out of juice at some point. I am a firm believer in recycling, maybe it's the waste not want not ideals my grandmother instilled in me as child, but if you ask my fiancee she'll tell you I'm just a pack rat. At any rate, I decided to put all those old outdated parts back together and try my hand with Linux. To my surprise, I found there was alot more to this platform than I had anticipated. I admit, it was really frustrating at first, being accustomed to the windows way of working, and I thought to myself, why hasn't anyone just put this in plain english?

So this month, I decided to share what I have discovered with all of you. And to be honest, it really is alot easier than you think. We'll go step by step through the process of installing and setting up Fedora Core 5 for music performance, and if you get stuck, there will be plenty of help along the way through the ways of forums.

A quick note on FC6: I had alot of problems installing Fedora Core 6 on this machine origionally, therefore I stuck

with FC5. Your results may be different, as I used spare parts lying around my studio that's quality was slightly questionable in the first place.

First off, you'll need to get the installation media.

Don't worry. It's all 100% free (and legal). If your would-be FC5 system has a DVD drive I recommend the DVD ISO because the CD version is 5 disks or so. If you use bit torrent or something similar, you can easily find the media through a search engine, or go to www.torrent.fedoraproject. org (It is also worthwhile mentioning here you will want to connect this machine to the internet during the installation processes, as it will make the task much easier.)

Installation is a sinch, power on the PC and press the F8 key to boot from CD and follow the walkthrough. It is recommended to install all packages when prompted, as this will save you alot of toil and trouble later on, should you want to use the system for more than just music making.

FC5 is a fully fledged operating system, after all. During setup you will be prompted to enter a root password. DO NOT FORGET THIS. It will be required throughout all installation processes, and there is not a means for root password recovery. At the end of the install process you will be required to create user names and passwords. Once this is completed, reboot.

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INTO THE CORE FC5

uses an istallation system called RPM (Red Hat package manager or RPM package manager). This enables you to proceed with installations in a relatively painless manner. Even better yet is the YUM program, which will install dependencies automatically for you, but more on this a little later.

Once FC5 reloads, you will want to type root as username and then enter the root password. If you log in as the user name & password you created at start up, you'll constantly be prompted to enter the root password to continue, wich gets a bit annoying after a few times. Now point your browser to www.ccrma.stanford.edu/pl anetccrma/software/installt wosix.html and follow the instructions listed there. These are all steps you will want to run in a terminal, which can be evoked by clicking Applications on your menu bar and navigating to Accessories, and choosing Terminal from the pop out menu.

With an open Terminal in front of you, type Rpm --import www.ccrma.stanford.edu/pl anetccrma/RPM-GPGKEY.planetccrma.txt and press enter.

This is a validation tool for Planet CCRMA (pronounced KARMA) applications. Press enter and you will see the terminal import the key. At

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this point, Planet CCRMA will basically become your server and YUM will do the rest, but first you'll need to update YUM to be sure it is picking up all the dependencies the applications require to run.

Dependencies are bits of code & other applications the apps you will be using need to have installed in order to run.

That understood, we need to update YUM using the Terminal again and typing rpm -Uvh www.ccrma.stanford.edu/pl anetccrma/mirror/fedora/li nux/planetccrma/5/i386/yu m-2.6.10.1.rhfc5.ccrma.noarch. rpm and then configure YUM to access the Planet CCRMA repositories. Enter rpm -Uvh www.ccrma.stanford.edu/pl anetccrma/mirror/fedora/li nux/planetccrma/5/i386/pl anetccrma-repo-1.02.rhfc5.ccrma.noarch.rpm now we can begin downloading and installing all programs directly with YUM, so from here on out, we will replace the rpm -Uvh command simply with YUM. Type in yum check-update

Once this is completed you are ready to upgrade FC5 into a lean, mean, low latency machine.

You will want to update the kernel (think of this as the operating system) to the most relevant version for your system. Continue to follow the instructions on

INTO THE CORE Planet CCRMA and be sure you pay attention to the version of kernel you are installing. Once you have The kernel updated, reboot the machine.

When Fedora reboots you will see a screen that enables you to choose wich kernel version you intend to use, and you can also modify the way it will start up here too. Choose the CCRMA build and boot up.

Once back up and running, you can use Planet CCRMAs walkthroughs for fine tuning your system, or you can skip this step & come back to it later. Using the link below you can browse the many available programs that you now have access to, entirely free and legal. www.ccrma.stanford.edu/pla netccrma/mirror/fedora/linux /planetccrma/5/i386/repodat a/repoview/Applications.Multi media.group.html And www.ccrma.stanford.edu/pla netccrma/software/packages. html

Obviously, there are far too many to expand upon in this space, but the basics are all there, soft synths, samplers, audio editors, sequencers, soundfont players, and the list goes on.

A few rules you should understand first:

1. Most applications require an audio driver called ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound

Architecture). Chances are this has already been installed along with the Planet CCRMA kernel, but if you should run into any problems you will probably find a solution at http://www.alsa-project.org/

2. Most programs also will require a program called JACK (Audio Connection Kit).

MAC users may be familiar with this already. I have found this program to be slightly troublesome, but with a little experimentation you will be able to get it running seamlessly.

More information on JACK can be found at www.jackaudio.org 3. Depending on your sound card configuration you can have varied issues, but if you refer to Planet CCRMAs guide to configuring them you shouldn't have much of a problem. You may also want to refer to the ALSA homepage for further technical support should things go awry.

4. When all else fails, reboot your system. Windows users are probably used to slick graphical interfaces that guide us through set up and installation procedures. Linux doesn't sway to this way of thinking, so remember your basic PC skills.

All of this being said it is now time to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We can begin with some of the more popular prgrams in the linux realm, and possibly some Ideas on integration...

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INTO THE CORE Sequencers: One of the most popular sequencers to date is Rosegarden, and users of Cubase should feel immediately comfortable with this program. It is now updated to version 4 and seems to have the largest gathering of users in the Linux realm. It's competitor, Ardour, has a cleaner interface and bears slight resemblances to Logic. Both work as traditional sequencers, but with linux I don't see them as being absolutely necessary.

Afterall, JACK will allow you to route inputs to outputs in a seemingly modular fashion, and I like tooling around with SEQ24. If you really want to spoil yourself you can splurge the $40.00 licence fee for Energy XT, which is evolving along quite nicely.

Instruments: Linux sampler is a superb soft-sampler, AlsaModular Synth can handle all of your synth needs, and I rather like the sounds ZynAddSubFx produces. Qsynth will play yor soundfonts while amsynth takes care of all your analogue modeling desires. Hydrogen is a sample based drum machine, a little tricky to get running, however.

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Audio Editors: The two biggest contenders in this category are Audacity and ReZound.

The latter is probably less popular than the former, as Audacity has also ported to the MAC. Although ReZound can also be used as a pretty nifty mastering tool.

Of course these are all just a handful of what's on offer and I encourage you to see what else is out there. I have set up the linux machine on a send/return bus using the EMU 1820m dock, and use it for additional audio processing when exhausting my PC. I Also use the soundcards input on the linux machine as an external effects processor and then pump the audio path into Cubase on my PC. With some extra time and good old fashioned studio rigging know how this setup offers enormous potential.

I guess I'll need to start buying new parts to upgrade my old machine... again...

?

??

??

Ask WilliamK ?

"Why do you update so often?"

Simple, to stay ahead of piracy.

But not only that, I'm always creating, so its very hard not to add more features. While working on the "Creating Sounds" articles for this issue, I found out several problems and also that something was missing.

So I had to code the extra-stuff and fix the bad-bugs. (as if there were any good-bugs around, eh?)

What's New @ Wusik

!! !

!

!

"Wusikstation V3.1.2 Release" By the second week of February, we will be releasing another big Wusikstation update.

This will be Free to all V3 users. This update will include several new features and important fixes.

Top New Features: - Categorized Library - Preset Rank System - Wavesequencer Slots - Linked Preset with Descriptions - File-Browser: Copy, Delete and Remove options - New WSeq Envelopes

?

"Do you really use only Wusikstation to create your songs?

Don't you have any other VSTi you like to use?"

Indeed, there's no other VST I rather use. Honestly, Wusikstation is the only one that I use. My recent Dark Ages collection (see www.william-k.com) I used SONAR 5, Anwida DX Reverber, Kjaerhus Audio Plugins, Wusikstation VSTi, Manystation Sounds, VOX'd and TSW (BITR) Sounds, Loops by LoopMasters, SmartLoops and ProSessionsLoops.

(M-Audio line) That's it, nothing else.

- 4 New WSeq Mod Lanes - New Mod-Matrix Sources and Destinations

"The Ultimate Wusikstation Group-Buy" And the Special Wsm Offer

! !

We extended the GB until March 31st. We already passed over 200 users.

The Wsm Free V4 Update offer was also extended until that date.

For more information, visit: www.wusik.com/w/wsgb.html

!

Wusik Sound Magazine February 2007 #010

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Creating Sounds

by Artvera

How to Easily Generate Melodic Patterns Part 1 30 Wusik Sound Magazine February 2007

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Creating Sounds How to Easily Generate Melodic Patterns

Sequencers can be pretty unfriendly at times. This has probably happened to you: you want to create melodic lines in the Wusikstation sequencer and you end up with ugly, unharmonious patterns. Or maybe you’re scratching your head over the problem of what intervals you can place in the sequencers under the TUNE option, to produce some type of chord?

An easy way round this difficulty is to create melodic patterns based on the notes of chords.

In Wusikstation, you can find 37 basic chords already defined for you.

They’re the files with the extension .Seq in the folder ‘Wseg Files.’ In there are two subfolders named "Regular Chords TUNE" and "Alternative Chords TUNE". The Alternative Chords are inversions: they have the highest note transposed to a lower octave, very useful for bringing variation to your music. In the Wseq folder is also a text file named "List of Chords".

This helpful list includes all 37 regular and alternative chords with the number values you can insert when using the TUNE option in the Wusikstation sequencers.

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Creating Sounds How to Easily Generate Melodic Patterns

Now you have several possibilities:

sequencer – in its regular order or mxzed up in some irregular order, or using an inverted order where the highest note is the root note of the chord.

that use at least three of the same notes and each chord will be painted in one sequencer.

(This is a way to making complex chords)

to create two (or more) measures with the two different chords.

"Regular Chords TUNE" and "Alternative Chords TUNE" if you are feeling lazy, or you’re using a skin with very small sequencer windows and the exact programming of notes is more hard. Just to select the option TUNE in your sequencer's window and then load one of the .Seq files.

The chords in these *Seq files are generally 4 or 5 notes long. If a chord has only three notes (a standard major or minor) then the value ‘zero’ is assigned to the fourth note.

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Getting Synchronized If you painted or loaded some chord into one of the sequencers or you painted a melodic line in one sequencer, you will need to copy this sequence into the second sequencer. Or, you can load a different chord that is related to the chord that you used in the first sequencer. One easy way is to use the option "Inverse" from the sequencer menu and simply invert these notes.

Now you can get fancy: try changing tempo in one sequencer to double, half or a third of the tempo of the other sequencer. (Don't forget to use the SYNC button!)

Once you have a sequence you like, try it out with miscellaneous sounds (samplesets) and use the adjustment option TUNE in the PITCH section to assign -12 or +12 values to shift octaves if the sound you have picked is very high or low.

Creating Sounds How to Easily Generate Melodic Patterns

You can also load another sound into the second slot of one sequencer, select the option ‘SoundSet’ and exchange sounds from a second sampleset. You can use also miscellaneous PAN effects for these notes. If you load samplesets with drum sounds, you can fix their pitch when these notes sound. So the sound of a drum sampleset will be always the same at each pushed key, as they would be with a live drummer.

I’ve prepared several examples where you can listen these standalone methods. The folder "Artvera - chord examples" include 28 presets that use *Seq files in both sequencers, Actually there are only 9 presets used, but each preset shows the standalone process at work.

All presets use one effect unit: Delay-Echo.

No other effects or modulation options are used, so the examples are very easy on CPU. The presets marked ‘A‘ are presets with piano sounds and with miscellaneous tempos in both sequencers. The second sequencer use option TUNE -12 in the PITCH section. Each preset is named after the chords used in both sequencers.

The presets marked ‘B’ are the same presets as before but use only the exchanged sounds.

The presets marked ‘C’ are final presets where another sampleset is slotted into one or both sequencers, several PAN options are assigned to notes, and drum sounds’ pitch is fixed. There’s also some minor adjusting of TUNE in the PITCH section and a small adjustment to FX1 in the Master section.

The preset ‘1-D-Inverse’ shows how a preset can sound quite different if you use the Inverse option.

Inverse is used only on W1.

The ‘5 and 6-C-Final’ presets show at W1 that you can use empty "Slots/SoundSets" to get some gate effects.

The ‘6-C-Final’ preset shows that you can even use different lengths in melodic sequence. W1 includes 5 notes while W2 uses only 4.

I hope that this tutorial will be helpful for you and that you can create miscellaneous melodic lines by experimenting with different chords, tempos, soundsets and miscellaneous notes. You can use miscellaneous effect units and modulation options to further enhance the process of creating interesting melodic presets.

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33

Creating Sounds

Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine

by WilliamK

Ever wondered if you could use the WSeq slots like a 4 track sequencer?

Since the new V3.1.2 update, we have presented you with new features that can turn the Wavesequencer into a really useful Drum-Machine.

We have included a few ready-to-use presets just so you can get up and running right away.

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Creating Sounds

Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine

Start by loading up the preset "Drum 01" that we included.

Open up the W1 layer. Each Mod column is one of the other layer’s sound.

Mod 1 = Closed HiHat (O1) Mod 2 = Open HiHat (O2) Mod 3 = Drum Kick (O3) Mod 4 = Snare (O4)

Click on the 5-8 to see the other lanes.

Mod 5 = Accent. This controls all layers’ volume.

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Creating Sounds

Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine Now click on W1 to go back to the main window, so you can see the Mod-Matrix.

Notice that the W1 Layer has no sound, we are only using its sequencer here.

We added a LFO to O1 (Closed HiHat), so it deviates a bit.

Each O layer is now Synced by using the Sequence Mods. (Mod 1 to 4) A Mod Event works just like a Mod, but with a special code that lets you use it to Sync other layers on every step. If you use a regular Mod, instead of a Mod Event, you would have to setup steps to max and zero, so it would Sync. With Mod Event you can use it on every step at full value.

On Layer O1 you can see how we setup the Closed HiHat Sound.

All layers were set to Mono Mode (Voices = 1) so Wusikstation doesn't eat too much CPU.

Layer O2 has the Open Hat Sound. Since we don't want it to sound right away, we added a bit of Attack to its envelope. So when you press a key, it won't sound, but after its Synced/Retrigger, you can hear its full sound.

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Creating Sounds

Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine On Layer O4, the Snare sound, we do the same thing, to prevent the sound from happening once we press a key.

Now for a more advanced example, we turn to another preset: "Drum 01 4 Sets (Lower Keys)" Here we will introduce the new Sequence Sets. Each W layer (W1 and W2) now can hold up to 9 Sequences.

By Default, it will always show and play the first sequence. You can see the other sequences by going up/down the number above the Arpeggiator knob. Shown as "3" in this screenshot. (it’s showing the 3rd sequence from 9 sets)

On the Mod-Matrix, we set it up so that the lower Keys (36 to 44) will control which Sequence we are playing.

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Creating Sounds

Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine You can also use a Filter with Envelope on the sequence.

Open up the next preset "Drum 01 Filter - 4 Sets" Mod 6 will control when the Filter Envelope will be retriggered.

With the Mod-Matrix we set Mod 6 Event to Mod Env1 Gate. So when Mod 6 is full the Env1 will start again. This is the Envelope we set for the Filter, on the lower part of the Mod-Matrix, showed here on this screenshot.

Some final hints. We also added 2 new options under the Right-Click Sequencer Menu: "Clone Selection" and "Copy All Seqs to next Slot".

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Creating Sounds

Wavesequencer = Drum-Machine For instance, you have 4 steps that you want repeated all over the sequence. Select those steps with Ctrl+Click, and do Right-Click->Seq Functions->Clone Selection.

Also, after you have created a Pattern.

(Sequencer Slot) you can copy this to the next slot.

By doing the same as above, but selecting "Copy All Seqs to next Slot" instead.

Test all included presets, use those as Templates to create your own drum-machines.

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Review

Manytone Upright Bass

by Wouter - aka Kyran

W

e are musicians, ergo, we need toys; preferably new ones. Our biggest toy is Wusikstation off course, but the all mighty Wusik is only as good as the samples you feed it. Now you probably already know all this, otherwise you wouldn't have bought this magazine.

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Review

B

ut this magazine isn't the only way to feed your samplelust. Somewhere in the cold frozen north called Canada lives a small group of people with a damn good studio and, apparently, quite some spare time. They're called Manytone and already brought us great products like ManyStation, ManyGuitar, ManyMapper (can we see a naming pattern emerging here?) and the recently released ManyOne, which I'm currently trying to convince myself not to buy. In other words: I'll review that soon..

A

part from their sample-based vst instruments, they also occasionally release separate samplepacks. As you might have guessed, these samplepacks are available in wusikSND format, though you can get them in various other formats such as sf2 and Vsampler, if you are so inclined. The one I'll be reviewing here is their Upright Bass collection. It was released near the end of 2006 together with an acoustic bass sampleset. These are still so fresh that the introductionary price is still in effect: you can get one for 19,95 USD or both for 38,95. Whenever this offer expires, they'll be 29,95 USD each.

N

ow what exactly do you get once you've unwrapped your new gift to yourself? Well, it contains a direct recorded and a mic'd sampleset, a nice pdf manual, a bunch of ManyGuitar presets and some Wusik/ManyStation presets, each nicely packaged in a rar archive. You'll have to imagine the shrink wrap yourself. As it's not really a program, installation of these things went flawlessly.

B

ut enough of this chitchat, and let's get down to what really matters: how does this thing sound? Well, very good, to be honest. At Manytone they have a slogan (nowadays you're not much of a company if you don't): we sample the instrument and the player. This leads to very realistic samplelibraries. It doesn't only contain the sampled notes, but also note slides, release noise, knocks on the body, slaps, etc. Everything you need to do a convincing jazzy upright bass performance is there. All these sounds are nicely mapped in each soundset. Where the sounds are located can easily be found in the pdf manual. The great advantage of this approach is that, if you train yourself a bit, you can even play this live.

I

f you listen to the demo mp3 they have up on their website, you'll hear that, with good programming, this thing can sound so realistically that it will fool even experienced bass players. Yes, it's that good.

T

hese are quality samples, the like of which I have seldom heard and at the current introductory price it's an absolute steal. The regular price isn't exactly bargain-basement cheap, but you'll still be hard pressed to find something this good for the price. If you're into jazz, or otherwise would like an upright bass, I can't recommend it hard enough.

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Creating Sounds

Bad Granular!

Creating LoFi Granular Effects Ever wondered if you could use the Wavesequencer as a Granular Processor?

Today is your lucky day, here we show a few simple examples on how to get some LoFi Granular Effects out of Wusikstation.

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Creating Sounds

Bad Granular!

We included a test preset with the magazine that you can open and follow up for this short tutorial.

Pic 1 -----------------------Pic 1

Pic 2 Here we use only Layer W1. Load up any sound there. Voices, Choirs and Phrases will get you better "horror" effects.

On the mod Matrix, just set an LFO or Envelope to the W1 Sample Start. Add some Delay or Reverb if you want.

------------------------

Pic 2

Open the WSeq Editor. Make a short loop of 2 or 4 steps. Here we have set higher, but you can lower it down to 2 steps and hear the difference.

Set the WSeq Envelope type, and Speed from 100 hz to 400 hz. (depending on the size of the loop, use your ears to know which is best) Set xFade to Max on the first 2 steps, and also the Retrig and Volume to Max on those steps.

Pic 3

Hear how this sounds. You can also test with Volume only on the first Step. To see how that changes the sound.

Pic 3 -----------------------For a more complicated effect, you can use the Tune option as shown pretty chaotic sounds.

Pic 4

Pic 4

There you go, a short but effective tutorial on how to get those grainy sounds out of Wusikstation.

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Microtuning on the

Wusik

by Warren Burt

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Microtuning on the TUNING IN GENERAL One of the things that sold me on the Wusikstation was its ability to do microtuning using Scala *.tun files. With these files, you can have your Wusikstation play any set of pitches you want.

And while it may not be something that a lot of people who play with synthesizers do, if you understand what tuning is, and how it works, your ability to make interesting sound designs will increase enormously. Besides which, it’s fun to hear all those different kinds of intervals and scales.

It’s only been since the early 1800s that there has been anything like a standard tuning, anyway, and that only in “the West.” Tuning is a fascinating area, and it’s one that is very easy to explore with the Wusik.

SCALA Scala is a wonderful freeware program, written by Manuel Op de Coul, for the purpose of exploring tunings. It’s very powerful, and has a set of on-screen keyboards that will help you explore microtunings in real time. It’s not an easy

Wusik

program to learn, but for those interested in tuning, it will provide a great platform for exploration, learning, and for developing and performing. It has a library of a couple of thousand scales (also provided with the Wusikstation), and you can make your own new scales with it. (All the scales I’ll discuss here were made with Scala.)

Here’s the URL for Scala: www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/

A NOTE ABOUT KEYBOARD

KEYS

ON

THE

For the following examples, I’ll be labeling keys on the keyboard in the following way. Middle C, Midi note 60, will be labeled C. All the notes above it will be labeled with a similar upper case letter. The C above middle C, Midi note 72, will be called c, and all the notes in the octave above that will also be labeled with lower case letters. In many of the examples in this article, when you press on a key, for example “G”, you might not hear that sounding note. You might hear “c” or a very flat “B” or anything else.

Welcome to the world of microtonality on a traditional keyboard, where any key can sound any pitch.

HOW TO TUNE IN WUSIK What’s the best way to explore tuning with Wusikstation? Simply start exploring! Click on the

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Microtuning on the

Wusik

“System” button, then click on the “Config Page” in the drop down menu.

At the bottom of the Configuration Page is a slot that says “Microtuning.”

In the box you should see the words “Equal Tempered.” That’s the name of the tuning that’s normally used in commercial music today – an octave divided into 12 equal parts. Click on the words “Equal Tempered” to enter the File Browser to select tunings. In the file browser, you should see on the left “TUN files,” and below it “TUN Library.” Click on “TUN Library” to see a listing of folders from 01 to WXYZ. Click on any of these folders, and a large number of TUN files will appear in the window on the right of the File Browser. Click on any of these scales, and you’ll hear it if you play a few notes on the keyboard.

But if you do this, playing a simple C D E F G F E D C riff on the keyboard, you’ll find that the pitch level might radically and violently change with each new scale.

You may also find that the particular timbre you’ve selected might not respond well to being in a particular tuning. This is because tuning and timbre are intimately related. There’s a lot of scientific research on the relationship between tuning and timbre which we won’t have the time to get into here. For those interested, the best book to read is “Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale” by

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William Sethares. This is a very (very!) technical book, but it does explore the area in great detail.

For our explorations, we’ll want a very plain timbre, with no beautiful phase shifting, reverb, or effects – all the things Wusikstation does so well. Don’t worry though – once you cover the basics of tuning, you can go back to using whatever timbres you want. A lot of the tunings available, for example, will sound luscious with some of the Wusik’s many pad sounds.

SOME EXAMPLES AND TIMBRES For purposes of our explorations, I’ve made a simple Wusik preset. It’s just a plain triangle wave with a bit of a long decay on the envelope. There’s no filtering and no effects. This is to allow you to hear the qualities of the intervals in their rawest possible state. This file is called “Triangle Only.WusikPRST,” and it’s included in the download with this magazine, in a folder called "DATA\Tun Files\Timbres by Warren Burt" Load up this timbre, and play a few notes on your keyboard. Make sure the tuning is “Equal Tempered.”

Microtuning on the

12 NOTE SCALES Now, in the TUN library, open the folder called "DATA\Tun Files\Timbres by Warren Burt" In it, you’ll see a number of scales. Click on the one called “12 note simple just.” On your keyboard play a C major triad – C E G starting on either Midi key 60 or an octave higher on Midi key 72. Hold the triad down for a while. Listen to how the notes don’t waver – how the quality of the triad seems somehow brighter. If you want to, go back to “Equal Tempered” and listen to the same C major chord, then go back to “12 note simple just.” The 12 note just chord is much less “fuzzy” and sounds “clearer.”

This kind of tuning is called “JustIntonation” and it’s been used for around 4000 years. It’s a tuning in which intervals are tuned so they just “hang”, and don’t beat.

On the other hand, in “12 note simple just,” play a B major chord – B D# F#. Notice how “sour” it sounds, and how the chord seems to waver.

That’s because this 12 note Just-Intonation scale is set to be in tune in the key of C, and is out of tune in the key of B.

Wusik

If you want a good introduction to JustIntonation, David Doty’s book, “The Just Intonation Primer” is very good.

It’s available at www.justintonation.net. The New York based music critic and composer Kyle Gann also has a website devoted to Just-Intonation.

It’s at www.kylegann.com/tuning.html.

Many people tried many ways to have all the triads sound acceptable in a just tuning. In the “Tuning Examples and Timbres” folder is a scale called “12 note Well temperament of Charles, 3rd Earl of Stanhope (1806).” This is a scale in which all the triads sound different, but they all sound relatively ok. A scale very much like this one is probably the scale J S Bach had in mind when he wrote the “Well-Tempered Clavier.” Contrary to popular myth, Bach did NOT write for, or use, our modern equal-tempered scale.

We even have letters from his son, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, stating that his father didn’t even LIKE the sound of 12-tone equal temperament. The Bachs, father and son, were much more interested in the many kinds of “Well-Temperaments” in which every chord sounds different, but the all sound acceptably in tune.

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Microtuning on the

Wusik

Moving to more interesting and dissonant scales, load the tuning “12 note odd harmonics 5-27.” This is a scale with 12 notes, but it sounds very different from either our normal scale or the 12-note Just-Intonation scale we just played with.

This is a scale made of odd numbered harmonics from 5 to 27. If you want to hear the C major triad in this one, you’ll have to press the keys C – E – Ab. The interval we would normally hear on the piano between C and G is now between the keyboard keys C and Ab. If you explore this scale, you’ll hear many interesting chords you’ve probably never heard before.

scale like this? Well, play together any two notes that are next to each other between C# and B and hold them for a while. Notice how it doesn’t seem like there are two notes playing, but only one note that is beating and throbbing regularly.

This phenomenon is called “acoustical beating,” and it’s the basis for a lot of experimental electronic music by composers such as La Monte Young, Phill Niblock and Alvin Lucier. When you detune two layers in Wusikstation to get a lush sound, you’re doing the same thing – having two notes play very closely together so that they make a composite throbbing sound.

Getting even stranger, load the scale called “12 note tiny cluster.” Play the keyboard keys C C# B c. You’ll hear the NOTES C F G c. What are all those notes in between keyboard keys C# and B? They’re notes that exist between those two notes.

Play the full chromatic scale, and you’ll hear that from keyboard keys C to C# is the interval of a 4th, but after that, all the intervals are very small – you might not even be able to tell the difference between some of them, unless you listen closely.

Finally, when you play the interval from B to c, you’ll hear another 4th, the one that’s between the NOTES G and c, bringing us to the octave. You might wonder why anyone would want to use a

SCALES WITH MORE OR LESS THAN 12 NOTES

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Many of the scales in the TUN Library, however, have more or less than 12 notes. What happens if you load them into Wusik? The answer is that you’ll still hear the scales on your keyboard, but what an “octave” is will be different than what you think. To play these scales effectively requires a simple thought adjustment.

It’s this – the distance between any 12 keys on the keyboard might not be heard as a sounding octave. Some other number of keys might be heard as a sounding octave. Here’s an example. Load the scale called

Microtuning on the “7 note Greek Enharmonic.” Now play up the keys from middle C (Midi 60): C C# D Eb E F F# G. Now play only C and G. Between the keys C and G, you should hear a sounding octave. Playing up the 7 keys from C to G, you should hear the Enharmonic scale described by the philosopher Plato’s good friend, the mathematician and general Archytas, who lived in Tarentum in southern Italy around 425 BC. To hear this scale one octave up, play the keys on the keyboard from G to D: G Ab A Bb B c c# d.

To hear a series of octaves, play keyboard fifths up and down from Middle C. Playing C G d a should result in hearing 4 notes all related by octaves. To play polyphonically with a scale like this, in order to play in heard, sounding octaves, you’ll have to play notes related by 7 keys (“keyboard fifths”) on the keyboard. Another interesting 7 note scale is “7 note 7 harmonics.” This is a 7 note scale of harmonics 1 3 5 7 9 11 and 13. If you play it from C up to G, you’ll hear that it sounds sort of like an “out-of-tune” major scale.

It’s a scale worth exploring.

With some of these scales, you might have to adjust your keyboard, or the “Pitch-Tune” settings on Wusik in order to place the sound in an octave you’re comfortable listening in. This is a perfectly ok thing to do. We want to find a range

Wusik

within which our music sounds good, and we can hear the different kinds of intervals our explorations produce.

With scales of less than 12 notes, we had to find the interval less than a “keyboard octave” that produced a sounding octave. With scales of more than 12 notes, it’s just the opposite. Here, we have to find how many keys more than a “keyboard octave” we need to hear a sounding octave. For example, load the scale “13 note equal tempered.”

This is, as the name says, a scale where the sounding octave is divided into 13 equal intervals.

Just like our 12 note equal tempered scale, but squashed a little. Play the keyboard notes C and c#. (Midi 60 and 73). You’ll hear a sounding octave. Play a chromatic scale on the keyboard from C up to c#. You might think it sounds “normal” except it takes an extra note to get to the sounding octave. Now, play the keys C E G. You’ll immediately hear that those three notes produce one of the most out of tune, sour versions of a C major triad you’ve ever heard. If you want to explore dissonant sounds, 13 tone equal temperament is a scale for you.

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Microtuning on the

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Play around with each of these scales. I’m sure you’ll discover many interesting sounds.

Combine them with the many luscious timbres Wusikstation can produce. With the complete Scala library to explore, I’m sure you’ll find many interesting sounds and combinations of sounds. Or, if you’re so inclined, download Scala and begin to make your own scales.

12 Note EFGs based on 3 5 & 7.

This is a family of scales made with chains of perfect 5ths (the 3rd harmonic), major 3rds (the 5th harmonic), and blues 7ths (the 7th harmonic). All the scales are 12 note scales, so you’ll be able to play octaves as normal. The tuning of the scales will vary radically between each scale, however.

SOME NEW SCALES Over the past 5 or so years, I’ve written a series of pieces, totaling about 26 hours of music.

Each of these pieces used not just one or two, but a whole family of scales. These scales are now available in the TUN library. A brief explanation of each of the families of scales follows. I offer them here as another resource for exploration. Some of these scales might be just the thing you’ll searching for, or they might give you sounds you’ve never heard before. The key is to experiment, with wide open ears and minds, finding new sonic delights.

The name of each folder is given in bold, with a short description of the scales following. Many of these scales are based on the work of the Los Angeles based music theorist Ervin M. Wilson. A collection of his very complex writings can be found at www.anaphoria.com/wilson.html.

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7 note diatonic-like scales used in Someone Moved in a Room.

“Someone Moved in a Room” is a composition of mine. It uses 18 different 7 note scales. These are all based on equal temperaments between 21 and 31 notes per octave, and all the scales have 7 notes, so you’ll be playing sounding octaves with keyboard fifths, as in the examples above. Each scale has a very different “modal” sound – like they could be from some exotic culture, but aren’t.

Microtuning on the

Wusik

Homage to Wyschnegradsky Scales Animation of Lists Scales These are scales used in my current CD, on the New York based XI label (XI 130), “The Animation of Lists And the Archytan Transpositions.” It’s a piece which is played on a set of tuning forks I built. The recordings of the forks are later transposed with a computer, making a more complex scale. The original forks are tuned to a 19-note to the octave Just-Intonation scale.

This folder contains three 19-note scales (sounding octave = keyboard C – g), and a 49-note scale, which is the combination of the three 19-note scales.

Euler Genus 3 5 7 9 11 13 There is just one big scale in this folder. It has 64 notes. If you have a very wide keyboard (or a sequencer where you can type in note numbers), try exploring very widely spaced chords with this scale. Things like Midi notes 34, 48, 60, 68 and 81.

There are whole families of interesting scales and chords contained within this one 64-note scale.

These are scales I used in a piece praising the Russian experimental microtonal composer Ivan Wyschnegradsky, who worked extensively with the 24-tone equal-tempered scale. These scales are all 7-note scales – modes using quarter-tone intervals, based on the Greek Enharmonic mode demonstrated above. There is also one 13-note scale. It’s the combination of all the 7-note modes in this folder.

Malleable Urn Scales These scales are all 7 note scales as well, and also use quarter tone intervals, based on the Greek Enharmonic mode. Again, there are many exotic sounding modes here.

MOSsy Slopes Meru Scales Scales of many sizes, based on ancient Indian mathematics, and Pascal’s triangle. The size of the scale is given at the end of the file name. For example “MeruE-17” is a 17 note scale. A sounding octave in this scale would be played on keys C and f.

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Microtuning on the

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Scale Tree Scales Babylonian Bathtub

Pythagoras

A family of 167 scales of many sizes I used in my hours-long drone piece, “Pythagoras’ Babylonian Bathtub.” Each of these scales also has its size at the end of the file name. For example, “01F17MOS15” is a 15-note scale (sounding octave from keys C to eb), and “12BurtMOS13” is a 13note scale (sounding octave from keys C to c#).

Triangle Scales used in Proliferating Infinities This is a family of 275 scales, all having 12 notes that I made for my 13-hour-long harp samples piece “Proliferating Infinities.” You’ll see that there are many subfolders in this folder. Keep navigating through the folders, eventually you’ll come to sets of 11 scales, all of which use normal octaves, but all of which have a variety of strange and unexpected modes within them.

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Catalogs of scales Also included in this package are a series of pdf files. These are catalogs of all the scales in this collection. If you end up liking or using any of these scales, feel free to write to me at warren (at) tropicapricorn.com.

by Autodafe The Jen SX1000 is a mini-mono synth made by the Italian manufacturer “Jen”, who were mainly known way back when for other synths, like string machines and various effects such as guitar pedals, mainly Whas and Fuzzs. The synth remains Jen’s most remarkable effort. I came out at the end of the ‘70s (reports says it was released in 1977), but after some years of operation, the company ceased to exist in the early 80’s.

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Tech Talk The Synthetone SX-1000 could be called the "essence of functionality"... It has only one VCO (actually it’s a DCO, or at least "hybrid" VCO) with just three different waveforms (sawtooth, square and PWM) and different octaves (32', 16', 8', 4'), and that’s all! Not a very "big" instrument even in its day, I might say!

The keyboard is quite small, just a 3-octaves range on it, but this was quite a common choice that other manufacturers adopted at that time.

It sports a simple analog Low-pass filter (12dB/octave) with Cutoff, Resonance, and LFO Modulation. It has a basic ADSR envelope for the VCA and another one for Filter modulation.

It additionally features a noise generator with white/pink option, a LFO, glide and a "vibrato" effect.

A "no-frills" synth?

Indeed, the little Jen really looks like a synth that offers no big expectations. No pitch bend controls or mod-wheel, no audio or CV/gate inputs, not so many modulation options...

A no-frills synth, with just the basic option available on the usual entrylevel analog synthesizer.

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Panel and Interface One of the most remarkable and eye-catching features of the SX1000 are its knobs and panel layout. The synth is divided into sections (VCO, FILTER, VCA...) which are labeled on the black metal of the front panel. The knobs are colourcoded for each section, red for the oscillator, silver for the filter, gold for the LFOs and Vibrato, blue for the envelopes, green for the noise section. These knobs are the same as on the EMS Synthi and VCS3 (and possibly others) and could be a useful source of spares. Many writers (including Peter Forrest of the "A-Z of analogue synthesizers") say that the small plastic colored caps "tend to fall off"...Honestly, my SX still has all the original knobs and I didn’t need to do anything to it, but judging from pictures from different web sites I must say that this "rumor" is probably quite true....

Simple Sounds?

of heart to improve filter tracking, adding filter input, and to get a better sound in general.

Given all the limitations we have been talking about, you might expect that the SX has no significant "score" in the sounds section. This is partially true, because it has a single oscillator and lacks important features that could liven the sound up a bit...But nonetheless the small SX is capable of nice leads sounds, particularly if you fiddle with the PWM control, or if you process the voices with external effects. Basses are not particularly deep, because the Filter (which is a Low-pass) also tends to take out too much of the bass frequencies.

And finally, there’s no way to store any patch you create, except for some kind of "patch sheets" that can be layered on the front panel to manually "store" (i.e. write with a pen) patch settings, like some other manufacturers did at the time (ARP, with the Odyssey, for example).

Less than basic Given the restrictions I have talked about, you might expect the SX to at least be powerful in the connection’s department... Sadly it’s not. ...On its back there’s only a switch to power it on and off and a mono audio output. Nothing else...

Of course there’s no MIDI either. But also, no other kind of connection is available...No CV/Gate or any other kind of input/output... It also adds Filter Input. There are also some modifications available on the Net for the brave

Collectability and prices The synth was only produced for a few years, so the numbers of units out there is not that large.

Unfortunately, its limitations don’t make it a real "object of desire" for synth enthusiasts and collectors. Additionally, it seems as though its main chip, the M110, which controls the main oscillator, is almost impossible to find nowadays, so restoring an old unit might be impossible (or difficult as hell).

Prices are not too high on the SX1000, usually going form dirty cheap prices at second hand shops to 200-300 Dollars/Euros. I think that a fair price would be 150-200 for an ‘OK’ unit, at least that is more or less what I paid for mine some years ago.

Conclusion Maybe not the best synth of all times, but it’s fun nevertheless... and you have to agree that it looks good!

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The Synth Romance

by WilliamK

Sometimes I miss my old Workstation keyboard.

Why? Because it didn't involve using a mouse to do everything.

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S

ince I work all day long in front of a PC, I'm using the keyboard like crazy and the Mouse as if there's no tomorrow.

I tend to get tired of this interface. So when I'm ready to create some music, I get the feeling that I'm still working.

The Synth Romance

That's why I miss the good old bad Workstation days...

What do I mean by ‘bad’? To be honest, it sucked big time. I remember my old Ensoniq TS10, it was full of bugs, would reboot without notice, and I would lose complete songs on the way. Not to mention floppy disks, or only 8 MB of RAM to load samples. Very slow load times.

And a poor interface, compared to a big computer screen.

I tried the Yamaha Motif, but it was still not a good solution for me. It would load samples from any external USB drive, but it’s still very slow compared to a regular computer. The interface was fine, but still small. Triton, you say? Yeah, I tried one of those too, but it’s still not what I dream about when it comes to a Workstation.

The workstations are all too limited when it comes to user interactions. Even when loading extra samples, you are still stuck with the primitive interface, including how it works and the limited effects provided. Things tend to sound too Motif- or Triton-like, above all.

I used to have a Notebook, but it was not powerful enough to drive Sonar and Wusikstation the way I wanted. So I switched to a mobile device just to read emails and navigate the internet, but nothing else. Not to mention that the Notebook didn't have a good sound-card.

But now I’ve noticed a company called Open-Labs. (www.openlabs.com).

They have created what might be the ultimate workstation, by combining a computer, touch-screen LCD, a musical keyboard, a computer keyboard, a touchpad-mouse and a low-latency soundsystem.

There you go, everything inside a custom case! Since it runs on Windows XP, it’s compatible with everything we have, unlike other ‘alternative solutions’ around.

It’s not just a computer in a special case. The developers really took the time to make their install of Windows XP stable and fast for use with Audio. Kudos for that, Open Labs.

They have even produced a smaller version, with a 36-key keyboard attached, which is very handy. You can bring in into your living room and start making music right away. No need for a special studio, even. A good set of headphones, a wallsocket and there you go.

10 years ago, I couldn't even have dreamed about this, and now it’s a reality.

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Creating Sounds

Sampling a Filter

by WilliamK

Filter Sampling Old-School Style.

Y

ears ago, producers were already using samplers, but very limited ones. No onboard-filters, short memory, slow, real dinosaurs. So when they wanted to create punchybasses, they would use a very old known method: The Filter Sampling. Just record a SAW waveform with a Filter going from total Open to Close. Now play this back, but assign the Key-Velocity to the Sample-Start position.

There you go, a simple but effective way to play recorded filter-sweeps.

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Creating Sounds

Sampling a Filter For this example, open the included preset named "Sample Filter 01 Dry".

Its very simple, here we got the sampled filter already in place. Tuned an octave above. Try to play the very lower keys. Harder and Softer, to see how key-velocity acts on the Sample-Start.

On the Mod-Matrix, just set Source=Velocity and Destination=Sample Start of the layer you which to affect. Min will control how "low" the filter will go when you hit the keys softly.

The fun starts when you start to add more layers using the same technique.

In this case, two layers playing the same sound, but one tuned one octave above the other. Also, we deviated the MIN settings from the mod-matrix a bit, so the filter cut sounds a bit different for each layer.

Go ahead, test the other included presets, and start creating your own.

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HQ Synthetica Volume 4

Dijiridu Lite Set

Bad Granular

by WilliamK, Jeremy Janzen www.nucleus-soundlab.com and Kevin Breidenbach - aka synthgeek www.skincontact.com/synthg eek

by WilliamK

by WilliamK

29 SoundSets - 29 Meg - 39 Presets

6 Presets

This is the Fourth volume of our special High Quality (HQ) Synth Sounds. (check issue #007 for detailed information)

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Dijiridu Lite Set

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Bad Granular

27 SoundSets - 556 Meg - 45 presets

Artvera - Chord Examples 28 Presets

Maestro Concert Grand Piano

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\HQ Synthetica\Volume 04

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Artvera Chord Examples

Sampled by Mats Helgesson (xo@telia.com) - Converted by WilliamK

Also included a full selection of seq files that can be loaded on the Wavesequencers.

All samples are Copyright Š Mats Helgesson, 2003

Oh Sync 9 Presets

For a list of files, read the txt file included at: Wseq Files\List of Chords.txt

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Oh Sync

Location: Wseq Files\Alternative Chords TUNE

by WilliamK

Location: Wseq Files\Regular Chords TUNE

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2 SoundSets (Left and Right) 329 Meg - 4 Presets Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Maestro Concert Grand Piano

WSeq Drums

by WilliamK

Samba Kit

LiquidBrad's Stictwitz Set 2

by freeztar

14 SoundSets - 21 Meg - 32 Presets

1 SoundSet (Multi Kit) - 11 Meg - 18 Presets Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Samba Kit

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Stictwitz 2

Midi Files Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Samba Kit\Midi Files

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\WSeq Drums

Library Files

Sampled Filters

Tuning Examples and Timbres

by WilliamK

by Warren Burt

13 SoundSets - 50 Meg - 27 Presets

13 Presets

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Sampled Filters

14 Presets (using the Drumillenium and Drum Collection sounds)

Location: Presets\Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0010\Tuning Examples and Timbres TUN Location: TUN Files\Timbres by Warren Burt

Since Wusikstation V3.1.2 you have the new Library option.

The setup already copies this into your Preset-Library and merges with existing categories.

You can browse categorized presets for this product alone at the following location: Library\By Product\Wsm #010 To open up the Library browser, click twice where you normally open the Preset-Browser

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