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Saxonia Issue 02 Part 013
Thoughts around buying a synth
By Rumrunner/VOID
[l
I bought my first synth in 1995, I think. Since then, I have also bought
more equipment. Throughout these years, I have made some thoughts about
what you should look for in a synth and what you can expect. I hope that
this can be of help for others wanting such an instrument.
To make it simple, when you are about to buy your first synth, pick the
one that suits your needs. I will go deeper into this now.
Let's start by saying that you have three possible ways to go. You can
choose an old analogue synth. This is the kind that makes the sounds
itself. This kind of synth is superior to others in the way of working.
You usually have much knobs and levers that you can use to tweak the
sound while playing. And there are no specific limits as to how many
sounds it can produce, as this depends on your settings. The downside
can, in some cases that is, be that you have no midi, so this might be
a drawback, or at least a little challenge if you want to hook it up to
your computer. But, in most cases this is possible to solve in some way
or another, such as a midi to sync converter, more about that later.
Another drawback you get when choosing such a synth will be the polyphony
(how many tones the synth can make at one time), espacially if you buy a
really old synth. The third issue worth mentioning is that many analogue
synths are not multitimbral, that is, they will only receive midi data
from one channel (for those who didn't know, there are usually 16 midi
channels to choose from). But then again, there are analogue synths that
have midi, enough polyphony and even are multitimbral, but ask first.
The next way to go, is to get a digital synth. As far as I know, all of
them have midi, have many notes polyphony and most are multitimbral.
There is however a big drawback with analogue synths. Many of them sounds
terrible. Especially some older ones. A piano can for instance sound like
a real one, but only at let's say two octaves. Lower and higher tones
sounds like a piano where you have killed the tax collector and hidden
him in your piano (not good, if that was unclear). Another drawback, at
least for some years, was that synthmakers almost competed in having as
few buttons as possible on the instrument. So, even a little command you
want to perform requires a lot of pressing buttons. If you have intended
the synth for live playing, this can be especially boring.
But also let's not forget that there are digital synths that sound good.
I recently visited a local musical shop, and the owner demonstrated a
new synth (well, perhaps more like an electic piano, but you had other
sounds too, so let's call it a synth), and it sounded really good. You
also had lots of levers and knobs to use, so there was very little
fiddling around with menus and only a couple of buttons. To my surprise,
there was even mellotron sounds on the instument. You know, that old
big box with a piece of tape connected to each single key. It lasted for
eight seconds and then looped.
Now, the last possible answer as to what to buy, is a sampler. Don't
get confused here. A sampler is not a piece of computer equipment, but
an instrument where you can record your own sounds and then play them.
You can usually have one sample for those octaves, and that one for these,
so this will make a more "correct" sound, it will sound the way it should.
All in all, a sampler, perhaps not being a real synth as is doesn't make
it's own sounds but neither does digital "synths", is what will give you
the best sound. Drawbacks here might be available memory. You might not
be able to have many different sounds loaded in at once. Also, sounds
can get rather big, but most synths offer a harddrive in addition to
floppy disks. And I guess that you can find samplers which only uses
harddrives, and there's no floppy drive on them.
I would like to mention here that nowadays, it seems that most samplers,
at least the ones people think of are just boxes, that is, no keyboard
to play on. Ofcourse, you need to get one with a keyboard if this is your
first instrument. If you have another synth already, you can hook it up
via midi (and remember that the midi cables doesn't have to go through a
computer if you want to play live). Another remark is that new samplers
have lots and lots of memory, so if you can afford a new one, you will
probably not have to delete sounds from memory and load new ones that
often.
So, having gone through these groups, I should mention some "mixes" of
the above groups. You have what's called semi-analogue synths. These
usually have analogue sound, with filters and oscillators and all that,
combined with digital controls. While this makes it more difficult to
change the sound while playing, most of them are regarded more stable
than the pure analogue ones, which could sometimes get "out of tune",
tweaking the sound without you wanting it to do so, that is.
Having thought about this, you should also take note of the keyboard.
If you want to play "live" you should go for a synth with at least 5
octaves on the keyboard. If there are less, you will perhaps end up
having to use the transpose function on the synth a lot. But this should
not be a big problem as most synths have 5 octaves keyboards now. However,
it is interesting to know that some synths from the very first years in
the seventies, like Moog Minimoog and ARP Odyssey have smaller keyboards.
These are regarded as some of the most valuable for certain sounds even
today, and they are a good example showing that used items aren't always
cheaper than new ones. Ofcourse, you can buy a new synth that is more
expensive than these, but you don't have to do that to get decent (or
better) sound. Anyway, you will find many samples that have been taken
from the two above mentioned synths if you take a look at trackermusic.
But back to the keyboard. If you want to play music "live" and/or want
to make other music than boring techno, you should get a synth with a
touch sensitive keyboard, so it plays notes low if you press light, and
high if you hammer on the keys.
I have told a little about polyphony, and I will comment it further here.
As I told, this is a measure of how many tones the synth can play at
once. The Moog Minimoog and ARP Odyssey can only play one tone at the
time. So you cannot play accords. For a long while, the most common
was to have either 24 or 32 tones polyphony. Now, there are synts with
over 100 tones polyphony. This should be seen in combination with the
Multitimbrality (can you say that in English?). Most digital synths are
16 part multitimbral, which means that they can use all of the midi
channels at once. Now, you might say that you have seen synths that have
more that 16 parts. Yes, I have seen them too, but this is solved in the
way that you have more than one midi port, one of them uses part 1-16,
while the other one uses part 17-32 for instance. But in a sequencer
programme, you will not see numbers higher than 16, instead you will se
that you have to use "port B" or something like that.
Ofcourse, a multitimbral synth need more polyphony than a synth that is
not multitimbral. Let's say that you play a three-tone accord at one
of the 16 midi channels. On the next one, you play a piano, and another
channel puts out some guitar. On top of this, you have drums. The three
tone accord uses up three tones. The piano perhaps uses inbetween 3-6
notes, or more if you play accords here too. Remember that decay and such,
that is, sounds that stay on for a while after you release the key,
also takes up tones. And so it goes on. I would recommend at least 24
tones polyphony on a synth that is 16 part multitimbral, at least if
you intend to play many sounds from the same synth at once.
The next thing you need to think about regarding polyphony is whether
the figure given from the makers of the synth is worth considering at
all. There are synths that perhaps use up more then one tone of the
polyphony for one single note. So 32 tone polyphony doesn't neccesarily
mean that you can play 32 tones at once.
Samplers like mentioned above is more "honest" here. One note takes one
tone of the polyphony, if it doesn't, it must be some really weird thing.
Now, for the sounds, most digital synths have the GM setup. GM is short
for General Midi, and basically means that you have 128 sounds at your
service. Sound number one is a piano and sound number 34 is something
else. They sounds and their numbers are the same on all synths so music
pieces written on a GM synth can be played on another GM syngh. There are
extensions to this, so you might have more sounds than that on one synth.
There are no midi synths though, that operates with such a thing like
sound number 300. This is one of the limitations on the midi system. You
have only 128 sounds to choose from, but this is solved in the way that
you have variations, and each sound number can have 128 variations, I
have yet to see 128 variations on every sound number though. But anyway,
more sounds can mean more fun, as long as the sounds are good. The 128
GM sounds though, are not suited for certain kinds of music, before you
learn to "trick" something more out of the synth. Hehe I remember a
little story a friend of mine told. A person he knew worked with
demonstrating synths from a certain producer, and he was really good in
tweaking interesting things out of these synths. So people got interested
and bought the synth, but when they came home and tried it, they got
disappointed. Simply because they didn't know how to get the most out of
the synth.
With samplers, sounds are not a problem as long as have something to
sample from, or have someone to exchange sounds with. Also on analogue
synths, the limitation is you imagination and ability to get good sounds.
[l
Now, onto the subject of midi to sync converters. These come in handy for
synths that don't have a midi-input, but can be triggered to play from the
internal sequencer at a sync signal. This ofcourse means more work than you
would have if you could record into a sequencer, but sometimes, it's worth
the work to get those really good sounds from old goodies.
So, from the above, I hope that you have gotten some inspiration to use
when looking for a good synth. I can mention my setup, it goes like this :
- Roland JV-30. This is a 16 part multitimbral synth with 24 tones
polyphony. It has GM sounds and some drumsets. The keyboard is touch
sensitive, and works well. It was the first synth I bought, and a
decent starting place.
- Korg EX-800 synthmodule (no keyboard). This has analogue sounds but
digital controls. Setting the sounds are easy to do as long as you
don't need to do it while playing. I can't remember the polyphony
right now. It is not multitimbral. It can store 64 sounds, and they
will stay there even when you turn it off. I have a MEX-8000 for it,
which basically is a box to connect that let's you save out all 64
sounds in banks. It holds several banks, so you can load the one you
need from it. It can also use a tape recorder to store sounds on.
You simply use a tape recorder, almost as you did on Commodore 64 for
programs. But you don't need any special recorder, the one on a radio
works fine.
- Ensoniq EPS 16 Plus. This is a sampler with keyboard. It sounds really
good. You can put a scsi drive in it, but I use floppy disks for now.
From what I know, you can also add some more memory to it, I think that
it is upto 2 megs. I'm not sure about this though, as I haven't got a
manual for it and I have only had it for a few weeks. The keyboard is
touch sensitive when you want it to be, you can set this for each sound.
Also, you can transpose each sound, so while you have one that is
transposed down one octace, another sound can stay untransposed.
You can make splits (one sound here, another one there on the keyboard),
and you can play more sounds at one time. Is is 16 tones polyphonic,
which is enough for my use. There's also a 16 track inbuilt sequencer
in it, which works as it should, perhaps a little hard to get to know
when you don't have a manual. Anyway, this sampler really made it more
fun to play again, since it delivers very good sound.
