I just meant that one vid and again, my bad, if it seemed like I was taking issue I was probably being too melodramatic. I just thought when he said, here’s a list of analog mixing boards that you’ll never use and probably never see but I’m gonna talk about it because talking about gear is fun, I thought it was funnily superfluous. Not bad or wrong or anything.
My whole philosophy, why I like helping people along this path, is that if somebody wants to record a song, even if they only plan on sharing it with a few close friends or nobody at all, doing so is and should be easily accessible. Whatever DAW you’re using is fine, whatever EQ you’re using is fine.
Like I bet this dude used those Neves and Pultecs on everything he ever did up until at least Y2K, so his thinking is probably very much formed in terms of specific pieces of outboard gear. He was born into the hardware world. They still get a lot of worship from people who believe in magic so I think it’s pretty interesting to cover them in a “what the pros use” video even though they are Unobtanium for 99% of people.
Dug out this Casio/Radioshack sampling keyboard from the 80s that was my first instrument. Obv it is super basic and awful but fun to noodle around while sketching ideas out because it’s tiny. I was laying on the bed working out the chords to something I dreamed up. The OP-1 would be really nice in this regard but the prices are stupid.
Novation has a Circuit and just released two different versions of their original Circuit. I think one of them has sampling abilities iirc. The original you can load samples but not record any samples into it. Much cheaper than Deluge but not getting as much either and smaller than the Deluge by a little bit. Not as small as OP-1 though.
This song had me wanting an OP-1 a long time ago and then I came to find out the sounds were from something else I think or something lmao.
I see a lot of multi-instrumentalists using the looping feature Deluge recently added to build tracks themselves in live performances too. It’s pretty sick.
She’s mutual friends with a guy I know that does a podcast on synth stuff and also visual arts and things that interact with audio. That’s making me want to turn my sub up!
I don’t think the OP-1 does anything particularly well, but it’s an integrated DAW / synthesis engine / keyboard / controller all-in-one that fits in a backpack. Afaik there is really nothing else that offers that?
In terms of form factor, the closest thing I can think of that I might actually use is the Keith McMillen QuNexus / K-Board. It’s only a controller, although sort of an interesting one that can do MPE and also fits in a backpack.
Coming from strings, I love the idea of being able to modulate notes with touch (both pitch and tone) without having to reach for a wheel. One of the things I don’t like about traditional MIDI keyboard instruments is that achieving that level of expression is difficult in real time. The only reason I haven’t pulled the trigger on one of these yet is because forums say that the pressure / tilt sensitivity can get whack and is unfixable.
Yeah the problem with all of this stuff is that I’m hugely skeptical of all Kickstarter start-up type companies and products. The other Roli products have a high failure rate and I’m not into paying huge premiums for that. Keith McMillen stuff is the same way but I might throw $50 at a used K-Board. A 25-key controller for $300 has to be absolutely mind-blowing to deliver value since you could get a full blown analog synth like a Bass Station or Monologue for that.
Had to refresh my memory on the problem with these KMI controllers. They are basically useless for MPE*. The pitch tilt modulation at the individual key level does not zero itself on release if you strike another note (lolol). Also, the “smart” fabric or w/e they are using is garbage with huge variances between keys of the same unit. People have demonstrated that the same strike force applied across all keys produces widely disparate velocity values. The axis and aftertouch modulations apparently also suffer from this. The QuNexus ($200 retail) can do CV and DIN MIDI if you buy the external modules for those function at additional cost (ffs), but it has some weird issue with CV slew.
*Possible exception: There’s a plug-in that some guy wrote for Reaper that basically corrects most of this, so if you are a person who is invested in Reaper as your DAW then maybe. But the prices are still totally stupid for a defective product that is basically abandonware.
Have you seen the Sonicware stuff? I discovered it reading back through some of these portable controller threads I had bookmarked and it might be exactly what I’m looking for.
