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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 8, 2008 15:29:22 GMT
Hello Everyone! I just joined today and posted in the Tech Support area for the polymoog 208A I'm repairing. Anyway, to give you some background on me I'm the Chief Audio Analyst for Musical DNA Software. You can check out the website at musicaldnasoftware.com it's a very interesting thing we have done here and any musician, engineer, physicist, should check it out! I'm in the process now of building a studio/ audio laboratory for audio capture and polyphonic note extraction. Before coming to Musical DNA I ran a business repairing vintage and new musical instruments but primarily restoring vintage electric pianos- Rhodes, Wurlitzers, RMIs, etc. along with synthesizers, amplifiers, guitars, basses, and effect units. I also worked as an electrical test and diagnostic technician for a prototype circuits company working with everything from telecommunications to military operations and installments. I also have my own personal studio Stage Blu Productions where I have completed eight albums of my own works and have produced a few others for bands and singer/ song writers. Although, I don't spend as much time recording others as much as I use too. I did much more producing through other studios that I was part of years ago. I would like to add that it's so gratifying to see this site here as these types of places keep the nostalgia alive! These old synthesizers among many other instruments are what many musicians desire because of their unique qualities and fidelity. I'm happy to be a member of this site and I'll do my utmost to bring others here to join. Thank You! and Hello!! Corey
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Post by secretagent on Apr 8, 2008 15:32:46 GMT
Hi corey ;D Nice welcome post
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Post by MrArkadin on Apr 8, 2008 17:03:00 GMT
Welcome. Musical DNA Software, eh? No chance of you making a Polymoog VST instrument is there? (hey, had to ask)
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Post by TheProdigy on Apr 8, 2008 17:39:18 GMT
Welcome Corey!
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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 8, 2008 19:40:38 GMT
Funny you mention that! As a matter of fact this would be quite possible and this may be something that I'll bring to the table eventually. Till then however, I have much work to do before I'll be looking to do that project. We will first be focusing on polyphonic note extraction. Check out our website at musicaldnasoftware.com we have our hands in many different things among technology in general but, first and foremost the music side. You can join our forums and we have thrown in some old school video games that you can play, just for fun. But check us out! We have developed a way to teach music theory and composition by breaking down the musical language into 6 lines, 4 triangles, and 9 trapezoids, geometrically and mathematically precise color coded to the rainbow. This is almost like turning music into a form of architectural composed works where the person learning music is learning by shape and color as opposed to linear learning note-for-note methods that take a life time to learn. Check it out! It's a bit much to wrap your mind around at first but it will become evident after watching the videos. Corey
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 8, 2008 21:15:23 GMT
Welcome aboard Corey. It will be useful for you dig deep into our tech help forum for previous articles and FAQs on Polymoog repair as a great deal has been addressed in the past which you will find useful (as well as our downloadable Service Manual which Jordan (Minimoog) patiently scanned for us.
Anyhow, we;re all on first name terms in this place so feel free to call us by our real names.
All the best,
Shaun ;D
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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 9, 2008 0:54:54 GMT
Thanks Shaun! Looks like you have a nice selection of Roland classics yourself! I have a Roland Juno 106, DR-770 and that's all for the present. I have owned in the past an XP-10, D-10, D-20, SH101. I sold those years ago. If I could I'd like to get the SH101 back again and I've always wanted a CR-78! I would also like to get an SH3A. I find them on ebay once in a while but they normally need repairs. This isn't so much a problem as I'm sure I can get them singing again it's just the case of how many projects do I need at one time. Also, I did get the service manual off of the site for the Polymoog and my hat is off for the man who has done this, for it is quite the lengthy manual. Kudos to you good sir ;D
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Post by ajmottes on Apr 9, 2008 4:19:17 GMT
Welcome Corey!!! I took a look at your company's web site. Looks like you all are working on some interesting software. Clearly polylphonic note extraction would be useful for your software by eliminating its current requirement of getting note information from MIDI data. Peter Neubäcker at Celemony sure raised the bar with respect to note extraction with the introduction of the Direct Note Access software at the Frankfurt Musikmesse. I am anxiously awaiting the release of the Melodyne plugin 2 in the fall. It will be interesting to see what you guys come up with. Good luck! With respect to Mr. Arkadin's comment: If (1) someone (ahem ... Shaun ...) provides me with 280A samples; or (2) someone with a 280A located close to the Northeast portion of the USA would allow me to bring my portable Pro Tools rig over and sample their 280A for a few hours; I would be able to produce a virtual polymoog in a relatively short (i.e., a few months) period of time. Best regards Corey. Andrew
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 9, 2008 12:01:12 GMT
Andrew, we need to discuss this mate. As you know, I'm not prepared to compromise, (if I can help it) and I'm sure there are people out there who don't want to buy VSM for a 5 octave version of Vox Humana which you can't even play the Replicas intro on (due to keyboard range restriction). Also, I'm particularly keen on having a kick ass GUI as well so it actually FEELS like you have a real polymoog VST rather than just a patch name dialed in. Send me an email if you can and let me know what ideas you have and how you would like to approach this. We've talked about this many times before so you know pretty much what I'm looking for. I'm just interested to see how you think we can achieve this.
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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 9, 2008 14:41:20 GMT
Thanks for checking out our site Andrew! We will be making more updates here soon that will go a little more in-depth on the topic as well. The Celomony software is of great interest to me and I was able to play around with it a year ago when I was on a trip out to Denver. I was quite impressed with it and quickly went into research mode to see what they were doing with this. As I understand it they plan on creating a polyphonic extraction software soon. This may be within the next version of the Melodyne, not for sure though, but, this is a software that I plan on working with in the lab. My engineer and I were looking to utilize FFT for sampling purposes and have even thought of creating a hardware synth where you could use the sampled software that we've created. This synth could come equipped with standard wave settings, filters and the like but you could download sounds directly from our website. Of course this is all head candy at the moment but will soon be able to make it a reality. The key thing here is headroom and proper AD/DA conversion utilizing minimal equalization or making use of subtractive equalization. The deal is that when many samples are created there are tendencies to over-do the processing which can cause loss of headroom with inaudible frequencies causing the sampled sound to become "thin" or "overly uniform". Such an example is with instruments like the Fender Rhodes electric piano. This is an instrument that is inherent with many frequencies and over tones individual to each note as dependent upon factors like reed (tine) alignment to pickup, pickup adjustment, felt hammers from older models, rubber hammers in later models, amplifier choice of "X", or the cabinet toting satellite models and so forth. The thing is to get around this by creating a single note sample and dividing it up among pitch to scale creates a total uniformity that is outside the realms of the instruments true characteristics. Roland sampler synths are a good example of this (not throwing Roland under the buss or anything, I love Roland!) but other samples are much the same way losing vital characteristics. I would like to create a method that increases the headroom and allows the individual characters of the specific instrument to be captured. This would greatly benefit any analog instrument including synthesizers where the clipping element of analog could be employed instead of digital clipping.
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 9, 2008 17:39:33 GMT
I'm liking the sound of all this Corey! ;D
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Post by Gavin on Apr 9, 2008 18:08:09 GMT
Hello you.
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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 9, 2008 18:41:06 GMT
Hello Gavin, I checked out your myspace music page. The Photographers! Is this your band or are you the band? Anyway, dig the jams! especially liked Bottle Blue and Shiraz! Great works man!! I have a myspace music space as well. You can access it through my profile here on Dubsounds. Actually, it will take you to my web page at Stage Blu Productions first and you can access the myspace page through that. I have a few older compositions that are up but, I plan on setting up some new music from my latest album "The Mellow Voltage" here soon. I have one more piece I need to finish and then I'll post them up. I consider my music more fusion than anything else but it tends to lean more on the jazz/ funk side of things and even a bit of electronica. You should check it out! But I at least wanted to send you a ;D for your tunes man. Keep rock'n out!!
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Post by ajmottes on Apr 10, 2008 1:24:26 GMT
Corey: Your discussion was very interesting. ;D I would love to talk to you about your work -- some very cool stuff. Send me a PM if you would like to talk and have the time.
With respect to Celemony, their polyphonic note extraction will be appearing in the next version of Melodyne (version 2), which is scheduled to be released this September. Check out some of the videos floating around the net from their presentations at Musikmesse. They are even more impressive then the demonstration videos on the Celemony web site. A HUGE advance in extracting individual notes from complex polyphonic music.
Shaun: I will review your past emails and put together a proposal that I will send you via email. One question -- are you interested in a VST that includes only the Numan VH sound, or are you proposing a complete reproduction of the 280A (i.e., all presets, multiple velocities per key, multiple filter settings, etc.)? Obviously the latter will require a significantly larger number of samples.
Also, I'm not sure about your point about not being able to play the Replicas intro. Assuming we sampled each of the 71 keys on the 280A, why would you not be able to play anything you could on the original keyboard, including the Replicas intro? I agree that it would make no sense to sample only a portion of the keys on the 280A.
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 10, 2008 5:58:00 GMT
Corey: Your discussion was very interesting. ;D I would love to talk to you about your work -- some very cool stuff. Send me a PM if you would like to talk and have the time. Feel free to just discuss the subject openly on the forum by creating a new topic for it if you like guys. I'm sure a lot of us would be interested and would have additional input ;D Shaun: I will review your past emails and put together a proposal that I will send you via email. One question -- are you interested in a VST that includes only the Numan VH sound, or are you proposing a complete reproduction of the 280A (i.e., all presets, multiple velocities per key, multiple filter settings, etc.)? Obviously the latter will require a significantly larger number of samples. Also, I'm not sure about your point about not being able to play the Replicas intro. Assuming we sampled each of the 71 keys on the 280A, why would you not be able to play anything you could on the original keyboard, including the Replicas intro? I agree that it would make no sense to sample only a portion of the keys on the 280A. I think it would be a good idea to cover the first three presets (Vox Humana, String 1 and String 2) as they were all used by Numan. The raw samples for these come in at 1.23 Gb. The raw data will have to be 44.1 kHz mono wav because that's the rate of my original samples (and I'm not doing them again ). We should also offer a second Vox Humana through an MXR phaser. This will involve me re-recording the VH notes through my pedal but I'm happy to do that. That would make the VST about 1.5Gb which isn't too large for a VST Rompler these days. The most any one patch will occupy is 400Mb of RAM. About not being able to play the Replicas intro... Easily explained Andrew. I was talking about the G-Media VSM VSTi. Those are the limitations of that actual instrument as I understand it. Our patch would be fully authentic of course having being purpose designed. I had a thought about the GUI. I would quite like a scale render of the Polymoog 280 looking at it from the front from the angle you see it when you play one. Obviously the voice selector panel would be tiny so on mouseover, I would like a modified patch panel to zoom out and fill the VST window with the four patches available.
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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 10, 2008 13:52:35 GMT
Cool! While your browsing around the web come and check out our website: musicaldnasoftware.com This will give you a bit of insight to what we are doing and where our company is headed. I'm at the moment getting our studio underway. I'm working with a consultant and architect and we just got the floor plan dialed in. I'm going to be speaking with a GC next week to write up a bid on the structure and then checking bids for electrical contractor. I'm employing a complete Equitech system via an Equitech 50A supply and routing all the audio controls through an SSL Matrix. I just love that desk!! Due to the explicit need of capturing the purest form of audio signals I'm looking to utilize Millennia pre-amps which are super transparent. Of course I won't be able to resist purchasing later some API and Neve Pre-amps as there will be experiments using "colored" signals. We will be capturing the pure nature of audio signals from just about every instrument you can think of from bassoon to minimoog and violin to concert grand. Also using microphones of all types and styles, the list is insane and I could go on forever about it but, I'll resist. This project is an immense amount of work and is growing ever more so each day so you'll have to excuse me if I cut out of contact for a couple days here and there. I would really like to invite everyone on this site to also join our forums as well at musical dna software. We would love to have you guys there! In the "Music Technology" section and the "Wonderful World of MIDI" sections I have written numerous articles that you may be interested in. I haven't added any newer articles of lately due to my busy schedule but, I plan on adding more later. One thing I'd like to ask is if you guys check out the forums if you could throw me some suggestions on topics for other articles. Anyway, I digress, I would love to talk to you more on our experiments once we get things up and running.
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Post by ajmottes on Apr 11, 2008 1:12:17 GMT
Mmmmmm..... SSL Matrix ..... I saw the review on this recently and it looks absolutely amazing! Thanks for the informaton on the forums on your site. I will check them out!! Shaun: Thanks for the clarification. I will email you a proposal within the next couple of days.
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Post by polyneux74 on Apr 11, 2008 13:58:57 GMT
Awesome! I can't wait for the next Melodyne software as this can make my job so much easier! Well, I have been prodding around the circuits of my Polymoog and have determined that the polycom chips and mod cards are all cool. There seems to be a bad connection with a connector on the board that controls all the modulation, attack, an so forth. That's not the only problem as some of the keys are still very quiet. I think I will need to replace some of the four thousand series chips on the modulation and possibly some other yet to be seen garble on the Oscillators as some tend to beat quite erratically on presets that shouldn't beat as such. I really need to get a new scope! The scope I have now is an old RCA unit from 1967 and my probes were recently chewed up by my buddy Cooper (my mini pinscher). The little guy just couldn't help himself, he's too dumb to know any better you know. At any rate some progress is being made even if it is slowly coming along.
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Post by voxnumana on Apr 13, 2008 15:21:31 GMT
Drools at the thought of a Polymoog VSTi. ;D
Would it be possible for the software to be a stand alone synth too?
Colin
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Post by Dubsounds on Apr 13, 2008 19:48:57 GMT
The project that I'm looking at with Andrew would be just a rompler so there won't be any additional synth control over it (as far as I'm aware). If you mean standalone synth as in operating outside of the VST platform then I have no ideas about that but it may be possible to have that option. Once again, this is something Andrew could answer as his interest is in developing it. Hope that helps
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