From normpeterson@earthlink.net Mon Oct 17 13:47:11 2005
Subject:Re: Native Instruments B4 version 2
www.museresearch.com
Norm
----- Original Message -----
From: Damon Fibraio
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 10/17/2005 12:33:58 PM
Subject: RE: [CWSG] Re: Native Instruments B4 version 2
OK, I am new to the software synth angle of things, considering my rig is
all hardware, i.e. motif es7, kurzweil k2661, alesis ion, roland xv5080,
korg triton rack, roland vk8m and now a novation a station. Can somebody
point me to a link to this muse receptor so I can read about it? Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Norman Peterson
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 3:22 PM
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [CWSG] Re: Native Instruments B4 version 2
Wow Tony I had to read your post twice! I think you should be commended for
not just sticking you toe in the water but jumping in head first with this
rig and a show playing complete Pink Floyd albums for material to cover.
Yeah! Yo da man! I have been researching this stuff a lot myself. It IS the
wave of the future. How can KORG expect to sell this Oaysis rig for 8 grand
when you can pop all this stuff into the Receptor for so much less $$$?
Upon reading about the the B4 ll it seems like a lot more features were
added. Different Leslie models, etc. I heard some samples of the NI
Acoustik piano that sound quite nice and the FM7 was cool and Elektrik piano
had nice rhodes and wurlies. There is a Rick Wakeman video at the M-Audio
site demoing a bunch of these programs. M-tron, Oddity, Minimonsta,etc. I
don't see how hardware synth manufacturers can continue to compete with
software synths. I am no big computer music guy myself but the plethora of
sounds available is just to tempting not to jump into this. Plus the
nostalgia factor of the great keyboards and synths of the past being
available so easily and sounding so great. Thanks for the answer back Tony.
I'll be calling you soon!!! Pick your brain!
Norm
----- Original Message -----
From: tonysounds
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 10/17/2005 11:48:28 AM
Subject: Re: [CWSG] Re: Native Instruments B4 version 2
Hey Norm...
First, I'm using B4, not "II", although I will upgrade soon as possible.
Ok, where to start. I don't use...or haven't until now, but I can see this
is all about to change drastically, computers with music. So my learning
curve was more of a Hard Banking Turn.
SYNTHWARE
Learning to use the soft synths was easy: the interface is dummy-proof (in
other words, made for me!), and editing is a breeze if you're familiar with
the instrument being modeled. B4 gave me options and tones not available in
my other clones. The leslie sim is very good, and I'm in love with it.
It's tweakable on almost all fronts, and through an amp, sounds fantastic.
Pro-53 is killer, and gets those Prophet 5 sync-lead tones that just
scream!!!
MiniMonsta blew me away and next to B4, may be my favorite; it's definitely
my most used, right behind B4. It sounds fat, aggressive, smooth, and the
"knobs" do what I remember them doing, the way I remember them. It has
built in delay (unlike my old Mini), and makes me smile every time one of my
sounds comes up. AWESOME!
I used M-Tron on a couple songs ("In the Flesh" and the vocal section in
"Time") and it sounds just like you think it should. It shares the quirky
tape "artifacts" that influence ...er...dictate the way you play the
mellotron, so all in all, pretty cool.
I didn't use the CS80 program in the show, but I played with it quite a bit
just to hear it. That's an awe-inspiring program, and captures the unique
sound of the CS80 very faithfully.
The Muse Receptor enables this whole thing to work. I can only imagine the
grief I would have encountered using a computer live; the dread of a crash,
gear that doesn't work well with each other, and other "quirks" really
helped push me to get the Receptor; before buying any of this stuff I went
to the G-Spot (Gtr Ctr) and Sam Rash to audition some of these programs.
That was a waste of time, as both of these stores have let their licenses
lapse, so you can't hear anything except the Korg Legacy stuff, and whatever
is new that month (Spectrasonics' Atmosphere). Rash had Ivory to demo, and
they were running 2 very big (3.2 gig) Macs, and that thing couldn't play a
simple chord change without glitching; there wasn't even a sustain pedal
hooked up. This scared me, but the power of these softsynths was too
alluring, so after being disappointed that this wouldn't work out, I decided
to look into the Receptor thanks to a few earlier posts on this group, and a
mention in Keyboard's interview with Jordan Rudess.
Let me say up front, if you're going to use this in a live application and
run more than one program at a time, SPEND THE MONEY and fully upgrade to
the 160 or 200 gig HardDrive, and get 2 Gig of RAM. I only upgraded to 1gb,
and I'm going to rectify that eventually.
When the Nord Stage didn't pan out for me as a controller, I was going to
start hunting for an A90, but Robert M on this group recommended the
Doepfer. After researching that, I decided to give a whirl. There's a free
editor available for it that has quirks of its own, which are easily
surmounted, but the never ending grief I experienced with my USB-Midi
interface caused me lots of unnecessary headaches, and slowed me down.
While waiting for my Doepfer to arrive, I mapped out everything I would need
for the show. Since I already had done a lot of work using my Electro,
FantomX7 and Motif, it was simply a matter of reducing the keyboards (from 3
to 2, a real objective of mine), and figuring out what sound should go
where, and any octave transposition that would need to occur, and which hand
would be able to reach it; then, figuring out what footpedal/switch could
activate modulation, leslie speed, volume messaging since my hands couldn't
do it. Of course, knowing while some sounds I was happy with, and knowing
others I wasn't, it was also a matter of knowing which sounds I would need
to develop (the easy part!).
I spent all of last Saturday, about 8 hours trying to get things to work,
and failed miserably. I called Robert M on Sunday and he was gracious
enough to spent about 5 hours on the phone helping me troubleshoot and get
going. It took us 5 hours to get one set-up complete because of all the
weirdness going on; it took 40 minutes for the next one. After that, I
could program the layouts in about 20minutes or less, depending on their
complexity (thanks to my pre-weekend planning). Further grief with my
USB-midi interface screwed me over later, but Robert took a couple short
calls from me, and kept me on track. GREAT GUY!!!
Since this is already getting verbose, I'll try to keep it short. I
programmed all of Dark Side of the Moon and Animals before Wednesday's
rehearsal, and found I had some problems to fix with levels, and with the
Receptor going into "Load" mode for unexplained reasons. Waiting a full 45
seconds for this procedure to take place was unacceptable. I never could
ascertain why it was doing this, but I'm confident it was a midi message
being sent on some errant zone, or some quirk; I just went and cleaned up
every zone I wasn't using, and that fixed that problem. I also had to go
and shut down every program in every multi-set-up I wasn't using to ease the
burden on the CPU. I was running CS80, MiniMonsta, Mtron, B4 and Pro53
simultaneously, and the load would get too much; when that happened, there
would be a popping sound. Turning off what wasn't being used in the multi
took care of that problem. (A call to Muse got me the answer to buy more
Ram!!!!! My way is cheaper! But as I get more heavily into this, I'll pop
for the $100 upgrade, doable myself...or by my computer pals more likely.)
Another horrifying problem involved my Fantom X7. My X7 was going to be the
remote controller for the Doepfer, and I was using it as a tone generator as
well. Even after turning the Local Off, and turning off its own internal
"remote keyboard" capabilities, it would sporadically set up a midi feedback
loop, generating a static tone that wouldn't go away until I changed
patches. Also, while reacting to my joy at the sound of B4, I took a nice
happy smear on the X7 and yanked a key out of its moorings. At that point,
I decided the Electro would be the remote keyboard, and I would barter for a
FantomXR.
I spent Thursday evening fighting with my M Audio USB-Midi interface again.
I can't understand why it flakes out, but it does, and you have to reboot
your computer everytime it does. Annoying, especially when you're spending
4-6 hours a night trying to get this all to work. I was getting 4 hours or
less of sleep a nite, and by Thursday, I was down to 3. I was getting
REALLY burnt out, but I was determined to get it up and running.
After fixing the problems Thursday nite, Friday nite I spent programming all
of Wish You Were Here, and the 6 or 7 songs we do from the Wall. Saturday
was spent running errands (I had to take my wife's car in for some engine
indicators, and built my pedal board there in their waiting room; the
Doepfer has 2 footcontrol jacks -it likes the FC7, and one footswitch jack,
which will use a standard cheapo sustain pedal, or if you wire two together
with an insert cable, you can use a pair of pedals.) After errands, I
programmed the last two songs, and set up 5 all-purpose "spontaneous"
jamming patches; one with Rhodes and organ, one with clav and organ, one
with piano and organ.
At 6:45 pm, I started to build my rack (running WAY out of time!); M120
line mixer, MotifEs rack, FantomXR rack, Receptor, Power distributor. By
9pm I was on my way to the gig. The long short of this, the gig sounded
killer. Those synths were incredible, the B4 blew me away, being clean and
smooth (Us & Them), gritty and abrasive (In The Flesh), thin and reedy (the
intro to Time), and full and thick. I haven't even configured the drawbar
controller into this mess yet because most of the Floyd stuff doesn't
require drawbar manipulation while playing, but the sound of the settings I
preprogrammed was believable and inspiring. My guitarist, who hates synths,
was very impressed. The Pro-53 had me super inspired during Run Like Hell,
and after the guitar solo, I went off on an exploration of my own that went
on for a couple minutes and got me a very enthusiastic round of applause.
The MiniMonsta gave me the screaming sounds from Animals, and yet gave me
the truly warped sounds in Brain Damage; harmonizing that melody line with
Pro-53 was the icing on the cake.
All in all everything worked perfectly, and all my hard work and lack of
sleep paid off. Everything came up where I expected it to, there were no
mysterious "Load" episodes (The Muse loads just as fast as a normal synth
module when prepared correctly), pedal assignments did what they were
supposed to; only one time the whole evening was I surprised. One of my
FantomX7 rewrites to the Electro had a transpose message, and I had to
improvise over the raised tunings. One faux pas out of 50+ set-ups is more
than acceptable in my book.
Bottom line: I'm hooked. This is the wave of the future. An 88weighted
controller that weighs 47 lbs IN ITS CASE, combined with my 23lb Electro is
a sleek, small, keyboard rig; the rack weighs less than another keyboard and
has SO much more potential.
Well worth the money and effort expended.
T
Norman Peterson wrote:
Tony, I am waiting for your comments and review of the Pink Freud show
debuting your Muse Receptor and B4ll. Everything go well?
Norm
----- Original Message -----
From: tonysounds
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 10/17/2005 8:56:43 AM
Subject: Re: [CWSG] Re: Native Instruments B4 version 2
As a guy in love with his XK3 through a leslie, who has just discovered B4
(and likes it a lot as a non-leslie'd clone), I have a question: when you
say the B4 II will respond to midi info, would I be correct in assuming that
info does not include drawbar changes? (The XK3's drawbars don't send midi
info, right?)
T
b3monaco@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 10/17/2005 11:03:45 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
groovecake@yahoo.com writes:
Yeah...but how close is it to the XK-3?
Now that opens up a big one!!!!!! Actually the new b4II has a controller
map
so that it can respond to the xk3 midi info as translated to the b4II. As
far as sound, Hammond is Hammond! Software Synths are Software Synths. They
both sound excellent for their applications. If the software gets the sound
to
the software users, than maybe someday they'll want the real deal!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, they can be used together! Using the xk system to record all the
tracks (using as midi controller) using the b4II engine for playback. Then
stripping the audio with a real leslie through the xk3 engine (check out
demo here of xk system with leslie and di used for Hammond Suzuki
_http://b3monaco.com/saw.htm_ (http://b3monaco.com/saw.htm) )
But with software ussage, The B4 is a great teaching tool. See here how I
use the old B4 for lessons _http://b3monaco.com/Playingjazzhammond.htm_
(http://b3monaco.com/Playingjazzhammond.htm)
I think the key here is to remember that Hammond is a Hammond, nice
Keyboard, Drawbars, setup for gig now. The B4II has a great engine as well
but no hardware! I don't like any controllers out there right now for
playing organ.
That's the real difference. You still need the feel of the right keyboard
and good ergonomics of the layout of drawbars...Pedals...etc....
Leslie, Bench........ :)
Tony
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