SoundLab II

2011-10-28T02:31:00.001-07:00

SoundLab II, the interactive e-book for professionals.

Spring 2012 SoundLab II will be ready and available.
Full of unusual oscillators, E. G.'s, filters, Pattern Generators, Logic and much more.
Some are 'ready-to-go' pch's, but most are architectures and building blocks.
The result of years of research of new approaches in modular synthesis.
SoundLab I is available for beginners to experienced level users.
When SoundLab I was under construction, many new ideas had their offspring but
could not be placed.
So SoundLab II was created.
SoundLab II contains patches that are far-fetched or seemingly unusable,
some are elegant or clever.
But most of all, they are UNUSUAL.
This interactive E-book can been seen as a philosophical approach
towards modular patch design.
But above all it will challenge creativity and it is appropriate for everybody who wants to distinguish her/himself as a composer/sound designer.

research, development and demonstration.

English only.

A Few little examples:

A lot of pattern designs will be shown too. DIY pattern generators and more sofisticated architectures:

And with a lot of Logic fun:

This variation of a negative Ripple Counter:

What causes this Logic Drum & Noise?

A Noise loop Oscillator:

One step further, it will make a perfect input for a clocked Sample&Hold module:

A very versatile small Pattern Generator:

And did you know cascading S Flip-flop modules could be used to define the formant?

From a simple Harmonic oscillator with the use of shaper modules and a HP filter:

To a Phasing Wave osc with sync:

From a simple granular Env Gen:

To a D(elay)-Rhino EG. De controls are at the left.
The red audio cable is hidden:

A logic shape oscillator:

Or a Logic Ring Oscillator:

Shape your LFO's:

Sound different, a little RM timbre patch:

Or what about strange timbral echo's:

Talking about Shapers, what do you think of this Shaper model:

SoundLab I

2011-08-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

This is the Clavia G2 hardware and Demo interactive e-book.
It can be used as a reference manual for other modular synthesizers like the Nord Modular, Micro Modular, Reaktor, Max/Msp, Void.
It is packed with over 650 patches for an easy learning curve and workflow.

For content see right

Some examples:

2010-06-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

In chapter Basic 1, you will end up patching old subtractive modular systems like the ARP 2600:

Or the EMS Synthi:

In chapter Basic 2, you will find different kind of synthesis. Like additive synthesis with use of noise oscillators:

Or a violin made with the VOSIM technique:

FM synthesis like the Yamaha DX7:

Everything, step by step, additive to physical modeling and Granulair synthesis.

In the chapters House/Techno you will learn to build up drum and pattern machines from the ground up:

And famous machines:

Swing and humanize techniques too.

For the chapter Experimental music, here, you will learn from simple composing techniques, to more elaborate patch techniques and self running systems.
Like Drones:

From minimal music patches:

To complex music machines:

These are only a few of many examples.

some reviews

2010-02-11T01:13:00.000-08:00

source: electro-music.com

From Data Recovery, USA:

Roland's synthesis tutorial is hands down the best reference for the Nord G2. Period. It also serves as an outstanding resource and workbook for general synthesis. All the concepts covered in SoundLab can easily be applied to Max, Reaktor, or whatever you use. I ordered SoundLab because I was having trouble with Logic modules and needed to see some practical applications. What I got was an all-encompassing roller-coaster ride through every aspect of modular synthesis. If you love your G2 but feel as though you're not getting everything out of the editor, you will definitely benefit from SoundLab. It's like taking a comprehensive course in the G2. It's amazing.

From Memmorshell. India:

Now I have had this tutorial for a few weeks, I just wanted to say that it is realy an amazing source of information. Not only that actualy, It is one of the most valuable and practically usefull tutorials I have read or seen. After the Synthesizer Cookbook, this is the new synthesis bible.

From Drumfish, France:

I am so impressed of the work you have done in this tutorial..........just amazing realy. I bought this interactive cd to help me using my G2. I am so pleased that there is so much more inside.
History of electronic music with an attached video to every picture, 10 softwares, recording and softsynths&and the tutorial........MASSIVE. Great job.

From Ark, USA:

My first observation is that it is pitched at what I think at just the right level.
It assumes you understand the mechanics of creating patches and the rudiments of synthesis. The coverage is nice and clear. About half-way though the first page of the tutorial, it starts covering ideas although I may have understood them in princible, I did not grasp the ramifications. Its clear I have a lot of studying ahead for me........

From Marc, The Netherlands

I bought several synthesizers purely because I knew they would produce the sound I was looking for.
The Nord Modular G2 was one of them.
Once in the studio I quickly became aware that to get real interesting sounds out of it you had to get your hands dirty.
I mean Clavia doesn't really ship their product with inspiring presets.
They actually want you to explore your purchase yourself, and there is something positive about that mindset.
Most of the synthesizers these days are packed full with amazing presets.
Just a touch of a button and you have the most atmospheric and complicated sounds ever.
But there is a downside to this, people tend to get lazy.
How many people really understand their instruments.
Back in the dark modular times if you wanted a different sound you had to totally alter the cable connections because there was no memory.
This was only possible if you knew what you were doing.
So I have a couple of synths that are fabulous but then I became seriously ill for years.
It turned out to be chronical and when I took my first step back into my studio after a long time, the knowledge that I had was gone and eager to produce an album I wanted to get up to date again.
I first read a tutorial by Howard Scarr for the Access Virus series and after that I saw on the Electromusic forum that Roland Kuit had created a
tutorial for the NMG2.
I had tried some of the suggestions that I found on the forum, like buy the Arturia Moog Modular and the included book will help you with programming Modular Synthesizers. Well it did a little but it was an expensive lesson, $200 for a couple of pages that tell you how to create a patch.
OK, I have an awesome sounding Moog but if you can't program it the fun stops very quickly.

So I bought Roland's tutorial.

It's a HTML file on a cd and it comes with a demo version of the NMG2(Nord Modular G2) synth engine.
The history tour was worth the time especially because Roland has created links about the subjects to YouTube movies.
Giving you a very fun way to learn about an artist and you have many more links provided by YouTube to dig as deep as you want.

The Sound Synthesis chapters are great.
Instead of "How to create a MiniMoog or a Korg MS-20 with your NMG2" he steps through all the different ways of sound synthesis.
Many I heard of but you learn with examples made with the NMG2 how these different ways of sound synthesis work.
His way of teaching is pleasant and if you bother to try and recreate the patches you'll get a good understanding about all these different ways of sound synthesis.
Examining the patches is easy just click on the image and the NMG2 editor is automatically started with the patch ready to be studied.
I used Mozilla Firefox which directly let the Editor open the Patch. If you use Google Chrome the patches are first downloaded and you have to import each patch by hand which becomes a tedious procedure.

The next two chapters, "Dance and Trance" are all about creating patches involving drums, bass and chords.
The interesting thing here is that the NMG2 has it's own drum module but Roland rather wants you to learn how to put the knowledge from the previous chapters and put them to practice.
So be ready to patch a percussion loop in more than 4 or 5 ways. Sometimes it can be challenging but in the end it's quite rewarding to know how to create a complicated percussion patch with different ways of synthesis.

When you're designing your own sounds you will definitely use a combination of the many forms of synthesis.
Something what you will learn a lot during these chapters is the signalflow, Triggering, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, logic modules and more.
There are some big examples but the main objective is to really understand what is going on.
Don't forget he put 28 years of experience into a tutorial, you can't expect to understand everything at once.

The next chapters dig deeper into subjects like ring modulation, logic circuits, audio processing and last but not least "Tips and Tricks".

I find this tutorial one of the best ways to get informed about the different ways of sound synthesis but also how to program a synthesizer.
In this tutorial Roland choose for the Nord Modular G2 but this knowledge can easily be used to program Reaktor from Native Instruments, my Virus or even Alchemy from Camel Audio.
It gives you a very firm foundation on which you can built your own way of programming sounds.
I must admit that sometimes you really have to go that extra mile to understand some subjects but in the end it's worth it.
Especially when you own a NMG2 this is a must. You'll be patching your own sounds now.
Patches that first were a complete mess of cables make sense now.

One thing that made me very happy was the fact that when I listen to a particular sound now I automatically begin to analyse that sound and I have the knowledge to reproduce that sound on my NMG2 or a different synthesizer the basics never change.

As I said a must for a NMG2 owner who wants to get more out of his synth instead of downloading someone else' patches.
And a good overview of the different sound synthesis and how to create them with a modular system.

Roland Kuit SoundLab I and II

SoundLab II

SoundLab I

Some examples:

some reviews