This track is about the emerging role of ML/AI in humanity. While making the track I was learning new tools for creation built with machine learning / artificial intelligence and the experience gave me pause until I leaned into them. I have seen artists become fearful from their experiences with ML but I personally find the potential of AI to be a creative lightning rod. This song tries to capture both perspectives. As we march forward to the future, we’ll encounter new things that will make us uncertain at first, giving us future nausea and causing us to reject them but we must learn to embrace them. I believe that the future is bright and we’ll eventually come to incorporate these new tools in our practices to elevate our forms to new levels of artistry.
This track is the first time I’ve released music since 2022 and I’ve distributed it to additional stores, check out the release on:
TLDR: From my research, the following aspects of your computer translate the most to being able to seamlessly work on music:
Processor speed (CPU) – Most important / major factor of performance
System I/O (reading to/from disk and memory) – Next most impactful aspect
Peripheral and audio interface performance – Lowest relevant factor
If you only do one thing, compare the multi-core GeekBench scores for a computer to figure out which will be faster for music production.
If further optimizing your selection, look at the disk and RAM options. When comparing RAM, the MHZ most closely correlates to speed, same with disk, the manufacture GB/s correlates to speed.
For peripherals like midi keyboard and soundcard, don’t daisy chain them and prefer newer / faster standards like Thunderbolt and USB-C.
When you are producing music with a computer, you generally want to get the fastest possible computer that you can in every dimension of computer performance (CPU, memory, disk, and peripheral performance). A slower computer is more likely to have latency (time between when a is played until you hear it) and will take longer to render the audio for things like project renders, bounces, and oversampling or may not even be able to oversample in real-time.
With this in mind, you will want to focus on the raw computational performance of your computer, match it to I/O performance, and finally want to ensure that you are not bottlenecked by your peripherals and interfaces (e.g. audio interface).
This post first gives you some tools for understanding computer performance in the key dimensions:
Comparing the performance of processors
Comparing I/O performance
Insights on peripheral bottlenecks
You’ll then be given examples for baselines to understand choosing a computer based on these dimensions and hopefully will be ready to make informed decisions when building or buying a computer for music production.
Although this article focuses on the basics, you can apply them to building more extreme computers that can render projects with large numbers of tracks.
In practice, the only GeekBench score that really matters for overall performance is the multi-core score.
This is the most important aspect of selecting a music computer. If you only read this section, you will be able to identify a computer that will in general exceed the performance of a relatively less performant computer. I recommend the GeekBench benchmarks for comparing processors. There are other synthetic benchmarks but GeekBench is cross-platform, has a gallery of scores you can search, and is easy to understand because bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Because it’s cross-platform, you can compare PC to Mac or Mac to PC performance when comparing options should you want to switch. Something to note about GeekBench is that there are different versions of the benchmark and you should only compare scores in the same GeekBench version (don’t compare GeekBench 5 to GeekBench 6 scores).
To find the GeekBench score for a given system, identify the specific processor type by its family and model number and search the GeekBench database for that processor. The processor model is usually a 4-digit number and letter combination e.g. 6700k, 3900x as opposed and not to be confused with the processor family which is usually another part of the full model name (e.g. i7, Ryzen, Threadripper, i3, etc). It is of paramount importance to use the full model number for your processor and not just the family when looking up a benchmark score because there is a massive range of performance within even a single family of processors. For example, Intel’s i7 family of processors range between 600 and 2000 in single-core performance and 3000-13000 (as of writing) in multi-core performance, a 3x-4x difference! Be very careful when purchasing that you are getting the processor model that matches the expected performance. Also be mindful that the benchmarks I’m going from here are GeekBench 5, which will be considerably lower than older GeekBench scores (e.g. GeekBench 3).
Here is an example of a GeekBench score showing what’s presently Intel’s flagship CPU, the i9-13900k:
GeekBench scores are broken down by single-core and multi-core. The single-core performance corresponds to the capacity for processing within an atomic portion of the processor (modern computers have a bunch of processors grouped together) and the multi-core score corresponds to the sum of the performance of all available processors working at once.
Let’s do a quick comparison between the benchmark I showed you earlier from the i9-13900k and Apple’s flagship processor, the M1 Ultra. The following image shows the benchmark for the M1 Ultra:
As you recall, the i9 had the following performance numbers: single-core 2220, multi-core 26272. The M1 ultra has the following performance numbers: single-core 1778, multi-core 23724. Both of these machines are very fast at the time of writing. In this synthetic benchmark, the i9 that was tested showed marginally faster performance than the M1 that was tested.
I’ll note that these benchmarks are rough comparisons between the performance of the two computers: even on the same computer you can get different scores in subsequent tests. With this in mind, it’s prudent to look at a number of scores in the browser when making these comparisons.
So you now have a starting point for picking a computer based on the processor performance: look at multi-core on GeekBench before you buy.
At the time of writing, the following GeekBench 5 baselines are useful for estimating how fast your computer will perform for Ableton, which should be similar to other DAWs:
Less than 3000 Multicore – Will barely be able to run
3000-6000 – minimum recommended setup (frequently need to pre-render in workflow)
6000-12000 – good performance in DAW (sometimes need to pre-render in workflow)
12000-15000 – great performance in DAW (rarely need to pre-render in workflow)
20000+ – OMG this is the fastest computer I have ever used
After the performance of your processor, the disk and memory performance will have the next largest impact on your system performance for audio. I’ll start with disks and will then cover RAM.
For disks: use the MB/s rating to compare disks and prefer NVME over SSD and SSD over spinning disks (sometimes called HD).
For RAM, try and get at least 16GB RAM and look at the MHZ rating of the RAM as a general guide for how fast the RAM performs.
Disks
Disks in general come in three types: HD or spinning disk, SSD, and NVME. HD will be cheaper, SSD faster than HD, and NVME faster than SSD. The relevant disk performance metric is provided by MB/s or IOPS, higher MB/s means more data transferred contiuously – higher IOPS means shorter time from when you request data be transferred to the data transferring. I tend to focus on MB/s, because the IOPS and MB/s are correlated. The following high-level numbers will help you understand what is fast at time of writing but in general, you’ll be comparing so just pick the faster / better value choice for what you are going for.
500 MB/s – Typical performance for HD / SSD
7000 MB/s – Fast Gen4 PCIE-4 NVME disk
10000 MB/s – Fast Gen5 PCIE-5 NVME disk
20000 MB/s – “exotic” disk performance achievable by striping disks in RAID-0 (most should not want to do this)
Because this is a primer, I will not go into details on disks but when you’re comparing the hard disks for a music computer, you should prefer an NVME disk, with higher rated throughput as provided by the manufacturer.
RAM
The available performance of RAM will depend on the capabilities of your motherboard and processor so it’s difficult to give clear and concise recommendations in this primer. RAM is in general faster than disk performance and contributes to the system responsiveness but may have minimal effect when going beyond the matching performance to what your processor can handle (e.g. the 3900x pairs well with 3600mhz RAM, so getting faster RAM may not make a big impact).
The amount of RAM is usually as much of a consideration as how fast the RAM is because more RAM is better than less but you have diminishing returns on the impact to system performance beyond 32GB. I have found that exceeding 64GB of RAM does not significantly impact system performance in music production.
The basic recommendation I’ll make for RAM is when comparing pre-built systems, look at the MHZ performance of the RAM (e.g. 4000mhz RAM vs 6000mhz RAM) and understand that systems with higher speed RAM with all else equal will be a little bit faster. Also target a minimum of 16GB RAM, and only get more than 64 if you are going for an extreme build.
The peripherals are your PCI, USB, and Thunderbolt devices such as midi controllers and your audio interface. In general, these will not have a significant impact on your real-world DAW performance but can in some cases cause problems. As this is a primer, you should mostly be concerned about what not to do and what is the relative performance of your options for audio interfaces.
Gotchas
Avoid chaining a large number of USB devices on the same interface as your audio interface or midi interfaces.
Avoid older USB hubs that may downgrade your USB peripherals to legacy protocols, you should be looking for USB-2 or USB-3 hubs at a minimum.
Prefer powered interfaces and hubs.
Audio interface options
Audio interfaces come in PCI, USB, and Thunderbolt. For desktops, the fastest interfaces you can find with the lowest latency will be installed inside the computer in PCI express slots, the next fastest are Thunderbolt, then USB. The gains that you can achieve by choosing a faster interface are probably less significant than choosing an interface based on your other needs number of inputs, support for a plug-in ecosystem you want, or other non-performance factors so I recommend you choose based on those other factors first and then prefer between the same model based on your system capabilities. As an example, if there’s a thunderbolt 4 option and you have a computer that supports it, you should prefer it over thunderbolt 3 or USB should the same card be offered in both. The same is true for USB vs USB-C or PCI vs USB (if you’re building a desktop).
As this is a primer on purpose-built computers for music production and the biggest factor is multi-core performance in synthetic benchmarks, let’s conclude by taking a look at a few example computers and how you can assess them.
Essential Ableton performance
For this class of build, you will be able to run Ableton, render 20-40 tracks using Ableton stock plugins, and occasionally use computation intensive VSTs. You will probably want to keep Ableton’s sample rate at 44.1khz to minimize the amount of calculations that it needs to perform and will need to adopt a workflow incorporating freezing and flattening tracks or adjusting your buffer and delay to compensate for the machine needing more time to calculate the ultimate output that is streams to your soundcard.
Systems in this performance class will have single-core CPU benchmark scores under 1000 in GeekBench 5 and multi-core benchmarks in the sub-3500 range.
For this class of build, you will be able to run Ableton, load up 80-100 tracks, and can run a few expensive plugins or work in higher sample rates than on a basic setup. As of writing, in 2021, this is pretty much what I would consider the sweet spot for most Ableton users.
You want a GeekBench 5 single-core score in the 1000 range and multi-core in the 5000-7000 range.
Examples of systems in this range:
Mac Pro 2012 with the Xeon X5675 12-core
Razer Blade 2020 with i7-10750h
Mac Mini M1 (Late 2020)
Systems built around the Ryzen 3600x w/ X570|B550
MacBook Pro 2019 with i9-9980k
Systems built around the Ryzen 5600x / X570|B550
Great Ableton performance
For this class of build, Ableton will dance with delight as you render tracks to your heart’s content. You should be able to render hundreds of tracks in real-time without freezing and flattening and can crank up the quality settings on everything and oversample without it becoming a problem.
You want a GeekBench 5 single-score in the 1300 range and multi-score in the 12000-15000 range.
Examples of systems in this range:
iMac (Late 2020) 20,2 Core-i9-10900k (10-core)
Intel Systems with i7-12600k w/ Z690|B660|H670
Intel Systems with i7-12700k w/ Z690|B660|H670
Systems built around the AMD Ryzen 3900x w/ X570|B550
Apple MacBook Pro M1-max
Apple Mac Studio with M1-Max
Systems built around the AMD Ryzen 5900x w/ X570|B550
Systems built around thee AMD Ryzen 3950x / 5950x w/ X570|B550
Extreme Ableton Performance
For this class of build, you are really putting everything you have got into making the fastest possible computer for Ableton. You’re going beyond the practical and into the realm of the possible. Most producers do not “need” a system this fast but if you’re using Ableton all day every day and your well-being is based entirely on shaving seconds off your workflow and never needing to freeze and flatten, you will end up here.
For this class of build, you want a GeekBench 5 multi-core score in the 20,000+ range.
Examples of this type of build are:
Intel Systems with Z690|B660|H670 and i9-12900k or i9-13900k
TRX40 and AMD Threadripper (3960x, 3970x, 3990x)
Mac Pro (Late 2019) with the 28-core Intel Xeon W-3275M
Apple Mac Studio (2022) with M1-Ultra
For more information
My unabridged guide for purpose-specific creation of computers for music is in a shared drive document, comments are enabled for anyone with the link. This document provides some more detailed background on how computers render audio, detailed considerations for extreme music production builds, and deep analysis of DAW performance, but is still a work in progress. Please feel free to mention me on Twitter if you have questions or if there’s something that could use more clarification.
If there’s enough interest in this topic, I will follow up with another post covering building extreme computers for music production and more details on focusing a build for specific workflows. I hope this was helpful for y’all!
I have been making some music recently that incorporates electric pianos that sound like the Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Clavinova, and so on. In the process, I explored the Electric instrument in Ableton and found my results to be a bit underwhelming. I ultimately ended up leaning on synthesizers that are able to produce electric piano sounds that sound really great straight out of the box and produced sampled instruments to make it easier for myself in the future to stay in the box while producing.
In this post, I’ll go over some things that have worked well with producing Electric Piano sounds and am sharing some libraries from my synth collection.
Sound source and Effects
The key behind getting good source sounds for an analog piano instrument is the combination of varied amplitude and tone. This can be achieved in many ways but sustain and velocity are essential. Mr. Bill has a great short video covering this in his HCA feed (subscribe, it’s worth it!) that covers some tricks in Ableton to achieve this.
Another useful technique is using effects that make the piano / keyboard sound more realistic. I have found that reverbs, phasers, flangers, and other similar effects can really add some character to the piano sound as well as some variation that makes it sound like there is a real piano being played instead of one that’s synthesized.
In Ableton, you will find that playing on the electric instrument (which emulates a Rhodes® and Wurlitzer® using physical modeling) having these two sources of variation are essential to making the synthesized keyboard tones sound good. I am still a bit underwhelmed by the presets provided and results that I have achieved and have found that an actual rhodes or other analog keyboard to deliver more convincing results.
Yamaha Reface CP Synthesizer
I fell in love with the Reface CP electric keyboard’s sounds which closely emulates the sound of the Wurli and Rhodes. The Reface also provides an excellent selection of the essential effects:
Tremelo
Chorus
Delay
Reverb
These effects are frequently used in the cabinets that interface with these electric key standards, adding to the classic sound character of the instruments.
A picture of your friend Gus’s Yamaha Reface CP
Here is an audio sample of some keyboard noodling on the Reface through a few different presets while the effects are modulated.
Note the nice character that you get from the synthesizer! Having the synth available is great but I still find my workflow to mostly be “in the box” when it comes to making music. To make it easier for me to access these sounds, I created a set of Reface CP Kontakt devices and thought they may be useful for other producers.
Free Kontakt library for Reface CP
The Kontakt library I produced combines variable velocity sources from each of the 6 Reface presets as well as the hidden 7th preset. For those that don’t know, if you turn on the Reface CP between presets, it will load a vibey “acoustic piano” style source that in my opinion is potentially the BEST preset on the device. I’m not sure why Yamaha hid it.
Here’s a quick demo track made using the instrument and some drum loops:
In the download at the top of the post, are a few Kontakt and SoundFont libraries as well as an instrument rack for Ableton if you want them all in a nice hocket with a selector.
Over the past few years, I have updated my production computers (e.g. vsts/plugins/daw and library) a few times and have learned some lessons that I’ll be sharing in this post. Yesterday, I performed a relatively painless migration to a new computer and was up in running with everything good-to-go by today! Having had a very different experience the last few times I did this (forgetting some plugin/VST, not being able to activate a license, spending countless hours figuring out which VSTs I had, etc) I wanted to share the things that were helpful for me. For Ableton users, there is a guide on project transfer to new machines in their Transferring Projects to another computer documentation.
The most important thing that you can do, to avoid friction in future installs, is to exercise a few practices while you accumulate plugins, drivers, and license files:
Save your installers in a common location
Save those license files
Use email as a registration repository
Use a notes application (e.g. Keep) to maintain registration codes
By saving all your installers, license files, and registration information, you will greatly simplify the workflow for setting up a new machine. I’ll also cover a few useful considerations that have helped me along the way.
Collecting and installing all the plug-ins
As you can see from the screenshots on the right, I have a non-trivial number of plugins installed on my computer. I’m not saying I use them all but they’re there and I have old projects that I’d rather not re-do sections of – that make use of the occasional random VST. Let’s talk about collecting and installing your plugins, the first thing you would do when migrating to a new computer.
My first tip is that the key to having a painless migration in the future is to save and organize your plugins while you accumulate them. If you’re new to music production, get in the habit of saving all of the installers, license files, and content packs in a backup or if you have the space free, alongside your organized music folder. If you’ve been producing for a while and are migrating to a new computer, save the installers while you set up your new machine and you’ll be happy you did it when inevitably in the future you have to reinstall everything. Save your plugins all together in a backup location (uncompressed if they come in zips) so you can quickly install everything back to back.
The next tip I’ll add is to use the default installation path for *most* of your plugins. Using a custom Ableton folder with VSTs on a non-default path can create some friction and may not be supported in other audio editors that you may eventually introduce to your workflow. Also, by using the default plugin, you will save yourself the pain of changing the installation path while you are quickly running through all the installers. So in summary: quickly install your plugins that don’t have large libraries using the defaults.
The exception to this rule is to install plugins with large corpuses of data (e.g. Kontakt instruments and Omnisphere) to a separate disk, maybe even a drive that is configured with RAID-0 for faster loading.
Which leads me to the next tip: prefer using plugin distributors and installers that will bulk install your plugins. If you have plugins that are distributed through them, use the Izotope, Waves, Plugin-Alliance, Native-Instruments, Splice, Steam, and Output installers to manage plugins they distribute. To make this step go faster, also connect your computer to Ethernet for quicker and more reliable downloading of the large plugin corpuses. This is especially important for Native-Instruments Kontakt if you have Komplete. Although contrary to how I felt when I started producing, it can be a big timesaver to prefer plugins that are sold via a service with its installer. Yeah, the provider could go out of business but the convenience they afford you is worth it and you’re usually provided an offline installer if you need it. So, as you accumulate more plugins, check to see if you can buy them through a service that will make re-installation and licensing easier.
All the plugins
1000+ VST plugins
Use an iLok Hardware Dongle
When I first started producing, I hated iLok, it seemed like a lot of trouble to go to in order to self-DRM my plugins – it’s like being prison guard for yourself or something. Anyways, after setting up a large number of computers for music production, and having issues with plug-in/VST authorizations and running out of seats to use the plug-ins in, I have changed my opinion.
It’s $50, which isn’t cheap, but you will probably only buy one in your lifetime. Being able to easily install your plug-ins/VSTs without worrying about unregistering and re-registering your machine for activation is easily worth the price of the dongle. Additionally, being able to go back to your old machine and just insert the dongle to activate your VSTs is comforting. In summary, when you have multiple plug-ins that support iLok, go to the hardware dongle sooner than later to simplify licensing and activations.
Don’t forget your Ableton User Library folder
Don’t forget to migrate your Ableton User Library folder as well. I have forgotten to do this in the past and lost my Ableton Instrument presets, all my saved midi, my Max4Live devices, and so on.
One way to make this even more fluid is to use a cloud backup like Dropbox to sync your user library folder. If you do this (at least with Dropbox) make sure to keep that user library lean and mean, slow disk accesses can bog down Ableton performance.
Synchronizing your User Library from the documents folder
Gotcha's with Universal Audio
Universal Audio
Universal Audio makes some really expensive sounding plugins so it’s great for that. However, be careful how you migrate your UAD plugins. Most importantly, do not attempt to transfer your plugins associated to your account out of your account unless you’re actually trying to get rid of them. The support team at UAD is very overburdened and can take a week to respond to support requests and support requests are the only way to resolve making the simple mistake of trying to “transfer your hardware with plugins” to a new computer. (Their website has a clear warning that I naively did not heed, don’t be like me!)
If you make this little mistake you will find yourself in support hell for a few weeks.
Universal Audio error while trying to transfer a device to yourself
Plugin presets
Migrate your plug-in presets
Don’t forget to grab your plugin presets, a few examples to get you thinking about what you’ll miss if you forget:
Forgetting your presets can be a tragic experience, make sure to triple check you’re not forgetting anything!
Finishing touches
Conclusions and finishing touches
Before you kick to the curb / sell your old machine, wait a few weeks and keep producing on the new one. Open up your old projects using a bloom filter of some portion of your projects (e.g. check your oldest project, your newest project, the median age project, and some in-between projects) and make sure that you haven’t forgotten anything. After you have some confidence that all the things are in their place, you can confidently wipe that old machine and declutter!
To summarize my tips:
Save your installers, license keys, and license activation files for next time
Prefer to acquire your plugins through bulk installers
Install plugins to the default folders
Use iLok hardware dongle
Don’t forget to backup your Ableton User Library
Be careful with what you do with Universal Audio
Backup your plug-in presets
Wait a little while before wiping your old computer and check that a broad sample of your project files load correctly
Electronic instruments like the Akai MPC One, Maschine+, or Modular synthesizers are great tools for making music. For me, they serve as a way to escape being at the computer where I’m working primarily with the keyboard and mouse. Exploring other creative modalities like twisting knobs or bouncing pads is great, especially if you use a computer all day for work. In addition to being powerful tools for composition and performance, electronic instruments can also be compact and easy to bring with you away from home or out for live performance. As you can imagine, there are many situations where you would want to use your electronic instruments but don’t have convenient access to power.
To address this issue, many hardware manufacturers have started including batteries in their instruments so that you can use your instruments without needing to plug them in to power. For example, the Akai MPC Live and Live II include internal batteries and market the device as gear that you can bring along on a hike should the creative spark strike you.
The clever OP-1 from Teenage Engineering can run off its internal batteries long enough (18 hours!) to last through many sessions and is sophisticated enough to compose complete works on.
The OP-1 is like a miniature studio in a box
Being able to just pick up and play with instruments like this gives them a charm that differs from powering on a computer and running a windowed application with VSTs.
So what do when you have an instrument that you wish were battery powered but that isn’t? Just add a battery! Batteries are abundant because what is essentially the same system that is used for powering a laptop, RC aircraft, or cell phone is exactly what you would be looking for to power your instrument. You can easily purchase online a ready-built power supply for your device based on the voltage, size of the connector, and required amperage. If it’s not plainly written on the device, a little dive into the user manual usually can get you all the details that you need. With the ready-built battery, you can plug in the adapter just as you would into a wall and you’re free from needing a wall outlet!
I’ll show you how I did this for a few of my instruments. First, let’s look at the Maschine+.
The Maschine+ is Native Instrument’s ecosystem in pad form
If you just flip it around and look at the plug on the back, you’ll notice some markings written on the back near the DC power jack.
Labels with 15V, 2.6A can be seen on the back.
The labels tell you everything you need to know to find a compatible power adapter except for the size of the barrel connector. The voltage (15V) is provided first, and the amperage (2.6A) is next with the lines in-between indicating that the power is DC (not a squiggly sine wave) with the polarity of the outer ring being ground (solid line) and the inner pole being the connector’s voltage. To identify the size of the barrel connector, I checked in the manual but couldn’t find it so I measured it with a micrometer to approximate and then searched for replacement parts to verify. I still came up short but many of these plugs are roughly 2.5mm which seemed close to what I measured the plug to be.
The near-final step is to try and find a battery that provides the voltage (15v) with sufficient amperage (2.6A) that includes a compatible 4mm (??? I had to guess on this one) plug. I searched on Amazon, and found this little beauty – the BatPower EX7H – which at a minimum met the voltage requirements. To do this, I asked Wolfram Alpha, how many amps is 90W at 15V and it said 6A, which should be plenty of power to meet the 2.6A the Maschine+ needs. I waved a magic bone over my keyboard and rolled the dice with BatPower.
After the charger arrived, I opened it, verified the connector worked – if it were the wrong size, I would have found a kit of barrel plug adapters – then read the manual to figure out how to set the battery to 15V. After setting it all up, it was time for the moment of truth! I powered on the battery, plugged it into the Maschine+, and the power light lit up. After that, the device worked just as well as it would have plugged into the wall.
The Maschine+ powered by battery!
I have done similar additions to my MPC One and to make it more convenient for use in my kitchen, I even added some USB speakers and 3D printed a stand. The result was this chonky boi:
All set for timer beats
So there you have it, I hope this inspires you to add power to more of your music gear so you can use it more freely! I have made portable modular setups similarly – the possibilities are endless!
Modular cases ready for external power from batteries
I was in the local modular synthesizer store when they received delivery of the Septavox from Critter & Guitari and I immediately was taken back by the future organ sounds that came out of the cute little synth. The keys are made of wood and the case is bent metal, giving this synth a very boutique look and feel. I scooped it right away as these are pretty rare to come by.
Synth Layout
This synth has an integrated speaker as well and can be powered by AA batteries making it a fun bring-along synth for taking out with you. It’s really compact for the number of octaves you get in the keyboard. On the back is midi-in and midi-out, on the side is a DC port and the 1/4″ mono output for DI recording. On the back of the synth is an open slot that takes the AA batteries and a card that is included for reference on the tone and mode options.
There are two preset selectors that indicate their current mode by changing the LED color next to the button. The left button lets you select the tone from Dirty Sine, Sine, Electric Organ, Square, Sawtooth, Dirty Square, and Computer. The right preset selector changes the mode for the effect knobs. There’s a vibrato, slide, arp, swell, octave cascade, slicer, and pipe glide modes in there.
The two knobs control various parameters depending on the mode. For example, the vibrato mode has rate and depth settings that let you build a range of sounds from the tones from pitch-enveloped kicks to laser and wobbly risers. The slide and swell modes also give some unique character to the various tones that the synthesizer makes.
Demos
For this demo, I created some simple chords and put them into a drum rack. The demo resembles the organ sounds from Faithless – Insomnia.
This next demo uses the same process and has a few house chords that sound like something that you would hear in a Vengaboys track.
This final demo was produced by modulating a dirty sine in the vibrato mode and sounds similar to the sounds that the talking animals in Animal Crossing make.
Download
I have put together a very simple project with the instruments used in the demos created from the samples I created using the Septavox. Feel free to use them however you want!
This synthesizer was Casio’s first keyboard based on sampled sounds. When I was a young piano student, I had access to one at home and would noodle around on the keys and play my Suzuki method homework on these sweet PCM sampled instruments. I also remember being blown away by the DEMO mode of this keyboard. This is not sampled from my childhood keyboard (I found it at a vintage synth store!) but the sounds still brings back memories like how our cat peed on ours giving it a funny smell.
This bank includes Kontakt instruments as well as Soundfont 2 files (playable in Ableton Sampler, Fruity Soundfont Player, and Reason NN-XT / NN19).
The following programs have been added to the bank:
Accordion
Bells
E Piano
Funky Clav
Harp
Harpsichord
Jazz Guitar
Marimba
Organ
Piano
Vibraphone
Regardless of how you will be using this, you should first extract the downloaded files to a folder you can easily find. To load the Soundfont2 file in Ableton, drag the SF2 file into a sampler instrument. For Reason, load the SF2 from the NN-XT or NN19 instruments. I’m currently seeing issues loading SF2 files into Live 11; if you load the SF2 into your library in Live 10, it will then appear in your 11 library. For FL Studio, load the Soundfont Player device and load the SF2 file.
For Kontakt, just browse from the file manager to the NKI files. It’s the first time I’ve distributed Kontakt instruments, so you may need to resolve the path to the samples by providing the folder you containing the samples when you load the instrument.
You’re welcome to use the samples from my instrument however you want – I consider them to be attribution-free public domain so long as I’m not unknowingly breaking some other license. If you want to give me something back for giving these away, just follow me on Soundcloud, Instragram, or Twitter and say hello if you see me at a festival! I’ll be giving away more stuff as I make it so check back on https://ourfriendgus.com from time to time.
I’m Gus, we’re friends now, I am currently working on the OURFRIENDGUS (Our Friend Gus) project for which this web site’s been created. I have been making a lot of music over the past few years and can’t wait to show you!
I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I will be writing more about my project work on this site!
