Synth Demo - Work In progress.

[folderol]

Everyone seems to demo their fave synths these days, so I thought it about time I put something together myself and take you for a tour through Yoshimi. I want to work entirely inside Yoshimi, so that means no external effects or support synths - not even for percussion.

Currently this in nearly 8 minutes long - it's also too big to upload here, so I'm providing a link to my own website. I'll probably either shorten the first part, or cut it in half and stick the second part on the end, otherwise it gets a bit monotonous even though it does spin through quite a few sounds.

Mostly, I'm recording backing tracks, then improvising on top of them. There is a lot of tidying up to do, and there is more I want to add to give the best representation I can - I've only actually used 24 voice patches.

All comments and suggestions are welcome, as this is very much a moving target. When I make changes I'll overwrite the original file to save my web space, and I'll  just bump this entry when I make any significant improvements.

Ride with Yoshimi

[Oren]

Will,

Although the other selections on your website play very nicely with Firefox, "Ride With Yoshimi" doesn't seem to load and play successfully. Is this helpful?

Oren

[elwoodblues1969]

I recognize most of the sounds,as with all of your past renderings...you've already done a good shop of demonstrating Yoshimi.There are a few patches that are new to me...I haven't heard all that much in the way of freeware synths,but Yoshimi seems to be the most lush sounding.

[folderol]

Version 2 is up!


@Oren
Did you get a clean listen in the end?

@Thom
Thanks for listening. I'm trying to get as wide a representative sound range as I can. The bigger problem is covering appropriate musical styles


Well now, I carried on working on this last night (a bit obsessive I guess) resulting in my being late for work this morning! Fortunately there was little to do and I actually got to leave early so could spend even more time on my music this evening

I've done some general balancing, and corrected a few glaring timing errors - without sucking the humanity out of it. Also, specifically, I've improved the percussion at the end of the first part, and in the third part. However, most of the work has been on the fourth part which is now longer and introduces more instruments. We're up to 27 now - not all at once 

I still haven't decided what to to with the first part. Unfortunately(?) the melody lines interleave and it would be quite difficult to separate them now without an obvious break.

I'm wondering if the problem a couple of people have encountered is due to the fact I've gone from working at 44.1k to 48k. I use LAME to encode in VBR mp3 so I don't know if that combination messes with some decoders. In any case, I've now put up an ogg file as well as the mp3.

Ride With Yoshimi ogg

[Marc JX8P]

Very cool - reminded me of some 80s Mike Oldfield tracks. Really like the ethereal quality of the bell-like sounds. You should upload it in Soundcloud, so we can give some more detailed feedback at the seperate parts.

[Oren]

Yes, Will. I enjoyed the sounds, and both performances, very much. You should be proud of your part in the development of this amazing audio source!

(I had to open the mp3 audio in "Audacious" to get it streaming, but that did the trick. To play the Ogg Vorbis file, I had to download it, and then play in the default ogg player in Ubuntu Studio, "Movie Player".)

[folderol]

Well another extremely long session, but I think Yoshimi's ride is complete now. I did in fact shorten the first part - hopefully without losing anything, and filled the space with some new goodies. I've also done a bit more with the finale.

Thanks a lot Marc. I was waiting till the project was more-or-less settled before putting it up on the cloud, but I will do so now

Oren, it's very puzzling that you're having problems. I can play both files directly in Firefox here, and also from KVRs in-line player. I don't really want to go back to 44.1kHz if i can avoid it.

[SLD Music]

This sounds very very nice, now Will.  Congratulations!  It's really come a long way in a short time.

[folderol]

Thank you very much.
I can get quite engrossed when ideas come to mind but this one really grabbed me by the throat, so I spent time on it when I should probably have been doing other things!

[MarioD]

This does sound like you really got into it!

This one went into my keeper file so fast it left skid marks on my screen

[folderol]

  Thanks Mario