Roland Kuit's G2 tutorial

[Wout Blommers]

Roland,

I would like to purchase one, so I think we can reduce the postal costs when I collect it myself?

Wout

[DN]

Received my copy yesterday! Haven't had the time to dig in yet, but from the bits I glanced over it looks fantastic.

[Roland Kuit]

Ross, as I am working at SoundLab II now, few patches came up in my mind for in SoundLab I. Thats why the updates. Yes, I have put them in this tutorial but wanted that the people who already bought the tutorial could access them too. Thats why my blogspot-newsletter is so important. Here you can ask questions, answered in the newsletter. SoundLab I is finished now, maybe a few updates/patches. I think I got most things i wanted to explain well covered. SoundLab II will be written with a different angle/point of view.
Clavia says:

SoundLab Modular G2 tutorial
2010-01-21Roland Kuit (composer / artist) has put together an interactive Modular G2 tutorial that covers all levels of usage.

Learn how to take advantage of the power in the Modular synthesizers! To order this tutorial, contact Roland for further details.

And they are right;) I wanted to explain synthesis from an easy way-to the more advanced-proffesional level of users without killing the ceativity.
The nice thing here is, its interactive with the Demo/G2 hardware(but a lot can be translated to the NM) and can be used as a reference too. The most important thing is...making music and understand what you're doing and having fun doing it.

ps: thats ok wout, I pm you my mobile nr.

[iPassenger]

ok, cool I'll add myself to your newsletter.

[Roland Kuit]

just tested my newsletter and it works

[jksuperstar]

Tested my new SoundLab CD and it works

[Roland Kuit]

new addon chapter House/Techno II.
For in the chapter House/Techno II this patch. This is about the rhythm of the bass. The modulated and tempo synced Lfo module is crucial here. It modulates the AD Converter witch triggers the DA Converter.

see my:
link removed by mod



thanks Ross, hope you have fun with it

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[Roland Kuit]

For in the chapter Experimental Music, under topic Minimal Music, this pch.
Have fun.

[cappy2112]

[Roland Kuit]

Hi Cappy
The link to suscribe yourself is:
link removed by mod

[torbell27]

G2's better than G1

[Wout Blommers]

[Roland Kuit]

Hi Torbell. It is a G2 tutorial. But what is better? I have both, they are sounding different and I like them both.

link removed by mod
NM&G2s, Muse Receptor

[iPassenger]

Got mine yesterday, not dug in to deep but there is a mine of information in there. Cheers Roland.

Ross

[Roland Kuit]

Thanks Ross,
the trick is to combine the knowledge from the chapters to each other.

[lefev]

Roland,
Received mine and am happy to explore patching the G2 this way. Thanks!

Michael

[DN]

Glad to see that this was stickied (been meaning to say for a few days now). Well deserved!

[Roland Kuit]

thanks guys:)

[Roland Kuit]

Last update for in chapter House/Techno II.
This strange sequencer makes use of the Sample & Hold module and multiplexers. in the mixer and level modules, the rhythm and pitch, can be changed by the constant modules.

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[Pixie Hollow]

Hi everybody!

I bought Roland's tutorial a while ago and decided to let you know what my thought were.

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.


I hope this will help you whether you should buy it or not.

Thanks for reading,

Pixie


[Antimon]

That's a nice story, Pixie!

/Stefan

[Pixie Hollow]

Well thank you Stefan.
I've searched for a good tutorial about how to get the most out of my NMG2 but always were disappointed.
This is a real good tutorial and it has opened my eyes and let me see what a great machine the NMG2 is and how much fun sound synthesis can be.

Thanks again man,

Pixie

[Antimon]

Cheers - I just felt it was a nice warming and informative recount.

I've been thinking (somewhat arrogantly) that I know everything I need about the G2, but maybe I should give this tutorial a try anyway. I know Roland does great things with the Nords and knows a lot, and it can be good to leaf through some info, getting new inspiration. Maybe I'll even learn how to read other people's patches, or my own! I tend to lose the grip fast when a patch goes beyond osc->filter->out complexity.

/Stefan

[Roland Kuit]

wow...thanks!

[drumfish]

hi roland
i was away for a while (enjoying the snow around the alpes & the x-games) & back home today i got your update
thanks a lot for the regular updates
not only your tuto is massive but you keep fixing it !!!
you're a master