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 Forum index » Clavia Nord Modular » Nord Modular G2 Discussion
The g2 sound - How do you tweak it?
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Ludvig



Joined: Jul 25, 2005
Posts: 26
Location: Stockholm - Sweden

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:49 am    Post subject: The g2 sound - How do you tweak it? Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hello all!

I am as you can see new to these forums. I have spent the last week reading a lot of old posts and first of all i would like to say it has been very inspiring to share your thoughts and ideas.

Now for the topic. I am a owner of a g2 engine. I've had it for 4 months now and i love patching on it. I think its a whole lot of fun and really easy to use. However i find myself always coming up short in one department. I always need to process the sound coming out of the g2 to get it to sound more vivid, up front or punchy. I usually end up needing some creative EQing, compression and / or distortion. Not a whole lot mind you, just enough so that the sound, in my ears at least, comes alive.

Now i know the g2s shortcomings in sound has been debated before and the purpose of this post is not to get everybodys opinion on how the g2s sound differs from the NM1 or for that matter in what aspects ( if any ) the g2 comes up short in comparison to other synths.

Instead i simply ask "what do you do to make the g2 sound like you want it to sound?". ive downloaded Robs patches and they have been a great help but im sure that within this community there is a lot more to pick up.

I noticed the other day that I almost all the time somewhere in the end of the signal chain of my patches have 2 or 3 ( different ) shapers set to very mild shaping just to get a more complex and less pure sound. Then I thought that maybe a lot of you have these standard tweaks or sollutions that you often use in your patches.

So instead of debating what we think of the sound of the g2 I propose that we share our ideas on how to get the sound like we want it. The g2 is such an amazing piece of kit that I am convinced that the sounds i'm looking for are in there somewhere! Smile

Ludvig
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Tim Kleinert



Joined: Mar 12, 2004
Posts: 1148
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
Audio files: 7
G2 patch files: 236

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 2:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

First of all, welcome to this forum, Ludvig!

In reply to your topic (an interesting one):

I personally perceive warmth and vividness not only as an issue of frequency response (saturation, "warmth" circuits, etc.), but also movement. Digital oscillators however, are perfectly static and stable. Whereas this stability is good(!) and necessary when doing precision stuff with oscillators, it can make everything sound a bit stale and lifeless when you use them in a more basic way. Hence, I often patch pitch randomizing (drifting) and mistracking circuits for them. A slow random LFO on the pitch input does the job. Crank up the osc pitch mod attenuator until its effect is clearly audible, then back it down just a bit. Then you don't notice it, but it is still there. Makes a big difference.

I attached a patch which demonstrates my preferred solution: The oscillator drives a RandomClk module, whose "Step" parameter hence allows for a detailed control of pitch impurity, from slow drifting to fast jittering.


Drift Jitter TK.pch2
 Description:
simple solution for osc drift and jitter

Download
 Filename:  Drift Jitter TK.pch2
 Filesize:  978 Bytes
 Downloaded:  1458 Time(s)


Last edited by Tim Kleinert on Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:03 am; edited 2 times in total
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Charlie



Joined: Jul 08, 2005
Posts: 8
Location: paris

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

you can also warm your sound by copying-pasting filters models of some patchs here, I'm thinking of Rob's ones
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Rob



Joined: Mar 29, 2004
Posts: 580
Location: The Hague/Netherlands/EC
G2 patch files: 109

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 4:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hi,

You might have a look at this item:
http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-7224.html
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Ludvig



Joined: Jul 25, 2005
Posts: 26
Location: Stockholm - Sweden

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Rob:
Excellent! I followed the topic on the NMlist and when I come home from work I will check it out. Like I wrote in my first post - your patches has been a big help!

Tim:
Yes. This is a good way to get a more evolving, alive sound. I do think its an interresting topic because even if the modular approach of the g2 means that you get different sounds depending on your patching I believe there are several things that you do all the time just to tweak the overall feel of the synth. Like your example of making drifting oscilators. Good one.

Ive been thinking about saturating different parts of the spectrum in different ways. Maybe someone has tried this?

To introduce noise in different shapes and forms has proven to be effective for me on other platforms ( such as reaktor and msp ) . Is there a way to sample the noise on the inputs an use that in a subtle way or maybe the noise generators in the g2 would do a good enough job?

Sometimes using the reverb as a "diffuser-noise-adder" can yield interresting results coupled with shaping / saturation.

Im happy to experiment and learn by trial and error, but this specific area is hard for me because i lack deeper knowledge about signal processing and psychoacoustics. Thanks for the help!
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Tim Kleinert



Joined: Mar 12, 2004
Posts: 1148
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
Audio files: 7
G2 patch files: 236

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ludvig wrote:

Ive been thinking about saturating different parts of the spectrum in different ways. Maybe someone has tried this?


Of course. I often split the spectrum into three parts with two crossover filters. You can saturate the low ends to a suprising degree without the signal sounding "degraded". It just sounds more massive. Saturating the very highs gives an "exciter" type sheen, which can be nice too on pads. The middle band I leave unprocessed mostly.

This stuff can be easily overdone -but a little bit of it can be very effective.

Anyhow -I don't think this is "cheating". Remember: The Roland MKS80 analog synth also had a bass boost circuit. Wink
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3phase



Joined: Jul 27, 2004
Posts: 1183
Location: Berlin
Audio files: 13
G2 patch files: 141

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ludvig wrote:
Is there a way to sample the noise on the inputs an use that in a subtle way or maybe the noise generators in the g2 would do a good enough job?



they noise generators of the nord are not too bad..with some extra filtering you get lots of colours..
The input noise is not usefull...you need too many amplefiermodules to get it loud enough and HF artefacts are bigger than the noisefloor than...
I even had feedbacks because the noise level is not much higher than the crosstalk.. Thats the problem with digital machines..not enough noise Smile
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