What did you do in self-isolation?

Posted on June 15, 2020 by pj

Yes, this site still does music! 🙂

Several weeks ago, I decided to record the church tunes that I enjoy playing. It’s best to start with favorites, as most of you know how you come to detest a track after playing it over, and over, and over again during production. Energy quickly dissipates when micro-editing MIDI events or digital audio…

Before getting into production notes, here are links to the final tracks (all MP3). The goal was to crank out a new tune each week and send it to the folks in our music ministry. Some tunes are a little more polished than others. Please consider them “demo quality.”

Without going too far into the technical weeds, the primary sound source is Yamaha Genos™ and the primary vocalist is my spouse Fran. With the Mill Creek Chorale on hiatus — aren’t we all? — I was happy that she could contribute and have fun, too.

Production notes

So, how did all of this go down?

These demoes show off the Yamaha Genos as a sound source and production tool. I had two main subgoals:

Learn how to record a demo with Genos in either audio or MIDI format.
Learn how to mix down with Steinberg Cubase Artist and try out a few of the freebie plug-ins that I’ve collected.

By and large, Genos and Cubase were the main production tools although I back-slid into SONAR on a few occasions for MIDI editing. Old habits die hard. Workflow was not strictly linear from Genos to Cubase. In a few cases. MIDI and/or audio (stereo 16-bit 44,100 WAV) were slung back and forth between tools.

Genos is the sound source with one big exception: drawbar organ. When you hear B-3, you’re hearing Yamaha MODX through an Electro-Harmonix Lester K. I wanted to hear Lester K in musical context. It sits in a song pretty well and has more guts than the Yamaha MODX Leslie simulator. By itself, though, Lester K has some high-end swirliness in the upper drawbars, but in a track, it seems to mesh. You be the judge.

Emphasis was on speed. Get the tracks down quickly and finish a song each week ASAP. The Beatles used to call this recording “on heat.” Even so, it’s amazing how modern technology will drag you into the dank chasm of production minutiae. Don’t you just love hearing the same three measures fifty times while tweaking and tweezing. Not.

All vocals were recorded directly to Genos using its microphone input. Full backing and raw vocal tracks were exported to Cubase via WAV. Everything was processed and mixed in Cubase. The final mix was exported from Cubase as WAV, and then trimmed and converted to MP3 using Sound Forge Audio Studio.

Our God Is Here This was the first demo in the series and the process doesn’t get any simpler than this. All was recorded into Genos Audio Multi Recording. Find a beat, turn it on, lay down the organ part. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan for the ending, which is quite ragged. The organ is Genos in this case (not MODX). Kinda plain, huh? The bass is an overdub.

Audio Multi Recording is a nicely done sound-on-sound recorder a la Les Paul, minus tape hiss. There are two stereo tracks: main and sub. You can record directly to either main or sub, and bounce (sub+main) to main. There are options for punch in and overdub. Audio Multi Recording provides WAV import and export, functionality which eventually got a true work-out.

Audio Multi Recording keeps digital audio in a persistent project. A project resides in the internal Genos 60GB user solid-state drive and is always ready. The project remembers audio and mix settings without requiring explicit save and load user operations. That makes for a clean workflow. Export is the way to get digital audio into a WAV file and it mixes the main and sub on the way to WAV. In order to export a solo vocal track from sub, one needs to dial down the main and then wait while Genos writes the WAV file in real time. I wish there was a simple, direct fast export to WAV supporting both main to WAV and sub to WAV.

In The Day Of The Lord I quickly realized that I do need to think ahead and assemble a basic skeleton on which I could build a tune. (Duh!) In this case, Toontrack EZDrummer provided the drum patterns which I pulled together in Cubase. Genos played the MIDI drum track while I recorded the flute as a melodic guide and layered in the bass and organ — all recorded as audio. We then did a few vocal takes to Genos. I transferred all of the Genos audio as WAV into Cubase for the final mix. Vocal processing typically was light: a little pitch correction, EQ, and maybe double tracking. A touch of reverb (Cubase Revelation) blends everything together here.

Stop By, Lord This tune makes use of the Genos rhythm accompaniment consisting of main patterns and one-bar fills. I recorded a basic guide track in MIDI using the “BigBandBallad” style as the drummer. This meant switching the main and fill patterns with my left hand while playing the melody with my right hand. I layered in the piano, bass and horns, discarding the guide melody along the way. I added the B-3 organ (MODX through Lester K) in an audio pass. Everything was recorded and produced on Genos since we didn’t record vocals.

Psalm 95 If Today “If Today” makes full use of the Genos arranger features. I played the basic accompaniment track using the “Sunny Reggae” style. Whoever built that style, it must have been a labor of love and it fits this song quite well. I vocoded my voice. Both the accompaniment and vocal tracks where exported to Cubase for final assembly and mix down. I had a lot of fun adding dub effects and tons of reverb, Long live King Tubby!

Rise Up With Him “Rise Up” was recorded to MIDI, again using the Genos rhythm accompaniment as the drummer. The electric piano went down first followed by the bass. The B-3 organ is MODX through Lester K. Backing and vocal audio were exported to Cubase for final mix down. Overall, a pretty simple demo to pull together.

O Sacred Head I recorded the MIDI for this tune a long time ago — in the early 2000s on a Roland XP-60. The guitar picking was carefully edited and assembled (years ago!) from Twiddly Bits. I imported the XP-60 MIDI into Cakewalk, choosing Genos voices and effects. The Genos result versus the original XP-60 is amazing. Fran encouraged me to leave it as an instrumental.

This Is The Day This psalm is long out-of-print. A few years agao, I transfered a scruffy copy of the piano score into Sibelius. So, to kickstart this tune, I exported MIDI from Sibelius, restructured the sections, and humanized the piano as much as possible. I tried to keep the accompaniment simple adding just bass and horns. Once again, the backing and vocal tracks were mixed in Cubase. This demo is a good example of Arturia’s Plate-140 reverb — a freebie that Arturia gave away during the Christmas holiday. I love it.

Lead Me, Lord Another simple turn-on-the-beat-box, sound-on-sound production. Everything was recorded to Genos with the backing and vocal tracks exported to Cubase. (Another example of Plate-140, BTW.) The vocal harmony was generated by a TC Helicon Play Electric added in real time. Recording and production was dirt simple although it took a while to get the TC Helicon configured.

Alleluia! Love Is Alive This was the penultimate demo in the series. The basic track is a stripped down Genos “6-8PopBallad” style. Yamaha tends to over-orchestrate styles, so I kept drum, bass and guitars, tossing the rest. Instead of playing the basic track, I created the accompaniment using chord step-record. This MIDI Multi Recording feature lets a musician enter chords and sections from a lead sheet, quickly creating the song skeleton. You can even try different styles if you haven’t chosen one already. Once the skeleton is set, you expand the chord track into MIDI events, thereby obtaining the full backing track in a Standard MIDI File (SMF).

I added the Celtic violin by playing it into a free MIDI track. Using Sonar, I tweaked the tempo in the full MIDI song in order to add energy as the song progressively builds to the end. Finally, with the MIDI finished, I froze the backing tracking to WAV audio. The backing and vocal tracks were mixed down in Cubase with a little automation here and there to add vocal depth and double tracking.

Conclusions?

The preceding discussion is already a lot to absorb and to process. I’ll take a step back in a future post and try to summarize. All the best to ya.

Back In The Day

Posted on February 25, 2020 by pj

A Keyboard Corner member asked what people did for keyboard amplification before PA. Man, that question really kicked off some memories.

Back in the day (1966), I played a Farfisa Mini Compact Deluxe through an Ampeg SB-12 bass amp. It was all I could afford. Mom and Dad lent me the money and I mopped floors at the local donut shop to pay them back. The shop had a wooden floor that was impregnated with grease. I still can’t face donuts to this day. 🙂

While packing for the house move, I found an original Farfisa brochure from the 60s era.

The Portaflex was pretty cool with its flip top. The amp was mounted to a covered board which acted as a base for the head and, when flipped over, it became the cabinet cover. The clamps held the base/cover board in place and did double-duty as the speaker connections to the cabinet.

The SB-12 had a 12″ Jensen speaker powered by a 25 Watt tube amp. It weighed 47 pounds — the first of a long line of heavy schleps.

Being the 1960s, of course, that wasn’t enough. Since I started playing with electronics and DIY at an early age, I tried my hand at an extension cabinet. I somehow came into a 15″ JBL speaker with a small tear in the cone. Impedance be damned, I just hooked it up in parallel with the Jensen via the clamps. Before building a cabinet, I would carry the JBL around in a suitcase which doubled as a “cabinet.” (!) The tear in the cone lent more bad-itude. [Why fizzy digital distortion doesn’t cut the mustard.]

In the R&B band, the guitars and vocals went through matching Ampeg guitar amps (probably Gemini’s). Only the top local bands could really afford PA for vocals (typically Fenders). Nobody put instruments through PA. The bass player had a Guild ThunderBass amp with that funky head. The bass player was quite good and laid down decent grooves. Can’t remember too much about the psychedelic band…

My failed experiments at extension and PA speaker cabs wound up as end-of-gig props. When we saw The Who trash their gear, we thought “What the heck!” I’d pull one of the legs off of the Farf and ram it through one of the prop cabinets.

My dream rig would have been a Vox Continental through a Fender Twin Reverb or Fender Super Reverb. I copped the Fender tilt-back idea and built a tilt-back stand for the SB-12. That got the speaker pointing up toward my ears.

Both the Connie and the Fenders were out of my financial reach. It took me three years to pay back my folks. By then, I had to sell the whole rig in order to make the college tuition nut. Given the rigors of college math, physics and computer science, it was the end of playing for quite a while. I can’t believe how much a vintage SB-12 fetches on the market these days!

The Farfisa Mini Compact Deluxe left me with no delusions about 1960s electronics. I tried tuning the F# oscillator and bunged the tuning coil. That was an unnecessary repair expense. That’s why I’m happy as a clam to play the Yamaha Reface YC today. The YC does a good job nailing the Farfisa and Vox.

A few other memories stick out like playing music fairs on stage/demo gear with the psychedelic band. One stage was incredibly small and I had a horn driver literally right in my ear. We played Doors, Steppenwolf, Vanilla Fudge, etc. at phenomenally loud volume, attracting every biker within earshot. They loved us. I think I still suffer hearing loss from those jobs.

Before signing off, I want to plug “Classic Keys: Keyboard Sounds That Launched Rock Music” by Alan Lenhoff and David Robertson. I received a copy yesterday and gave it a quick browse. The photography is excellent and the example gear is in tip-top shape. The book is long on history — less on playing technique and artistis, so some may be disappointed. Discount and used copies are coming onto the market and you may be able to save a few bucks if you can’t pony up the full $60USD. Recommended.

Sonogenic voice editor

Posted on February 18, 2020 by pj

The Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic is a good sounding syntheizer which lets you jam along with ChordTracker songs. The SHS-500 includes a General MIDI Level 1 multi-timbral tone generator that is accessible over MIDI (Bluetooth, 5-pin or USB). Yamaha doesn’t promote the General MIDI capability, but it’s there!

Update: I added a post showing how to customize the Sonogenic voice editor user interface.

The Sonogenic lacks three critical features that one finds in a typical desktop synth:

Although the Sonogenic has 28 great voices and two drum kits built-in, it lacks many important instruments like organ, double reeds, tuned percussion and soft synth pads.
Internal voices cannot be edited, e.g., attack, filter cutoff and so forth cannot be adjusted.
The chorus and reverb types are preselected and cannot be changed.
Edits and changes cannot be stored into and recalled from user memory slots.

This is the ideal situation for a tablet-based app.

MIDI Designer is an iPad-based tool which supports creation and use of MIDI voice editors and controllers called “layouts.” Users have built and shared layouts for many popular synths. Now, I’m pleased to add the SHS-500 Sonogenic layout. With this layout, you can play the General MIDI (GM) voices, change reverb and chorus types, edit General MIDI (GM) voices and save all of your work in MIDI Designer presets. If you turn Sonogenic LOCAL sound generation on, you can layer an internal voice with a GM voice.

This post describes the Sonogenic layout. I recommend reading my post about MIDI Designer to Sonogenic communications (MIDI flow) first. It will help you to understand the relationship between the SHS-500 and the MIDI Designer Sonogenic layout. The write-up may even inspire a new way of using MIDI Designer with Sonogenic.

One thing that’s nice about MIDI Designer and layouts — you can customize them. So, if you want to modify my layout, don’t hesitate. First, though, you should read my post describing Sonogenic’s MIDI implementation. Then you will know more about the MIDI messages behind the layout’s controls.

Click this link to download my Sonogenic layout for MIDI Designer. Use iTunes file sharing to install the layout in MIDI Designer. I plan to upload the Sonogenic layout to the MIDI Designer web site.

Connection

Although you could connect by USB or 5-pin MIDI, the Sonogenic, MIDI Designer and Bluetooth MIDI are made for each other.

First, launch the free midimittr app which acts as a bridge between Sonogenic, Bluetooth MIDI and MIDI Designer. midimitter lets MIDI Designer echo Sonogenic’s MIDI note on/off, modulation and pitch bend messages back to the Sonogenic. You should turn Sonogenic LOCAL off unless you intend to layer a Sonogenic voice with a GM voice.

Next, launch MIDI Designer and make connections to midimittr as shown in the screenshot above. Then load the Sonogenic layout into MIDI Designer. You should be ready to go at this point.

Voices and effects

The Sonogenic layout is separated into three tabs: Effects, Voice and Voice Edit. (See the screenshot below.) Effect-related controls are on the left-hand side of the screen and voice-related controls (tabbed pages) are on the right-hand side.

Selecting a GM voice

The Sonogenic has a strict division between its keyboard sound and the General MIDI sounds over MIDI. You can think of the keyboard sound and GM sounds as two distinct tone generators, each with their own controls. The keyboard sound is selected and controlled through the Sonogenic front panel. The GM sound(s) is selected and controlled by the MIDI Designer layout.

The Voice page has an array of voice buttons. The 28 buttons at the top of the page select one of the preset “panel” voices. The two large buttons in the middle select one of the two preset panel drum kits. The buttons at the bottom of the page select a voice from the General MIDI sound set.

Please note: if you select a panel voice on the Voice page, you are changing the current General MIDI sound. The Sonogenic keyboard sound remains the same. The separation may seem artifical, but it lets us layer two sounds: the keyboard sound and a General MIDI sound.

The Sonogenic panel voices are generally better-sounding than the equivalent GM voice. The layout provides direct access to the panel voices while providing 12 buttons which can be customized for your own favorite GM voices. Of course, you’ll need to learn how to edit the GM buttons…

Effects

The large buttons on the Effects page choose the current reverb and chorus type. Like the voice buttons, the reverb and chorus effect type buttons are “radio buttons,” i.e., you can select only one effect type at a time within the reverb group or chorus group.

The reverb (Rev) and chorus (Cho) sliders adjust the reverb and chorus level for the General MIDI sound. [By the way, the GM voice and its effect levels are on MIDI channel 1.] Change the amount of reverb or chorus effect here. The sliders do not affect the keyboard sound — only the GM sound.

Changing the chorus and reverb type also affects the keyboard sound because the chorus and reverb units are shared by the keyboard sound and the GM tone generator. Reverb and chorus level only affect the GM sound [MIDI channel 1].

The four small buttons are utility buttons:

XG On: Sends an XG System reset to the GM tone generator. This resets the voice (acoustic piano) and all internal MIDI controller values.
Local: Turns Sonogenic LOCAL CONTROL on and off.
All Off: Turns off all notes which may be sounding — a panic button.
C3: Plays the MIDI note C3. Good for testing edits and changes.

Use the XG On button sparingly. The GM tone generator and layout do not automatically re-synchronize with each other.

Voice editing

The Voice Edit page is where you adjust basic voice characteristics like volume (Vol), attack time (Atk), release time (Rel), filter frequency (Freq) and filter resonance (Res). You can spruce things up with these controls. The attack, release, frequency and resonance controls behave like “quick edit” controls, that is, they are offsets from the preset voice parameter values. The middle position (64) specifies a zero offset leaving the original value unchanged. Higher values add an offset and lower values subtract an offset. So, if you want to increase attack time, move the attack slider up. If you want to shorten attack time, move the attack slider down.

Portamento adds a glide between notes. Press “Porta On” to turn portamento on and press “Porta Off” to turn portamento off. The portamento time slider (Porta Time) sets the glide time.

The velocity sensitivity knobs change how the voice responds to MIDI note velocity (touch). The two voice parameters are:

Velocity Sense Depth (VelDepth)
Velocity Sense Offset (VelOffset)

Please see Yamaha’s explanation in the figure below.

Organ voices, in particular, should not respond to velocity, i.e., a note is either on or off. To achieve this kind of touch response, set velocity sense depth to zero and set velocity sense offset to a value in the range 110 to 127.

The keyboard voices have a default volume which is louder than the General MIDI voices. You may need to set the volume slider (Vol) above 100 in order to get a better balance (mix) between panel and GM voices.

MIDI Designer presets

MIDI Designer itself implements preset storage and recall. A MIDI Designer preset is a snapshot of all the current values in a layout. Here’s a typical usage scenario:

Select a voice.
Select and adjust chorus and reverb effects.
Tweak the voice (e.g., change filter cutoff, etc.)
Save the finished voice as a MIDI Designer preset.

It’s easy to save a preset. Press the more button, press the “Save” button at the bottom of the drop-down menu, and then press one of the ten preset buttons. To recall a preset, simply press more followed by the desired preset button.

MIDI Designer has two groups of presets: regular and alternative. There are ten preset slots in each group, so you get twenty presets total. The Alt button selects the alternative group.

Potential issue: Portamento sometimes stays on (or off) after selecting a preset that changes portamento state. [I’m still investigating.]

Limitations

I experimented with several other controls of the kind normally found on a desktop synth. Unfortunately, the SHS-500 MIDI implementation is rather limited. Here are some known shortcomings:

Transpose and note shift
DSP effect control
Mono and poly mode selection

Should I make any progress with these deficiencies, I will issue an update.

Korg NTS-1 Assembled

Posted on February 3, 2020 by pj

Twas a nice bright morning in our kitchen — lot’s of good light for assembling the Korg NTS-1 Digital Synthesizer Kit.

If you have watched the Korg video assembly instructions, you know that there isn’t much to the actual assembly process. The printed circuit boards (PCBs) are fully populated, tested and ready to go. All you need to do is to break the boards down, to stick on and connect the ribbon controller, and to insert and tighten a few screws.

Assembled Korg NTS-1 Digital Synthesizer Kit

Overall, the assembly process took about 40 minutes. I kept an iPad with the assembly instructions nearby, pausing the video at the end of each major step. Assembly was easy and if a small modest amount of labor keeps the kit cost low, I’m all for it!

Here’s a few short comments.

Breaking the boards apart was the step that I feared most. One needs to be firm when snapping boards apart at the seems, but no major issues with flex. Be bold!
Those silver screws are tiny!
Inserting the ribbon controller cable was the biggest issue. The locking tabs were closed and I didn’t suss the direction in which they slide. (They slide in the same direction as the cable, not perpendicular to it.) Thus, I used needle nose pliers to insert the ribbon cable, using more force than necessary.
Keep the tiny screwdriver. You may need to fix your eyeglasses some day. 🙂

Once everything was assembled, I rushed upstairs and connected the NTS-1 to the Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic. When I bought the NTS-1 from Sweetwater, their site recommended the Make Noise O-Coast 5-pin to 3.5mm TRS adapter cable as an add-on accessory. Fortunately, I went for it and didn’t have to search through storage bins looking for an appropriate adapter. The MIDI cabling looks baroque with a 5-pin MIDI adapter on each end.

The wiring rat’s nest makes me wish for a wireless solution. Someone needs to invent a Bluetooth MIDI board that 1. plugs into a USB-B device connector and 2. connects to an advertising Bluetooth MIDI peripheral. With the current state of things, most (all?) devices act as a peripheral, assuming that they will connect to a central tablet-based application. Currently, there isn’t a general way to replace a 5-pin cable with a Bluetooth MIDI link (i.e., you can’t connect a keyboard to a keyboard!)

It’s ugly, but everything worked! The NTS-1 is a single oscillator, monophonic synthesizer. Its user interface is easy to navigate. I soon had the classic Chameleon synth bass dialed in. The single oscillator by itself sounds a little bit thin, but the Ensemble effect is a good thickener.

The filter is decent, especially the 4-pole low pass filter (LPF). It isn’t difficult to push the filter hard into ringing self-oscillation. It truly is a shame that the external audio input bypasses the filter. I would love to put the Sonogenic’s signal through the filter.

My final experiment for the day involved connecting the NTS-1 to my iPad Air 3. Immediately, I got the dreaded:

Cannot use assessory. NTS-1 digital kit: This accessory requires too much power.

Oddly, the iPad Air 3 continued to power the NTS-1, just killing data communication. The NTS-1 specifications claim 500mA or less power consumption. So, what the what, Apple?

I was hoping to unlock a few more instruments in Korg Module. I guess that experiment will wait for another day.

Korg NTS-1: First look

Posted on January 27, 2020 by pj

Just received the Korg NTS-1 Digital Synthesizer kit. Here’s the first pictures including a close-up look at the main logic board.

The kit arrives in a plain grey box with simple line graphics.

Inside the box, you’ll find the circuit boards to be broken apart and assembled, the ribbon strip, the corner brackets (spacers) and a short USB cable. There’s a short manual, a link to assembly instructions and the download code for the Korg software bundle. Sorry, you’ll have to buy your own kit to get a bundle code. 🙂

The NTS-1 hardware and Korg software bundle are well-worth the purchase price ($100 USD).

We’ve all seen snaps of the front panel. This is a close-up. BTW, click on images in order to get full-res.

Yep, that’s an ST Micro STM32F030 (R8 LQFP-64, 64KB flash memory) on the back side of the front panel board. It’s an Arm® Cortex®-M0 core with a 12-bit ADC and other integrated peripheral interfaces. No doubt, it handles pot and button scanning, including the kit’s little ribbon control strip. The STM32F030 is part of ST’s “Value Line” and costs about $1.00 USD in quantity.

Ah, the money shot that we’ve all been waiting for. The main VLSI components are:

ST Micro STM32F446ZET6: Arm® Cortex®-M4 32-bit RISC featuring a single precision floating point unit (FPU), DSP instructions and a memory protection unit (about $5.00 in quantity) . The IC is a “system on a chip” with integrated flash memory and SRAM. Three low resolution ADCs and two low resolution DACs are included.
Integrated Silicon Solution Inc. (ISSI) IS42S16400J-6TL: 4Mx16 bit word 166MHz SDRAM (about $1.10 in quantity).

That’s a 24MHz crystal by the ARM processor. I haven’t done the maths, as yet, to compute the operational clock speed. Should be near the top-end for the chip, tho’.

There are two Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM) components:

AK 5358BET: 96kHz 24-bit stereo ADC (about $0.52 in quantity)
AK 4384ET: 106dB 192kHz 24-bit 2-channel DAC (about $0.63 in quantity)

Nice to see decent quality converters. Not high-end, but decent. Overall, it’s rarily about the component cost anymore — software and hardware development costs dominate.

The Texas Instruments TPA6138 is a pop-free stereo headphone amplifier.

As David sang, “If you want it, boys, get it here, thing.” Technology uncut.

Sonogenic UI MIDI flow

Posted on January 23, 2020 by pj

My Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic user interface (UI) is coming along quite well and is nearly complete. Before presenting the UI itself, I want to explain the overall concept of operation from the MIDI perspective.

The diagram below shows the flow of MIDI messages between the Sonogenic and the apps running on the iPad. The iPad and Sonogenic exchange MIDI messages over Bluetooth MIDI (BLE MIDI).

The two iPad apps are MIDI Designer and midimittr. Although MIDI Designer is Bluetooth MIDI capable, it is not able to echo incoming MIDI note on, note off and modulation messages back to the Sonogenic. For that, we need the (free) midimittr app. midimittr is launched first and makes the connection to the Sonogenic. In Bluetooth terms, midimittr is the “Central” and the Sonogenic is the “Peripheral.” MIDI Designer is launched after midimittr and virtual MIDI connections in and out are made to midimittr. THRU is turned on.

Thus, midimittr acts as a bi-directional pipe for incoming and outgoing MIDI messages (i.e., incoming and outgoing with respect to MIDI Designer.) MIDI Designer along with midimittr forms a MIDI loop-back.

Back in the Sonogenic, keyboard and modulation control messages are sent to the MIDI OUT link and, under the control of the LOCAL ON/OFF switch, are sent to the Tone Generator. If LOCAL is ON, keyboard messages are sent to the Tone Generator. If LOCAL is OFF, keyboard messages only go out on MIDI and no sound is initiated.

In this design, the Sonogenic transmits outgoing MIDI messages on channel 1. MIDI Designer also sends its messages on channel 1. The net effect of the loop-back is to merge messages sent by the Sonogenic with messages sent by MIDI Designer.

The incoming MIDI message stream always goes to the Tone Generator. Along this path, the Tone Generator implements a General MIDI Level 1, 16-channel synthesizer. All channel 1 messages are recognized and interpreted by the Tone Generator whether they originated within the Sonogenic or MIDI Designer.

The incoming MIDI messages and the keyboard messages (when LOCAL is ON) are received by the Tone Generator via two separate and independent ports.

The keyboard port is not one of the 16 MIDI channels. Panel voice selection and DSP effect control are available through this port. No General MIDI control is possible through this port.
The General MIDI message port handles all 16 channels including channel 1 which carries the merged messages from the Sonogenic loop-back and MIDI Designer. General MIDI messages cannot change the panel voice or DSP effect.

Now you can see why MIDI Designer loops Sonogenic MIDI messages back to the tone generator. And, you can see why there are certain limitations.

However, we do gain one advantage by having two such independent tone generator ports. If LOCAL is turned ON, you can layer a panel voice (selected on the Sonogenic) with a GM voice (selected in MIDI Designer). Want a phat stacked synth? You got it. Want to layer EPiano over strings? You got it.

The MIDI Designer UI lets you select and edit General MIDI voices. You can also select among all of the available chorus and reverb types. Thanks to MIDI Designer’s preset capability, you can save and recall the edited voices. The Sonogenic does not have patch editing or patch storage.

I hope this explanation is helpful. Soon, I will dive into the MIDI Designer interface.

YC61 Developer’s Comments

Posted on January 16, 2020 by pj

I just finished watching the “Yamaha Stage Keyboard YC61 Development Story” on Youtube. It’s a twelve minute video of three developers behind the new YC61 organ:

Takashi Mori – Sound Synthesis Algorithm
Toshifumi Kunimoto – Sound Synthesis Algorithm
Akinobu Shibuya – Software Engineering

Dr. K, of course, is well-known for his work in physical modeling and Virtual Circuit Modeling (VCM). Both types of modeling are essential to the YC61 sound.

The developers knew that physical modeling and VCM would be important during development. They began by studing real-world instruments to find the best way to deploy these techqniues. They eventually arrived at an implementation which unifies physical modeling and VCM — the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Quoting sensei Dr. K, “Real instruments feature a lot of undulation” not just pure sine waves. “While collecting a range of different pitch waveforms, combining them, and including some non-linear additions, we also had to deal with phase interference between them. It turns out that this interference is not constant, and while balanced over the entire pitch of the instrument, the pitches do shift in subtle and inconsistent ways. … [T]his disordered yet harmonious behavior” is essential and necessary.

“Real sounds are affected [by] a lot of instability in circuits and component devices, and sampling alone — which is the equivalent of taking a static photo in the audio sense — could not be used to replicate these instabilities.”

Rock players, in particular, know that good overdrive is essential to the Hammond sound. “When the expression pedal, for example, is pressed down hard, the distortion component can become an exquisite noise.” Virtual Circuit Modeling has a role here.

Rotating speaker emulation is also a suitable role for VCM. However, VCM alone is not enough. Physical modeling is needed to capture the properties of rotating speakers including the acoustics and physics of sound reflection. “The noise component of an organ’s sound is really effective when combined with the rotary speaker.”

Existing Yamaha instruments use a separate AWM2 tone generator and an effects section. The YC61 takes a unified approach and combines tone generation with effects to produce an accurate, overall sound.

The character of real world instruments changes from day to day with temperature and other factors. The developers needed to study materials and the effect of those materials on the behavior of electrical circuits. They measured actual organ circuits and tried to understand how materials and other factors affected their sound.

The organ sound in seventies British prog rock was a key influence. They wanted to achieve an overall musical sound. The developers wanted to create an instrument which organists could play naturally and intuitively. The instrument itself should reveal its “amazing sounds” when it is simply played “without any upfront explanation.”

Well, most of us must wait until June 2020 to play and to decide for ourselves. The YC61 is expected to be in stores by then, costing $2,499 (MSRP) and $1,999 on the street (MAP).

The YC61 is slightly smaller than the MODX6 and just a touch heavier (15.6 pounds). Given the range of non-organ sounds, I’ll be giving the YC61 a serious try when it’s available. Maybe it’s time to trade in the old NE2?

Winter NAMM 2020 prequel

Posted on January 15, 2020 by pj

Feels like Winter NAMM 2020 came and went already. Here’s a short round-up of products that don’t or won’t get big press.

BeatBox by rhythmo is a do-it-yourself cardboard MIDI controller drum kit. The BeatBox is just $159USD. For that tidy sum, you get a BeatBox with a 4×4 grid of pad-like (arcade) buttons, 4 filter knobs, 8 function (arcade) buttons, an internal amplifier, two 15W speakers and 3000 mAh rechargeable battery pack. Everything is housed in an 8″x9″ cardboard chasis. The Beatbox is MIDI mappable and will work with most DAWs. The Beatbox has an USB-B device to host port and can be used as a MIDI controller.

BeatBox is an Indiegogo project. I presume that Beatbox is programmable at the code level although the funding page doesn’t mention what’s inside. Rhythmo Lab is pitching Beatbox at both CES and Winter NAMM 2020.

The Viscount Legend ’70s digital piano is a modular approach to retro piano design. The Legend ’70s is a platform that accepts modules, allowing a player to customize the instrument to their needs. Viscounts have revived the idea of the old Yamaha PLG boards, but the Viscount modules include front panel controls, too.

Viscount’s on-line information is a little bit hard to decypher, i.e., what do I get for my money. Anyway, the platform comes in three versions: Compact (73 keys), Artist (88 keys) and Artist-W (88 wooden keys). Hammer action all around. All three come with two modules:

E.Piano: 5 Rhodes, 2 Wurly, E.Grand
Sound Collection: Pad, Strings, Choir, Brass, Keyboard, Organ, Bass, Guitar, Bells, Marimba

Sound generaation is physical modeling. The platforms have a good range of effects: Tremolo, chorus, etc., too.

You can add any of three modules to a platform:

Acoustic Piano Module: 8 sampled pianos, 128 note polyphony
Clavi Module: 2 physically modeled Clavinets
External Module: Send MIDI control messages to external gear

The modules have all of the appropriate knobs and buttons as well as the tone generation (and/or control) electronics.

Italy’s Lab4Music have two interesting products: the Sipario MIDI router and the Enjoy MIDI CV controller. The Sipario has 2 MIDI IN DIN connectors, 2 MIDI OUT DIN connectors, and 1 USB port (HOST/DEVICE). It’s programmable and can handle all of the usual chores (e.g., send program change) in addition to routing. It has a touch screen (!) and is built to a robust road-ready standard (metal chassis).

The Lab4Music Enjoy controller bridges MIDI (digital) with control voltage (analog). The digital side is an USB class compliant MIDI device. The analog side can generate CV, gate, pitch, trigger and LFO signals. The Enjoy has a joystick on top as well as expression pedal jacks. The enjoy handles conversion between MIDI messages and analog signals. Ten memory slots are available to hold specific control and conversion configurations.

The Blipblox folks will be releasing an adult version of the Blipblox toy synthesizer: Blipblox After Dark. (As if all synthesizers aren’t toys? 🙂 ) It will have the same signal flow as the original adding a multimode resonant filter, a stereo delay, new oscillator modulation schemes and new kick/snare samples. I can’t say that I like the physical aesthetics, prefering the colors and white chassis of the “kid’s” version.

Back in the do-it-yourself domain, check out the midistomp six button foot controller. It has five latching footswitches and one momentary footswitch. It’s USB over MIDI — no MIDI DINs. The midistomp is based on the Arduino Teensy which means user code! Hurray! An assembled midistomp is $99USD. Or choose a DIY kit of parts for $85USD.

Sonogenic: General MIDI

Posted on January 13, 2020 by pj

After jamming with the Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic, I’m glad that I chose it over the Yamaha PSS-A50. Sure, the A50 could be fun, but the Sonogenic panel voices are definitely step up from the A50. The Rhodes electric piano sounds great and I’m warming to the synth voices like Analogon — good for classic R&B, soul and funk. I love the mellow jazz guitar, too. One minor gripe so far. When I play the Sonogenic in my lap, it tends to slide and get away from my hands where as Reface YC stays put.

For brevity, I will refer to the SHS-500 as the “Sonogenic” in this post. Yamaha also makes the SHS-300 Sonogenic. The SHS-300 is not as robust as the model 500 and has a smaller set of decidedly lower quality voices. The model 300 is at home with its peers in the PSS family like the PSS-E30 Remie.

I make light of my obsessive pre-purchase analysis, but one observation paid off. The Sonogenic Owner’s Manual mentions “General MIDI System Level 1” compatibility on page 8 and includes GM compatibility in the product specifications. Yamaha don’t make such claims lightly and I wasn’t disappointed.

The SHS-500 has a 16 channel General MIDI tone generator built in! I successfully played back General MIDI (GM) compatible Standard MIDI Files (SMF) through the Sonogenic. (DAW: An old version of Sonar.) Missing organ, oboe or vibraphone? You can find them in the GM sound set. The SHS-500 responds to the GM System On System Exclusive (SysEx) message:

    F0 7E 7F 09 01 F7

which puts the Sonogenic MIDI interface into General MIDI mode. The Sonogenic GM tone module accepts MIDI messages from the currently selected MIDI interface: USB MIDI, wired DIN MIDI and Bluetooth MIDI.

You’re not limited to just the GM sound set over MIDI. You can also select one of the 28 panel voices (or 2 drum kits). You’ll need to embed an XG System On SysEx message at the beginning of the song file:

    F0 43 10 4C 00 00 7E 00 F7

This message makes the SHS-500 respond to MIDI bank select messages as well as program change messages. For example, if the song sends:

    Bank Select MSB: 104
    Bank Select LSB: 0 
    Program Change:  27

on MIDI channel 1, for example, then the tone generator will use the rather decent Jazz Guitar panel voice instead of the GM jazz guitar.

This is all good news, of course. However, there are limitations:

The GM sound set is available only over MIDI. You cannot select and play a GM voice via the front panel.
GM voices cannot be processed by the DSP effect. Thus, you cannot add a rotary speaker effect to a GM voice.
You cannot change the front panel voice or DSP effect via MIDI. Incoming MIDI messages affect the GM tone generator only.

The Sonogenic control architecture has inherited the quirkiness of the PSR E-series. That is, keyboard control and MIDI control are quite separate and independent.

There is some hope, however. Let’s say that you really want to play the General MIDI drawbar organ voice (MSB:0, LSB:0, PC1: 17). You can loop MIDI from the Sonogenic through an external sequencer and return the MIDI to the Sonogenic. First, you’ll need to turn LOCAL control OFF through the Sonogenic’s FUNCTION menu. Then, you need make (virtual) incoming and outgoing connections to the sequence — the equivalent of two standard MIDI cables connecting the Sonogenic with the sequencer. Then, you can select the GM drawbar organ voice on the Sonogenic’s MIDI channel (default channel one) and play the organ voice using the Sonogenic keyboard. It’s a roundabout trip, but it works.

I’m experimenting with other options like using an iPad app to loop MIDI messages back to the Sonogenic and to select panel or GM voices.

Be forewarned. The Sonogenic panel voices are significantly louder than the General MIDI voices. I haven’t decided (yet) if this is an inherent flaw nor have I found a way to boost the GM voices.

Even though Yamaha promote Chord Tracker for Sonogenic, don’t count MIDI out. The Sonogenic has a solid GM tone generator on board and you can use it to compose and/or play back MIDI songs from an external sequencer.

One final tip, if you put the Sonogenic in Jam Mode, Yamaha-specific chord name SysEx messages tell the Sonogenic to display a chord name. By placing chord name events in the MIDI song, you can jam along just like Chord Tracker only the accompaniment is coming from a MIDI sequencer instead of an audio track.

I hope to write a short summary of the MIDI messages recognized and interpreted by the SHS-500 Sonogenic. The basic synthesis engine is similar to the Yamaha PSR-E463 and PSR-EW410, minus the XGLite sound set. C’mon back!

Yamaha YC61 stage organ

Posted on January 9, 2020 by pj

Not to be out-done, Yamaha have announced the YC61 61-key Stage Keyboard. MSRP is $2,499 and MAP (Street) is $2,000.

The YC61 has waterfall keys and drawbars with VCM out the wazoo. The YC61 also includes FM synthesis for FM electric pianos. Speaking of pianos, the YC61 has acoustic pianos as well as electric:

Acoustic pianos: CFX, S700, C7 and U1 upright.
Electric pianos: Real FM, CP80, 78 Rhodes, 75 Rhodes Funky, 73 Rhodes, Wurlitzer.

The voice list in the Owner’s Manual shows:

Acoustic pianos
Electric pianos
Synths (pad, strings, Brass, Lead, Bass, Chromatic Percussion)
Strings
Guitar
Brass
Sax/Winds
Basses
Chromatic Percussion (Glock, vibes, etc.)
Accordions

The selection of voices is very rock, pop and jazz-oriented as one might expect in a keyboard of this type.

Tone generation technology is specified as: VCM Organ, AWM2, and FM. Looks like Yamaha has finally issued a modeled B-3. Polyphony specs are:

VCM Organ + AWM2: 128
FM: 128

There are 32 effect types including rotary speaker and amp sims, of course. The amp sims are British Combo, British Lead and Small Stereo, all of which are recent vintage. I can’t tell right now if the main rotary speaker effect is brand new or not.

Quoting the Owner’s Manual about the “VCM Organ tone generator:”

The VCM Organ tone generator was developed to faithfully reproduce the sound of a tonewheel-type vintage organ.
VCM stands for “Virtual Circuitry Modeling™,” and is technology that uses DSP to emulate the functions of an analog electric circuit. This technology enables the instrument to reproduce sound with an analog-like depth, which cannot be reproduced by a simple digital sound. By applying this technology, the VCM Organ tone generator fully reproduces the following characteristics of a vintage
Natural, organic harmonies when playing chords — thanks to a matrix circuit that connects the keyboard, tone wheels, and drawbars
Percussion sound with remarkable presence — based on vacuum tube circuit analysis
Key clicks and leakage sounds — based on electrical circuit analysis
Natural sound distortion — simulating vintage vacuum tube pre-amplifiers
Vibrato/Chorus effect — from scanner-based vibrato circuitry
Changes in frequency characteristics and drive amount that responds dynamically to operation of the expression pedal
Adjustment of these detailed parameters makes it possible to accurately recreate the distinctive characteristics of the original instruments — including all of their specially attractive imperfections, faults and even deterioration.

Organ models are H1 (standard vintage organ), H2 (mid- to low-emphasis), H3 (percussive), F1 (simple sine waves), F2 (Vox combo), F3 (Farfisa combo).

Dimensions are 35.25″ wide by 4.25″ high by 12.2″ deep. It weighs 15.6 pounds (7.1kg) which is quite reasonable!

I just downloaded the Owner’s Manual. It will take a little study to figure out how the effect units are allocated — the spec is not exactly clear by itself.

It looks like there is good MIDI control — lots of CCs. Naturally, the devil is in the details. One doesn’t always know what’s missing until you get down to the nitty gritty of voice and rig configuration. The YC61 has master keyboard functionality (four zones including organ).

Well, that’s enough to get you started. Download the manual. Then pop the popcorn, sit back and watch the usual Web mania.

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Category Archives: Music technology