Synthesizers, As Digested by a Classical Musician

thank you to all my supporters on patreon synths as

digested

by a

classical

musician

. Just kidding, that's not what I'm talking about either. I want to know how synthesized sounds can enhance and sometimes replace traditional acoustic sounds in the context of contemporary music. Wow, there are so many ways you can dial this up if you turn up the resonance really high coming from a

classical

music environment. I've been less exposed to digital sounds until recently, so a lot of this exploration has to do with getting familiar with different types of

synthesizers

and how different types of sounds are created. the instrument I'm working on is the cp88 and The full disclaimer here was sent to me by Yamaha when I moved to New York City recently and for now it is the only keyboard I have.

I worked so naturally that the instrument itself began to influence the things I was writing. Good morning, so I'm ready to work later. You'll hear how I turn this small musical idea into the spinal piece, but first I want to share the process with you. with the help of some of my friends to open my eyes and ears to new types of instruments and synthesized sounds oh I like how it's a little dissolved let's see where it goes. My friend James Khan showed me some old synths. It's like having a pipe organ, but from the future, while I was with my friend Adam Nealy, we experimented with an analog synthesizer, so there's a little bit of noise here.

I like noise and my friend Andrew Huang showed me a lot of things. about modular synths, yes, 47 of the time it will skip sending the trigger, it's a five beat cycle, four of the counts are possible, but 47 of the time it won't send one of those beats, all these experiences shaped a new understanding and I appreciate the timbre, texture and rhythm in relation to the sound design and then the tone is like a fun vibrator. I can finally express myself. This is the sound you want. It's a guitar that doesn't sound like a guitar. Keep it in that sound.

I'm going to be very brief, I'm going to connect the subwoofer. I like these kinds of cuts normally, like I try to avoid it, avoid that, but it's great in this context, so this is the uh oh the. super low end, yeah, it's that sub bass, it's like those cars that go by and you're like, oh okay, but then I can do that now, yeah, so you can touch it, but then you see there's nothing underneath and what are they? ? those other ones, oh, this is the background noise, so if you'll always have it, you actually already know what we control, so we don't have that sound, so it's like a sine wave, but that sound is right. works great with the material, this is the way we could do it, we can generate random voltages at the same rate as these kick drum beats when you apply it to a parameter, so if we apply it to the pitch of that every time there is a kick drum that change the note of the bass drum.

I really like that it's not regular, yes, yes, I don't like the sound, but I like what I find is newer in relation to the whole history of music. timbre which is now possible when we are able to create so many new ones electronically oh cool yeah okay cool and then I get bored ok I already did that so I learned quite a bit about the different types of waveforms and how they are used different types of effects using synths, but the main thing for me could be summed up with these words dial to taste, how much do you want that style to taste like, yeah, I feel like that's what synths describe, there's an adsr attack, a decay, a release sustained and that's how you make sounds, that's when the sound stops, if you jump there it will continue until you turn off the machine, so that's the square triangle of the saw, they're like that, they're like the building blocks of each one of these.

There are so many different types of

synthesizers

that work in so many different ways, but I've deduced that they are all tools for basically the same thing: the ability to design and create a specific sound to represent a specific emotion and color atmosphere with your musical ideas. oh it's so high we might want to lower them oh I haven't even managed to do this before it's really like a breaking feeling yeah again as someone who isn't trained in any of this just trying to get by feels like It's much more about how to design the sound of a note than it is about how to design the patterns of the notes because the patterns of the notes can be very simple, right, but the design of that note can be very complicated.

Oh, that's interesting, so I think I'm afraid of heights, all of these things influenced how I wanted to form my piece and after having that initial idea, I did a free improvisation session around it and ended up transcribing a part of it for my songwriting was going well, so I had some good ideas, some very questionable ones. I also had a visual reference that I personally used to map out the types of rhythmic and harmonic progressions I envisioned for the piece and this is what it looked like, so similar to how some of these smaller lines are written. springing from areas like this or here, basically the staggered and irregular nature of the lines represents the irregularity of the rhythmic patterns I use, as well as how I want the harmony to move at times, a lot of this had to do with the influence that What I gained from listening to irregular patterns generated on the modular synthesizers when I was with Andrew while writing my piece, I was greatly influenced by the prospects of being able to design a sound tailored to each type of idea I had and layering different sounds that were available to me, I took my time to find what types of combinations I wanted for each section and, frankly, after a lot of experimentation, I found that using a small number of additional sounds worked better rather than overusing the available options, so I like how This setup sounds like something like a perfect fifth without just adding a little bit of almost a halo over these notes, so I thought it was cool if you compare it to that, it's a lot more interesting for this sound.

I think layering it with the piano is actually much more interesting than listening to it alone. I don't know, it doesn't seem very good to me, but with the piano I just like that combination, of course, I could also see the pros and cons of using an acoustic piano versus a keyboard. and inevitably I made some comparisons, you know, I actually quite like these transitions on the piano. I can play very softly and place it comfortably. Requires the piano. I think as keyboard players it's always good to be able to adapt to different keyboards and different types of pianos. very quickly because that's the nature of reality for us.

Do you find it easier to shoot with your fingers? no you prefer the weight yeah you would rather fight the weight you're not fighting it's just um you're in contact with the keys when you're when there's weight okay and it's almost like you're riding the resistance whereas with this It feels like you're skating on something slippery. This particular keyboard is quite heavy compared to others, it has weight to it. and there's organic material, there's wood between the keys, which really makes a difference, but there's still something about the kind of resistance here that's unfamiliar to me and quite different from an acoustic instrument.

The solution is simply to practice. I found that just by spending time with this keyboard I was able to get a lot more comfortable with those differences and what else I think that's it. Another huge thank you to James Adam and Andrew for helping me and Yamaha for providing the keyboard. Now here's the end. piece yeah yeah I hope this video gave you all some ideas for your own musical explorations and thank you so much for watching. I feel like my life is together. Also, this is the kind of sound I don't like. 80s, yeah, that kind of thing, okay, you're putting me on the spot, what do I do?

Wait, that's what I want, okay?