Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Dream Studio

Watching the movie about Omnisphere triggered my long-dormant gear lust. Seeing Persing move from Moog Modular to Juno to Prophet to Jupiter to Virus (or whatever the order was) left a sizable drool stain on my shirt.

As a result, I decided to spend some quality time with Atmosphere this weekend. This was interesting for two reasons.

First, as I suspected, it suggested that there are several synths that have a sound I am drawn to. Of course the Virus comes up a lot. But, to my surprise, a lot of the pad and synth patches I liked are Roland synths. ...Like, a whole lot. As a result, I am vaguely considering a Roland JP-8080 and a SuperJX Rack. (In addition to that new Virus TI, cough cough.) On the other hand: I really like the Atmosphere patches that use them, so why would I need the actual synth?

Second, it surprised me how much more I liked the single patches, rather than the stacks. Less clutter, more clarity, purer sounds. ...I suspect I will be turning off Dual Mode with Atmosphere most of the time, in the future.

...Tangential to all of this Atmosphere-inspired gear-thought, I have also been reviewing 808/909 emulators. Sure, sure, go ahead and laugh. ...But I have noticed that, in using Stylus RMX, I am missing some of the "straight up" analog drum sounds that I have come to rely on in the past. ...I don't shove them in the listener's face (yet, bwa-hahaha), but they are an integral parts of my music! I miss them. So I'm in the market for a VA drum machine plugin. I'm looking at Waldorf Attack, d16 Group stuff, and one other package that had a name stupid enough that I've forgotten it.

All of this gear-lust has me worried about cluttering my studio. I like the idea of being elegant an minimal in my setup. Thus, I've reconsidered both Albino and Surge. Great synths, sure, but I have Predator, I love it, and it can cover most of that ground: I will make better use of it.

I'm also just not using impOSCar anymore, and have decided to sell it, when I have a chance to get around to it. Moving on, as it were.

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