Can a synth sound organic? What does that even mean?
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- What do we actually mean we say a synth sounds "organic?" Step right up to my freshly grown synth orchard and see how I interpret this somewhat peculiar adjective.
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0:00 - defining "organic"
1:32 - applying it to synthesis
2:47 - making a boring drone less boring
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Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, nor was the purpose of this video to explain organic matter with flawless accuracy. It was simply a surface-level exploration of the word’s meaning in relation to how we use it to talk about synthesizers. This is a channel largely about synthesizers and musical concepts, not science. Furthermore, I did not grow my Moog Matriarch in a secret synth garden behind my house. That is merely a thumbnail, the purpose of which is to entice people to click on this video. Thank you for your time.
Could i use that iridium device to create a sound, then export that sound to a daw or workstation?
Forgive my ignorance, I'm new on the scene
@@Johnstone565 Absolutely! You can record the output of the Iridium directly into your daw or workstation as audio. 👍
@@JamesonNathanJones , aaah ok, excellent stuff. I see they have a keyboard version of the iridium... is that the same as what you have but with the addition of keys?
I'm working off an old Roland Juno-Gi here at the moment... it's quite dated at this point
I was getting some "Bob Ross makes a happy little patch" energy there. I love your sounds throughout.
I realized so much things in this video. Thank you, im really happy now ! Let's cook sounds !!
Yes, whatever you think that is. Irregular, surprising, spooky. Own 2 Matriarchs, with CV and using my ears I'm creating irregular, surprising organic sounds.
I really enjoy and learn a lot from your videos. Many thanks!
love your videos!
Thanks!
jameson, this video directly addresses a comment I made in the first module of your subtractive synthesis course. I said something like, "the last thing I want is for my music to sound all synthy." hahaha!! another way that I've put it in the recent past is, "I want my sounds to feel like that bubbled up outa the earth." well, again, you are addressing that head-on here. & I'm really pleased about that!! yet another great vid here, sir!! thanks bunches!!
ps... we all really dig the billy bob aspect. he most definitely sounds like some "up from the ground come a bubblin' crude." ;-D
oh!! & another ps.... you drummed up a really lovely sound here.
You made me laugh, cry and learn something new all with one video.
This vid is most CERTAINLY organic and warm 😁Gotta love the weird adjectives musicians use to describe sound haha. My wife and I have an inside joke "make it crunchier" from her overhearing people in the studio say it so many times haha. Expert patch crafting!! Clearly you've got a great handle on what makes things sound analog. Don't sell that Iridium (again) :p
hahaha!! now, here's a person who's really following the thread of these vids!! bravo!!
Watched all of this yesterday,what a pleasure it is to watch someone who loves the design of music and the humour is always cool,Nick Batt is always interfering i find lol,your music is beautiful dude,giving Max cooper a run for his money
I actually laughed out loud when Nick Batt popped up 😂
Nick’s sense of PWM is legendary
Organic? Hmm.
Maybe organismic...
Lyra-8, my favourite "synth". :)
Great vid again, thank You!
Love it. It's naturally organic and very electric. Use with a Moog low-pass filter.
Each time I see your video I know - next X minutes would be a pleasure ❤
As a child, my mother digitally controlled me. But my dad controlled me with voltage - something I am still in therapy for. So what does that make me? A digital boy or an analog boy?
Well, let’s discuss….*lowers glasses*
Interesting thoughts. I think it are terms to describe an emotional response. Which is largely the point of good art. I think people listen to certain styles of music becauses something in the music resonates with them and triggers a certain emotional response. So it’s not so strange that the creators of this music use words that hint at the human experiences they try to communicate within their creations.
I found the Polybrute to be really organic. That 2nd patch on bank A especially
Ha! I just said the same. It’s a beautiful natural sounding synth.
It hunts me too. Too hard to make any patch … and not to try what your notes sound with A2 lol
Would love to see Jameson to recreate A2 for joy purposes. Jameson, Jameson, anyone….
Ahh, crap. Now I want an Iridium. I was completely happy before watching this. Ugg. OK, what can I sell????
Sorry 😅
I’d say the Polybrute is the most organic synth I’ve played. It’s alive, it breathes, it subtly changes, the sound touches you on a different level to any other synth I own. Sitting with it is like talking with a good friend.
I think one of its biggest features, or at least one they focused on a lot, was its morphing abilities. At least, that's what I've read on their website.
+1
True, but a Prophet 5/10 or an OB-X8 sound very organic as well.
There are loads of "organic" synths that have a will of their own, ignore your input, are difficult to cope with and in general unresponsive ... just like my Ex 😂
I found the putting the Iridium on a unstable vibrating platform transfers energy from the earth to the DA converters, and it sounds better. Unless I am part of that unstable platform, cause as my body syncs up with the platform frequency the sound becomes more digital again.... Except for the small phase shifts around the peaks of the wave, but I think I can get used to that. So yeah, it depends.
🧐🤔
I feed my synthesizers a strict diet of organic bananas and athletic greens. The resulting electronic diarrhea still sounds like chemical pesticides. Please help.
This is a really interesting video! Also interesting to see the different interpretations of "Organic." For me, whenever I hear organic, I always think about trying to replicate the color and style of more traditional acoustic instruments. I can see that as being a combination of both timbre (something that Synths are very good at, and only continue to get better at,) and the subtle nuances of articulation and phrasing as a result of interacting with the instrument (plucking the string, tonguing the note in the mouthpiece, etc.) I think the latter is very difficult for a synth to do because it's a combination of spontaneity and intent on the part of the musician. Synths are very good at consistency (envelope generators, LFOs, etc.) which is something acoustic musicians struggle to master. But that consistency is very difficult to direct in a spontaneous way. A lot of synths try to get around it with compounding modulation and S&H, but it seems only to ever get close, and I think that's because spontaneity isn't driven by intent at that point.
The Best fixes I've seen for this problem so far are the Lindstrument MPE controller and the Expressive E Osmose, which seem to go to great lengths to allow for the manipulation of articulations through their expressive controls. In lieu of that, the best workaround I've found is going back into the DAW and recording additional expression tracks with some midi faders to put in the "organic expression" after the fact.
Love the vid, as always, looking forward to the next one!
Another amazing video. Love all your stuff. Off topic, but could I ask about your workflow integrating your reel to reel? Does your R2R have a repro head so you can record back into DAW while laying onto tape? Or do you do that separately? Apologies if you've answered this elsewhere. I have a Foxtex model 80 that I want to integrate into my studio in a way that isn't toooo cumbersome (it has no repro head). I was just wondering how you do it so I can gather some thoughts. Thanks!
Thanks! Mine doesn’t do SOS recording (though I guess I could cover the erase head and achieve something similar). I recorded directly to this 8 track deck and then would record the outputs into my daw, so it wasn’t necessarily integrated, but a separate workflow entirely. That said, I use mostly cassette decks now because it’s lower fidelity and I’m usually going for that effect.
@@JamesonNathanJones Amazing, thanks for the response! I imagine its the same workflow with the tape deck? As I dont think any of those have repro heads? I'm also after that wobbly sound, and as the fostex is pretty crap - it sounds great for that! I just never use it cos its a bit of a nightmare to setup...
Thanks again
My Korg 01/Wfd has some incredible organic combis althought it shouldn‘t sound organic at all being an early 90‘s rompler without resonance. Also warm and organic is my Yamaha EX5. But nothing (except the Hohner string melody and the matriarch) beats my nord wave 2 when I choose the ensemble effect.
The "organic" sound for me means a sound that resembles sound of acoustic instruments. IMO, Polybrute can sound very organic.
Nice Cameo from Mr Batt..
He's always watching
I see some promoters or event managers often overuse term organic just because they heard it’s cool and it’s kinda fashion. Organic house, organic techno, organic whatever. They don’t even think about meaning, just stick popular word to the ads, and publish it. The same happens with “melodic”. Just add melodic to your stuff, et voila, you are now popular. But i really have close (if not the same) opinion as yours. People don’t like sterile clinically deterministic sound. Organic - it’s alive, it’s moving, morphing, out of perfection. Our ears like this. Another good definition of organic - the music or sound that sits very good at it’s place , it sounds and feels just right. Exactly what it supposed to be. This definition can be spread to non music things. Like furniture, it fits organic for certain interior , etc.
in the interior, a synth is warm, and warm is life
🎹 Nick Batt with the #PWM !!!
Josh at JHS needs to release an Organic Haunting Mids pedal.
Dude, what's the title of the outro track? It's honestly gorgeous.
“All Things Fade” :)
I think you miss one key definition: reactive. The "thing" must perceive-react-emit
One of the reason why I like digital synths from the 1980s and early 1990s is that many patches sound so impossibly perfect, brilliant, out of this world. It is quite easy to make music that feels cold, lonely, hopeless, which is probably why the Coldwave subgenre of New Wave, the synth heavy sister genre to Darkwave (both of which I quite enjoy since I'm a goth), emerged back then.
Analogue subtractive synthesis, whether actual analogue circuitry or virtual analogue emulation in software, is great for making sounds that are a little imperfect, but the merciless, unyielding, relentless perfection of the old purely digital synthesis methods like FM (e.g. DX7), PD (e.g. CZ-5000), wavetable (e.g. PPG) is bloody incredible. Roland's LA synthesis (e.g. D-50) may be based on a very simple kind of analogue synthesis combined with very short PCM samples, and it is possible to make sounds that feel more organic, but most of the sounds are still incredibly crisp and polished.
I wonder what artificial neural networks will do for synthesizers in the future.
The DX7 and FM synths of the era are the reason I find 80’s music utterly dull.
@@Kung_Fu_Jesus I absolutely love 80s music, probably because I was born in 1975. And my favourite synthesizer is still my Yamaha SY77.
Technology is Eargazmic! :)
Very entertaining! I would now like you to create a sound that aptly fits the description "chonky". thankyouveruhmuch
Oh and what accent - you sound normal to me?
I sound normal to me too!
The first thing I would do to make a sound organic is adding vibrato, itself being modulated.
Just wanted to point out that the Human League were one of the first, groups to integrate synthesizers into pop music in a way that sounded natural, & sonically integrated w/ the rest of the ensemble,. Kate Bush's use of synthesizers might be another example. Contrast the use of electronic sounds by the Who, ELP, the Beach Boys, etc
This word always confuses me, and I hardly use it. While many people use the word "organic" when they just want to say that a synth sounds nice/pleasant. But, a synth can sound differently. It can produce "organic" (=nice) pads, and acid 303-style timbres. I can hardly imagine combinations like: "organic 303-style sequence" or "organic Benassi bass" or "organic industrial noisy texture". In this case, does Access Virus sound organic? There's only one case I use "organic" confidently - when it relates to an organ instrument. So, organic bass is the one that sounds like an organ, M1 or Hammond...
It is a bit of an odd way to describe something that is inherently “synthetic” but as I mention in the video, I think when taken less literally it can lead us towards patches that are much more interesting.
Welp, I see lots of peeps (not Easter) using the terms to describe A synthesizer or A part of the synthesizer. Yes you can help a fully digital or hybrid synth sound more organic via modulation, but can you make a comparison to say why a synth that most people would say is “organic” is actually more organic than say one that most would say is cold or harsh sterile etc?
No outboard effects! (I know the tricks!)
We just want the comparison.
I would say perhaps the iridium vs the P6 might just be the ticket.
Humans as opposed to most animals have the ability to think abstract concepts, non tangible things. religion, organic sound, love, art . It’s the beauty of being a human.we just don’t have a word I guess for beating unstable oscillators yet.
If something is said to 'sound' organic, it's not saying it is, but it sounds as if it is.
Now unless you know of some species that naturally produces PWM tones, then I'd assume its supposed to mean not rigid, but has moving character to its tones, ie oscillator drift.
Either way, in a mix, nobody ever bought a track because it was organic.
6:00
Spiders are the ultimate analogue device. They got 8 legs and can stick to walls n make webs
I wonder if you would have added some pink noise or white noise, on ossilator-2 (with low volume), it may have created more of an analog "warmth" sound. Either way, you're the reason why I got the Iridium. I usually end up utilizing all 6 LFO's, I'm new to synthesis, so the way you were pairing up one LFO to another sounded incredible. I've seen the pairing of LFO's with other LFO's but this is the first time I've seen someone do it on a video.
By the end of your synthesis build up, it sounded EXACTLY like a wavetable. Makes you wonder if you would have started with a wavetable how much more evolving the sound could have been.
Really enjoyed this. You bring up so many great points. Especially for people, like me, who are just getting into this game. I liked the fact that you utilized a digital synthesizer to create this "organic" sound. To be clear, what the Iridium can do is basically impossible on an all analog Sequential or Moog.
You and State Azure still have me seriously contemplating the GR-1.
Definitely could’ve added more and done more with wavetables, but wanted to demonstrate something quickly that could be done on most synths. Thanks as always for watching!
Yes, it can.
I Owned a Supernova ,for me tha sound of supernova was " gluei " organic somehow....and Roland D50 ...
If I could make my DJI drone sound less boring.
...hey, what's with the accent?? 🤪 (sorry, couldnt resist it😜)
I think it's great than our linguastic abilities evolved so far that we ARE able to define nuances between different sonic charcteristics. Imagine if all we could say about a sound is that it is sine or square or "goes up" (yeah - no, more UP) 😄
Organic synth like sigma aldrich 😎
Hardware is different
That beast is so organic… Can’t get enough of that warm, lush, fatness. 😁
😂😂😂 “there’s wood here?”
Electricity is organic.. analog is electricity
Hmmm an interesting point. I think electricity is analog, but analog and organic are not necessarily interchangeable. Electricity isn’t matter, but is a charge. That said, I did say I wasn’t a scientist. 😅 And the point of the video was to not get too caught up in the terminology, but to extrapolate the application behind it.
Electricity certainly feels more real and alive than digital. But in the end it probably all depends from what perspective your viewing our reality. Its like how we separate our creations from ‘nature’. Like we aren’t part of nature. Like what we create is separate from the force that created us. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Organic= imperfect. Humans like imperfect things, like handmade pottery looks better than machine made.
Despite everything that was done to that digital drone, it never sounded organic. You can hold down one note on a vintage analog VCO synth and hear the organic nature of the sound. Even if it's a basic waveform with no modulation or detuning or effects. It has nothing to do with movement or evolution. It is an inherent character of the sound.
How would you describe the inherent nature of a vintage analog vco (without using “organic”)?
@@JamesonNathanJones I wouldn’t. Organic is a good word to describe it. Some people say “warm,” but I think that is a different quality. All of these adjectives are attempts to describe something that can never be conveyed through words.
@@RaymondCastile Organic is very broad and subjective. I think I made all those points in the video though so I’ll leave it at that. Of course some synths have more natural character, but I intentionally used a digital synth to demonstrate that some of that “organic” character is simply instability and can be introduced when patching any synth.
PWM should be renamed to Nick Batt.
I don't get why everyone make their video unwatchable due to those sawteeth.
I was watching Starrsky Carr compare the Minifreak to the Prophet VS, and if I had to describe the difference, I'd say the VS sounded more 'organic'. Interesting since they're both digital oscillators through analog filters, and the VS is 35 years older.
Nice PWM visual gag.
Definitely a carbon based sound
That fake debate is another SCAM to continue redundant dribble to help people waste their time.That's exactly like us trying to define who is attractive or 'nice'. By the time we go through redundant topics, we have not made much actual music. Most of us start from humble beginnings with one synth ,one drum set,one bass,one guitar, one mixer, one computer,one PortaStudio,one box of records, yet i didnt matter because we still moved forward. Point is, if it did not stop you before that means it does nkit matter. Besides, I why make a big deal about this subject for a global audience who never cared? Find 100 random people in the street and ask them about OCS, wavetables, and even sampling and 80 of them cannot explain it to you. The audience actually tends to buy and listen to more packaged, formulaic, and basic music. Social media has given faake wannabee gatekeepers and way to just be self important and entitled, taking abstract concepts and try to BULY us into convenient little boxes of not thinking for ourselves. The gear is only a tool that someone with skills can make great music. Those who obsess about trying to define emotions are the same ones NOT making music that is successful since they have a lot of free time on their hands. Organic????Who needs it defined and why?So if I have a Moog one, yet I also use an Iridium does that mean it's not 'really 'organic' ?? let's try NO,,
It means it needs tubes. Yummy valvey overtones. ;-)
The only true organic synthesizer is that dude who uses mushrooms as a VCO lmao
Your voice can be considered an instrument and we are a living breathing thing. Just sayin …
If you consume just the correct amount of psychedelic matter, EVERYTHING becomes organic!!!🤣😎😎
My next video will be about perception vs reality….. jk it’ll probably be about synths
Are you suggesting that a living being stops being organic if it dies? How is grandma’s body less organic than living grandma? You could make a drum with wood, skin, and bone. Things made of carbon are organic.
I’m suggesting that synth patches sound better when they are animated and have movement. That’s about it.
Osmoze does nothing that Geo-Shred iOS app can’t. Sorry
Osmose was not mentioned or used once in this video
@@JamesonNathanJones 😂
@@JamesonNathanJones let the man say his piece! 😂