Vernon Barnes

I saw them twice, once at Reading Festival in 1975. I saw the C-Beams glittering in the dark sorry - the lasers glittering through a torrential rain shower. The set list for that show https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/yes/1975/little-johns-farm-reading-england-63d81277.html I also saw them in Bristol but my memory is vague here. I am sure it was the Colston Hall, which would have made it 1975 a few months before reading, but I am also sure Wakeman was with them and it was the Topographic Oceans tour so it must have been the Hippodrome in November 1973.

65 module updates going on as I type.

And..... Just how good was Chris Squire!!!

And something completely different.

And if you ever thought Robert Fripp was far too serious.

I find that you have to open Voltage Modular stand alone, then close it and open it again to get the updates to start?

I see they have made is authentically hard to program. It really was pain in the **** in that respect. I had quick wizz through some of the presets and it sounds pretty good and the paraphonic architecture is captured so it requires its own special playing technique. The other recent release Tricent looks interesting.

I got a real one, but it no longer works. If I am brave enough to get my soldering iron out (I have been procrastinating for a long time.) I will try to replace the backup battery which is probably why its lost its memory. The presets were loaded from a tape cassette but I have downloaded the files and I hope they will load from the audio out on my laptop. Meanwhile I will be giving this VSTi a whirl!

Here is Tina Gao. She is providing the Cello on "Doldrums", Sadly only via he Cinesamples libraries for Kontakt and some dodgy programming by me.

$29 - goes to $39 later. The advantage here is the synths can be integrated into modular patches that use other modules making them more versatile than a straight VSTi emulation. (and more complex) https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/vintage-voice-bundle

Sorry for the misunderstanding, that was clumsy wording on my part. My curiosity was, did the chord names come from some meta data that was dragged across from EZKeys or where they determined in EZBass from the actual notes. If it was the former it would have complicated the workflow with non-EZKeys MIDI. Chords are recognized regardless of the source. I have yet to try "jazz" chords and see if they confuse EZBass.

I have been playing around some more. First off I wanted to confirm that chord recognition was taking place in EZBass and was not being transferred from EZKeys. This was my understanding but I wanted to make sure. When dragging my own MIDI parts the chords were correctly interpreted, including inversion. I think creating your own very simple MIDI piano phrases and and dragging them in is a good way to start to understand the way EZBass interprets the data. With simple triads with no left hand part only the rhythm and chord is available (doh!) when there is an inversion EZBass uses the lowest note, not the root note to create its part. It would be nice to have the option to do either. Next I wanted to try complex time signatures and played around with some MIDI from the EZKeys Seventies Prog pack. Everything worked OK. I got a really nice thing going with some of the very busy 7/8 EZKeys parts without any extra editing. The transition option works pretty well if you select the most appropriate transition for the part. From there you can move over to grid editor and tweak it. I notice there are no factory grooves in 5/4, 7/8 etc. so I am hoping they will add these. I also think they need to do a Rickenbacker expansion.

The one Larry posted recently in this thread cleared up a couple of things that were puzzling me. I missed the bit where you had to tell it if it was keyboard or drum MIDI initially and it clarified the drum options. I had a play around last night with one of the 4/4 "Oh Yes" patterns in EZkeys. (Its only a quaver away from a copyright violation 😉) The bass parts generated went exactly instant Chris Squire but they were pretty good.

I have all access and it's very good. I don't think I would have ever got to grips with programming the Arturia Synclavier and CMI without it. It's also been very useful for BFD and Superior Drummer. There are also useful tutorials on non software stuff like music theory and instrument playing.

Looking at the OTS Evolution basses instead of the default velocity switching of articulations its possible to use key switches and they can be mapped to anywhere on the keyboard. I suspect it will be possible to map common articulations between OTS and EZBass reasonably easily. It looks like the two use similar methods for hammer ons. Some deep experimentation is necessary but I am quite optimistic that something can be set up that does not require extensive MIDI editing. I cannot see any way to re-map Amplesound key-switches in the interface. As a lover of odd time signatures I noticed that EZBass is currently lacking grooves in 5/4, 7/8 and 11/8. Hopefully these will be added in future expansion packs. I did try dragging some 5/4 drum midi in and EZBass produced some sensible suggestions.

Thanks, updating fro 1.3.16 now.

That made me think. One should be able to use the Amplesound Riffer patterns to. Of course incompatible keyswitches & articulations will need to be worked around. Its something I will try when I have learnt EZBass basics. On the other side of the coin I prefer the sound of the Amplesound and Orange Tree basses. I am wondering if drum maps may help get things closer by re-mapping keyswitches. One thing is certain using the output of EZBass elsewhere won't be seamless.

Well, I have put my reservations aside and ordered it for £127.60 including VAT and minus around 1.5 euros of "Best Coin" - Serial number was instantaneous. Downloading now, test drive tomorrow.

Exactly this. EZKeys piano MIDI is going to work on any piano library with may be a few differences caused by differing velocity curves, Bass is different because of the many articulations, guitars will be even harder. The closest thing that I have come across to EZBass is the Riffer function in the Amplesound basses, this suffers for the same limitations and if you want to use the output from Riffer you are pretty much stuck with Amplesound. Unless manufactures get together are develop a standard for this (not going to happen) it will always be the case. EZBass looks like it is in many ways is what Amplesound's Riffer could have been. Riffer is cleaver in its string selection and use of multi channel guitar mode and comes with some excellent riffs but they have not got the chord /key change thing beyond a clunky transpose function. Programming your own parts requires really good knowledge of bass playing if its going to sound right. The Amplesound basses grew from a "normal" VSTi / library with Riffer added an extra feature later and they can be played as well as any virtual bass. As they can use MIDI guitar mode they would lend their selves to being played with a guitar controller (is there such thing as a MIDI bass controller?)

One thing EZKeys has taught me as a (rather mediocre) synth player is that I will never be a piano player. As such I find EZKeys very useful. .

This is a reservation of mine. Presumably a part contains different articulations, how are these triggered? I you try to use an Amplesound Riffer MIDI with another bass VST Amplesound's key switching may not be able to be remapped to the appropriate articulations. So you are pretty much stuck with using it with Amplesound basses or doing a awful lot of MIDI editing. If EZKeys uses velocity switching as you comment "at high velocities. You get a whiff instead of a note. " may be suggesting it would probably be possible to map mutes, palm mutes, sustains, harmonics etc. in a Orange Tree Evolution bass and save it as a new snapshot for use with EZBass MIDI. I will be looking for documentation and hopefully a demo before committing. The other issue is how hammer ons and pull offs are indicated and will this transfer to the target instrument. My suspicion as been one will need to use EZBass to get a accurate playback. Can the built in effects can be bypassed for a DI sound for processing in the DAW.

Not yet. I have noticed that with the more recent releases the free Analog lab presets have been a bit more limited.

Has anybody tried this with odd time signatures. I find the automatic search engine in Superior gets a bit confused with things like 5/4 and 7/8.

At that price I am interested enough to try the demo. 😉 I wonder what buying this now will do to the price of the upgrade to version 8?