Vernon Barnes

50 years ago my friend and I would wonder into the music store close to the technical college we were studying at and have ago an a ARP Odyssey they had on display. Of course we soon wore out our welcome. We both knew our way around the college's EMS Synthi A pretty well and my friend was building a synth from plans in Practical Electronics. Of course if you could program a Synthi A an Odyssey was pretty straight forward but it was a bit of a mystery to the home organ salesman and he was convinced we were doing it wrong by not following the printed patch sheets! Anyway, I always wanted an Odyssey and last week I finally got one, albeit a Behringer clone. What a hoot! There is something about a real analogue instrument that is missing in the VSTi emulations. Of course the VSTis, like the one from GForce have more options, simpler tuning and pre-sets and sound very good but the experience is somehow lacking. Why an Odyssey and and not a Minimoog? I caught my imagination with features like the duophonic architecture, the ring modulator, sample and hold and ADSR envelope missing on the Minimoog. I am really enjoying the duophonic, particularly when using the ring modulator and this seems to work a lot better than virtual version. The Odyssey always sounded brighter than the Minimoog, probably because of the lack of the mellower triangle waveforms, the 12db/oct LP filter (on the first model) and the inclusion of a highpass filter. Behringer have included three LP filters from three different generations of the instrument so you can select a 12db or one of two 24db filters. The 4075 filter is particularly squelchy at high resonance. They have also included a sequencer and some effects, and it's MIDI along side CV and Gate inputs which would be handy with other analogue gear. I think the Minimoog had better performance controls with pitch and modulation wheels as opposed to pressure switches which I find a bit awkward to control precisely, Also the range switches on the oscillators would have been far more convenient in a live scenario. The Moog has three oscillators compared to the Odyssey's two but this is not such a disadvantage as it may seem as the Moog's third oscillator was often used as a LFO, the Odyssey has a dedicated LFO. So I am really enjoying a vintage analogue synth experience, I may be some time!

Yes, you can drag in any MIDI and save it as a user pattern which can then be used like proprietary MIDI. So you could play a couple of bars in an easy key like C and then play the pattern using a chord progression in any key you want. It's not ALL about the MIDI packs.

I bought the Odessey from Gear4Music for £449. All the UK retailers showing the same price but I picked them on delivery time. Its a nice bit of kit, very solidly built and sounds great.

39.80 Euros https://www.uvi.net/organic-arps?utm_source=UVI+Customer&utm_campaign=82e0a9cae2-EMAIL_Release_OrgArp_NO_2023-04-05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3375a13ef3-82e0a9cae2-28206933 " A MODERN CREATIVE ARP TOOLBOX Expand Falcon with 100 modern-oriented arp sounds Tweak and perform on-the-fly with macro controls and chord helper Deep editing capabilities of Falcon allow limitless customization" Installed via Sonic Pass. There are also updates for Dual Delay and Shade in UVI Portal Doh - Larry beat me to it!

I had contacted Waves support about the S1 problem. They responded quickly with a longish procedure to reinstall after cleaning up a number of files which solved the issue. The forced rescan in S1 would be a much simpler solution.

Both Thomann UK and DV247 showing the Oddessy at £449. I am sure it was considerably more last time I looked.

There is no indication on what is included in the pack. Here is the a link to Martinic with the lowdown. https://www.martinic.com/en/products/retro-pack

Interesting, I wonder what the effect will be on UK prices? My GAS is telling me I should buy a hardware synth. I always lusted after an Oddesy back in the 70s which was way, way out of my price range.

Not sure if it the best way to remove old shells, I suspect there is a simpler way but I have PMd you.

Kudos to Waves technical support, I got an email this morning within 12 hours of submitting the ticket with a simple "re-scan in Studio One" which I had already done and a detailed process if that didn't work. Basically an reinstall with a bunch of other manual clean-up instructions, then re-install. Its all working fine. I am on V14 exclusively so this had the further advantage of removing several redundant Waves shells which has sped the VST scans up considerably.

I may try uninstalling tomorrow. I did a repair in Central and that did not help.

Well, lets see if their tech support is working. After 26th March update Waves VSts wont load in Studio One. Its fine in Cakewalk and Komplete Kontrol so I did not see the problem immediately. I have opened tickets with Waves and Presonus.

That's just the strings, so +/- $1600 for the 5. I know people around here don't like subs but my CC subscription is one of the best deals I have had.

I have the Composer Cloud subscription and have just installed the first release. the strings. There is a lot to explore here so I have only had the briefest of browses through the pre-sets. It all sounds pretty impressive but I do think the reverb is laid on too thick in most cases for my taste but can very easily be dialled back. Some of the "6 Celli and 4 Basses" pre-sets are really powerful, excellent stuff! The Hardanger Fiddles and the Viol ade Gamba sound very nice indeed. As a mountain dulcimer player I could be critical of the mountain dulcimer pre-sets as I don't think the sound authentic , but they do sound good and usable as unique sounds in their own right. The same probably applies to the lute which seems very bright. My first impression is this package is going to get some use!! I look forward to the rest of this series, particularly when they add the orchestrator.

The chord track and the integration of Notion are the main reasons I mostly use Studio One these days even though I think Cakewalk's MIDI is otherwise better. Sometimes I only use the chord track as a reminder of the chord for any location, other times I get MIDI to follow the track and it's very useful editing in Melodyne. I don't write in Notion but send scores from S1 complete with chords, lyrics, tempo qetc that need very little editing and this is a useful tool working with collaborators.

Smoke on the Water, Highway Star etc. Jon Lord was the master of heavy rock keyboards.

I updated a couple of days ago and the GIU is much better now. I have not used the synth much since buying it last year when it was on sale. I am sure the old GIU was a factor. (Along with getting into Pigments absorbing my sound creation time.) I look forward to going through you video and getting some pointers.

Installed (via Sonic pass subscription). I only had a brief look but it seems to be pretty versatile.

For anyone interested in control mapping and patch preview for NIs Komplete Kontrol watch this developer. MiniMonsta2 is not not included yet but given their rate of development it probably will be soon. https://freelancesoundlabs.com/index.php/downloads/komplete-kontrol-vst-packs/itemlist/category/118-gforce

You are correct, The VSTs I had made maps for, like IKs Hammond, have the assigned CC with in the VST. Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case with GForce. Just to the right of the window displaying the patch name there is a button labelled CC. With this enabled do the MIDI learn. The assigned CCs for each knob then persist when the application is restarted or the patch is changed. With this done a template could be made, but for basic purposes it may not be necessary.

You should be able to create a user template in Arturia's MIDI control centre software and recall it as required. I have not done it for Minimonsta 2 but I have for other virtual instruments.

I have more Mini Moog emulations than I can shake a stick at but Minimonsta has long been my favourite so I had to bite on this one and upgrade Boy, is their website slow at the moment, not helped by a forgotten login and the need to reset the password it was over half an hour to complete the purchase.

Cakewalk and Studio One not supported, anyone had issues?

My DAW has been on Win 11 more or less since it came out. I have not had any issues with it. My utility PC is still on Win 10 as the hardware is incompatible with 11, now I have got used to the changes I think I now prefer 11 but its marginal.

I think I will look into this, I hope it will be useful sketching out vocal parts as guide for a singer. One singer I work with just needs a lead sheet to pretty much nail the vocal but the other needs a lot more guidance.