POLYMOOG 280A VOX HUMANA

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matt j
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POLYMOOG 280A VOX HUMANA

Post by matt j » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:47 pm

CAN ANYONE HELP. PLEASE,
i have managed to recreate vox humana, Gary numan used my patch for his virus ti on last years PP tour, so i have it pretty close, except......
one thing that niggles me, i use a sawtooth wave, but there is an element to this that doesnt sound quite right, does anybody know the actual basic waveform that was used in the polymoog to make vox humana, it may just be the way sawtooth sounded on polymoog, but i think that another may have been used, try as i might it evades me. i have the LFOs to a T, its just the over all "tone " fusion has it, and ive heard a roland fantom do a close one, hmm
anyone?????

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MC
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Post by MC » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:50 pm

You're missing the crucial element - the formant filter. It's a special filter board designed for the Vox Humana preset. Basically it is three bandpass filters in parallel at different cutoffs, resonance, and levels.
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matt j
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Post by matt j » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:06 pm

thank you, ive never had the chance to even get near a poly, so i am oblivious to its technical workings i understand what you're saying about the BPF, but i think i dont have the parameters to emulate it, so i will have to impersonate,
at present im using an old roland JV80
2 oscillators, 2 LFOs at different rated. all i can do is adjust the BPF in one partial, might that do it,? sorry to sound thick, ive programmed synths for years, but im afraid you got me on this one , :wink:
this is my vox attempt on jv 80, select "me i dissconnect from you
http://www.myspace.com/mbkcjessup
maybe if you hear it, n tell me what im doing wrong,
thanks for you time,

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Kevin Lightner
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Post by Kevin Lightner » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:13 pm

You might consider some pulse-width modulated square also. :)

matt j
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Post by matt j » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:16 pm

thanks, i actually did try that at one point, but found it sounded to messy down the lo end, tricky little sucker isnt it,

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Kevin Lightner
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Post by Kevin Lightner » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:29 pm

found it sounded to messy down the lo end
Which brings us back to why they included a special board with bandpass filters (not lowpass filters.) :)

matt j
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Post by matt j » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:54 pm

appreciated, i dont think theres a chance on earth that the jv 80 has the available parameters to cope with recreating that, ill just have to make do,
thank you for your info n help,

david
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Post by david » Fri Mar 12, 2010 8:43 pm

Check out Mos-Lab's new 915 multimode filter. (www.mos-lab.com)
Not suggesting you buy one for your JV but seems to be somewhat similar to the Polymoog's formant filter.

matt j
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Post by matt j » Sat Mar 13, 2010 3:50 am

Kevin Lightner wrote:You might consider some pulse-width modulated square also. :)
i have just found out that its a sawtooth on one osc, pw wave on 2nd osc,
both modulated at different rates with LFO pitch, then pulse width modulated at yet another rate,
so i apologise your PWM suggestion was right.
thanks again

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mayidunk
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Post by mayidunk » Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:01 am

For my own edification, could one of the MURFs (standard, bass, and/or MIDI) be used as a formant filter for this patch? Their center freqs all seem to fall somewhere inside of the frequency range of the vowel formants. Would they actually need to be very close to the center frequency of the vowel formants in order to sound "right?"

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MC
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Post by MC » Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:01 am

Multimode is not formant. Multimode has simultaneous HP, BP, LP outputs and the cutoff/resonance are not independent.
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mayidunk
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Post by mayidunk » Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:10 am

The MURF is made up of BP filters, except I believe the lowest is a HP and the highest is a LP. And, none of the filters have individual cut-off levels, though they each have their own volume level.

Okay, so I guess the answer to that would be no.

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Post by LWG » Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:02 am

matt j,

Kevin's suggestion for using pwm'd square is on point, and your idea for adding a second oscillator set to saw is also correct. If you are looking for a passable version of the patch, you don't need a formant filter.
I've heard the patch re-created on Roland's D-50. Gary Newman used that version of the sound, and it works well. The D-50 had pulse width modulation for it's square wave.
The synth you're using is a rompler (JV series), and romplers (with exception of Kurzweil and Roland's JD-990) generally don't allow you to perform operations with the oscillators to get dynamic waveshapes.

One way of simulating dynamic pulse wave modulation on a synthesizer with only static values of the wave is with the use of a flanger.
In this application, a digital flanger actually works better. Its more transparent, as most stomp box analog flangers add an obvious metallic ambience to the sound when you crank the feedback.
In the case of the JV, if the voice architecture is set up to send a single osc>filt>amp line (usually called a "patch" in Roland-speak) thru an insert effect and have the other patches in the program, bypass that effect, you're in luck.
You take a narrow pulse wave (2%-15% duty cycle; you'll have to try different settings they give you in wave rom) in (line) patch 1.
Set the filter (TVF) cutoff freq fully open w/no envelope, sustaining envelope for amplifier (TVA).
Route the output of this patch through a digital flanger algorithm in the insert effects section.
Set the manual start freq for the flanger fairly high, feedback about 30-40%, apply lfo.
If you have the balance set correctly, lfo-controlled digital flanging, combined with the narrow pulse wave will give you a very decent simulation of a dynamically modulated pulse wave.
When you combine this with a simple sawtooth tone in a parallel "patch" with insert effect bypassed, you can get rich sounding string pads close to those that use dynamically-modulated waveshapes. Applying your lfo's subtly to the pitch of the tone generators will give added animation.
You'll have to fine-tune the exact value of narrow pulse (I've given you general the range), and your flanger settings, but working within this template will get you there.
Also, your filter settings within each patch will determine how dark or open the pad sounds.
If you still wish to play with formant filtering, you'd need to find out the center frequency values of the formant filtering used on the Polymoog for that preset.
If the values are close enough to those used on the Murf (or some other formant filter bank) it will suffice.
For post-vca processing, you can bypass the JV's global fx, pan the output of the JV program to a single mono out, then patch through the Murf or
formant filter (a bit of compression doesn't hurt either).
I'm not familiar with the JV's specific program architecture, but I'm assuming it sticks to the familiar layout of most romplers from the
big three.


Regards,


Lawrence

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Klopfgeist
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Post by Klopfgeist » Thu Mar 18, 2010 1:40 pm

Logic's ESE can do really good vox humana emulations.
So this thing only plays one note?

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