Put on your disco boots, cue up your favorite B-movie, it’s time for a 70s string synth you can play with your guitar (or bass or MIDI controller** or… using another 70s string synth, if you wanted to)!
PATCH DESCRIPTION:
The patch uses four pitch-tracked sawtooth waves (processed paraphonically, meaning they share a filter and a VCA, controlled by an envelope follower).
The oscillators can follow the pitch as a unison voice, or split off into chords. I used a lot of 7th chords, programming it, because I was thinking of disco and exploitation soundtracks, and those lean on the 7th for atmosphere, but reprogramming them to other chords wouldn’t be too tricky. The synth can also cut down to one voice, which is great for eerie leads, and it can also be raised an octave, because a lot of these sounds are just above the guitar’s range. This also allows for inversions, which add some nice flavor.
The synth uses portamento, which not a lot of string synths featured, because it helps cover up for the sometimes imperfect tracking. (You can hear more than one occasion where the pitch jumps. I was in a rush recording this, and if you’re careful with palm-muting, you can cut down on this quite a lot.)
Throw on the effects (ping-pong tape delay, chewy phaser, and “close enough” ensemble), and this thing gets down-right atmospheric.
Effect is stereo out, but it lists to the LEFT INPUT for pitch detection and envelope follower.
SOUND SAMPLE:
I play through the various chords, throw on effects, forget what I’m doing a few times.
STOMPSWITCHES:
Left stompswitch, voice select: paraphonic chords / solo voice / inverted chords / octave up solo voice
Middle stompswitch, chord variations: unison + suboctave / major 7th / minor / minor 7th
Right stompswitch, effects: dry / ensemble running parallel with ping-pong delay –> phaser
I normally go through all of the pages, but they have labels, and with this one, there’s not a lot to tweak, aside from, perhaps, the effect section and the chords.
**So, you _can_ use a MIDI controller to control this, but it would take a little work. I 100% hoped to have it plug and play, but I ran close to the CPU limit and didn’t want to risk freezes or other problems. All you need to do, though, is remove the envelope follower and pitch detector sections and add a MIDI interface and an envelope. If you want to try this and are unsure how, PM me, and I’ll hook you up with a MIDI-ready patch.
