Access Virus TI Sounds - Part 1 - One of the Most Interesting Synthesizers

[@modulartheory]

it would be great to see how your programming your virus or a manual tutorial from scratch

[@friendlynoise]

I haven’t programmed new sounds in my Virus for years. That thing has about 2000 sounds onboard. Just start modifying some sound you like and you will find no doubt almost infinite usable variations of the source sound. Programming the Virus can be a tricky thing, depending on what you want to get from the instrument. It can be very analog (to me) but also fully digital sounding. What you need decides how you program the sound. If you look for a certain analog vibe, try to program instabilities in pitch, filter cutoff and envelope times. Just a little imperfection can sound “analogish”, even if the basic sound isn’t completely analog sounding. Also, the FX section in the Virus is very powerful. Many of my examples make a heavy use of effects like tape delay, phaser or distortion. The FX relay makes the sound ready to be played, imho. I hope I had the time to make tutorials and similar videos, but it is impossible at the moment. Work and family come first. But maybe next year… 😉

[@modulartheory]

@@friendlynoise I was looking for a manual or tutorial to get classic sounds, in order to practice and also develop my knowledge of sound design. I found a couple of pdf , but no very specific in that subject, or bit annoying like programming Analog Synth from virus website. No much information about why oberheim sound like it sounds, like OSCs Filters, etc .... just it provides a patch sound that you need to install at first , I have virus B, instal, save and copy patches is a bit hard. So I am looking for a manual, about such synth, bit of text talking why it sounds like this and parameters to get it. But I didn't find nothing like this at the moment. But all those things I found add some knowledge as well .

[@friendlynoise]

@@modulartheory I get you. I don’t know if there is such manual as “Oberheim sound in 10 minutes”, etc… I’m pretty sure you can find the information you need within a few minutes with a little of lucky internet searching. If you a part of forums like Muffwiggler of Gearspace, there are people and threads almost for anything you can ask for. People are mostly very helpful and if there is no available manual for what you need, people will help as good as they can. The web isn’t always the solution, though. I see sometimes people with good intentions but poor knowledge trying to help based on common places or urban myths they read somewhere. You must filter out what’s not relevant or not based on facts. So if you ask about Oberheim sound, you’ll probably get answers from “there’s is not such as Oberheim sound” or “I can get exact Oberheim sound with my (write any synth brand or plug-in here)”, to “If you’re looking for the Oberheim sound, you’ll get it only with this/that model, and anything different is worthless”. It’s the beauty of the web, but in general, you’ll find what you need. 👍🏻 Regarding Oberheim: they are mostly simple synth engines (the Matrix series being the exception), with a very pleasing basic sound. The filter is maybe what makes a Oberheim synth unique, specially in the models with 12db/oct multimode filter. That filter screams Oberheim!!! right out the box. On the other side, you can get valid similar sounds with other synths. Please take a look at the three videos in my channels comparing the Oberheim sound with other synths. You may be surprised. This is part 1 of 3: Can you guess which of the two synths is the Oberheim OB-Xa? - Part 1 kzbin.info/www/bejne/joKXfKmvnt53hLM

[@friendlynoise]

A bible for synth sounds: reaktorplayer.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/roland-a-foundation-for-electronic-music-series-1979/

[@modulartheory]

@@friendlynoise many thanks 🙏 When I mentioned Oberheim .. it is was just an example. Watching videos I got to make a kind of formant filter, and now I can understand how it works. My idea was to find a manual to make different sound and patches, like strings, pad, percusive like snares, hats, FX, plucks ... And also classic sounds like Juno, oberheim, moog, ARP, Korg ms, tb303... and things like hyper sync , sine harmonic series, or get other cool stuff for learning more. I know the basics about sound design, vco, vcf, vca, LFO, env amp, env filt... but it would be great to have a couple of easy manual to understand a bit more. I am going to sing up to the website you said . Many thanks and I hope you get time to make those small tutos . ;)

[@falangistavaleroso9689]

I returned the first Virus due to slow envelopes and not snappy back in it's day, but I liked this video. The phaser sounds very Tangerine Dream.

[@friendlynoise]

Yes, the envelopes feel sometimes strange, like the curve shapes are not what you want or the like. Some exploring or modulating is needed to adjust envelopes to your needs.

[@Unison_Detune]

@@friendlynoise Yes Creative Spiral has done stuff like this on envelope response on the Rev 2.

[@friendlynoise]

@@Unison_Detune that’s the way to go. 👍🏻

[@AdamsOlympia]

The legendary sound designer Howard Scarr published a free PDF manual on programming Virus, where he explains how to get very snappy envelopes (basically assigning the envelope to modulate it's own attack/decay in the mod matrix) ... "Virus Tutorial, Programming Analogue synths -Scarr"

[@falangistavaleroso9689]

@@AdamsOlympia interesting, but how can it get a envelope faster than itself?