Learn With Me - Hydrasynth: Ep01 - Overview & Paradigm

Having shared my first impressions I discuss a little more about my thoughts on the synth as well as sharing some details of the general control paradigm and some changes I'd like to see.
In this series of videos you'll join me as I learn the ins and outs of the ASM Hydrasynth (Explorer). I've had it for about one month and used it to a limited degree alongside reading the manual. I'll demonstrate my end to end learning and exploration process starting with the basics of how to use the synth, through all the features, and ending with some sound design demonstrations.
Episode 00 - First Impressions - • Learn With Me - Hydras...
Episode 01 - Overview & Paradigm - • Learn With Me - Hydras...
Episode 02 - Oscillator 3 - • Learn With Me - Hydras...
Episode 03 - Oscillators 1 & 2 - • Learn With Me - Hydras...
Episode 04 - Mutants Part 1 - • Learn With Me - Hydras...
Episode 05 - Mutants Part 2 - • Learn With Me - Hydras...
Playlist - • Learn with Me - Hydras...
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#learnwithme #asm #hydrasynth #ashunsoundmachines #synthesis

[@alimaleki217]

You hit the nail on the head with your assessment of the interface. I've been considering this as my first synth and felt pressure to do so ($100 off most places through today) but decided to go a different route after watching your videos...which are excellent by the way!

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. I feel like the Hydrasynth Explorer was close to being an absolute must have, at the price, but it fell short in a few areas. I'm hoping they are working on a successor that improves in those areas (core sound quality with simple patches, live sound design capability and perhaps even more expressive potential in the keyboard). What I imagine is the Hydrasynth sectional interface paradigm, with more dedicated controls, a sound quality and features like Pigments (or zebra), a keybed like the Osmose, and perhaps a secondary expressive controller like the Touche. Maintain the build quality, and bring it to market for under $2000 (with 49 or 61 keys) and I think you'd have a proposition that was hard to beat.

[@RalfHauser-h1k]

What a helpful and great explanation! Thanks a lot for this superb video. I found the original ASM HS manual poorly describing the underlying concepts and functionality so i am greatful that you took your time in explaining all of this. Excellent job!

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. I really appreciate your support!

[@jimmyblimmy]

I am enjoying your unique perspective and thoughtful analysis; it is definitely a nice point of view to add to the mix.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for watching, and for your comment. Through the series, I've tried my best to avoid getting caught up in the "new synth honeymoon" and present how I actually feel about the device, alongside the features. I hope you enjoy the rest of the series!

[@leontedumitru]

Great job with this explanation!

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for watching, and I appreciate your support!

[@ps7365]

Just received my Explorer today. These vids have been very helpful. Thank for doing them!

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for watching, and I really appreciate your support!

[@kalpeshkpanchal]

Hello, I bought a hydrasynth explorer and came across these great series of videos. I appreciate your honest review and clear explanation. I will definitely go Over this series of video.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. I hope you enjoy the learning process, find the videos helpful, and get a lot of joy out of the Hydrasynth. In any case: I appreciate your support!

[@midisynthminds]

This is excellent and, in my opinion, is exactly what a lot of Hydrasynth Explorer users want to see, but might not admit it. Great video! Thank you. I am really looking forward to the training videos.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. I'd say the Hydrasynth benefits from an extremely consistent interface. While it's not always the most "intuitive", I find you can make educated guesses without being too far off the mark, especially when you understand a few basics. Hopefully this video helps everyone get oriented enough to ignore the rest of the series and experiment, should they choose to do so. Thanks for your support!

[@THETBRETT]

having just picked one up reverb for $550 AU, so I am watching with interest. Also picked up a deepmind 6 keyboard for $600, and need to learn that too. Talking about biting off more than I can chew. Thanks for the vid, subbed.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. Those are two quite different synths, but both offer a lot of sound design possibilities. I don't have a Deepmind, presently, but that's mostly as I try and keep my synth collection focused on things I really use, and it didn't see enough use. This isn't because it's a bad synth, but I think it covered some of the same ground my Peak. Anyway: enjoy the rest of the series, and your synths!

[@THETBRETT]

@@ChalkWalkMusic yeah, the difference is why i got them. I was looking at a Modwave as well, but the hydra came up, so maybe later. I can see myself losing afternnons to noodling, and acheiving nothing lol. Using a Yamaha RS 700o to run them to keep it DAWless for funsies. Thanks for the reply.

[@melorhy925]

Good somple detailed overview. thanks

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for watching: I appreciate your support!

[@shoppersplace]

Im still looking for the way to change banks of patches. rather than scrolling through a, then all of b etc. Hitting all buttons, still have not gotten to it. thanks

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. If you hold shift when turning the jog wheel, it jumps banks. You can also browse by name (alphabetic) and sound type vs number/bank which can be helpful too. Hope this helps!

[@shoppersplace]

@@ChalkWalkMusic my next attempt will be to connect it to mpc 2 live. still studying videos.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

youäre right, the missing macro knobs would be more useful than the arp knobs in most situations!

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment. The Explorer feels like great value, but somehow not quite the design compromise I'd have gone for. In any case: I really appreciate your support!

[@mshhoward]

Quick question. I just realized that my Deluxe is triggering the notes when the keypress is only about 60% of the way through its travel. It's consistent throughout the keybed, so it seems to be on purpose, but I'm confused. Does anyone else's do this? I didn't notice it until I was trying to play some more delicate stuff using 'keys' sounds. Thanks in advance.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. I'm not sure exactly what your expectation is: are you expecting the key to trigger earlier in travel, or later? This definitely varies by keyboard, but they usually measure velocity based on the time to move between two (or even three) points in the travel (three points is intended to detect if you were accelerating or decelerating, which is useful for modeling a piano hammer). The key triggers when you reach the final timing point (and doesn't trigger if you didn't reach it). For some keyboards, the second trigger point is at the bottom of the throw (where aftertouch starts). In this configuration, it's actually quite difficult to measure release velocity cleanly (as the key is still accelerating, and may be in the aftertouch range (this is more significant: without aftertouch you can place it very low), as the first time is measured. The Hydrasynth Deluxe (and the Explorer) both capture release velocity. I presume this is why they chose to place the latter timing point above the end of the key throw, but also fairly far down (I'm guessing the upper sensor is not right at the top of the key travel either). This gives them a relatively clean and reliable way to measure note on and note off velocity. In any case: if you want good velocity expression, a hammer action is preferred, which has a fairly long travel before triggering. The difference is that the hammer weight gives you good feedback for the velocity. For spring (synth action keys like the Hydrasynth) it's always harder to get precise velocity control: especially at the low end of the velocity range. The only keyboard I've used that manages to pull off subtlety with shallow motion is the Osmose. I believe the Polybrute 12 actually has a similar approach to key on/off, but lacks the pitch bend and is far more costly.

[@mshhoward]

@@ChalkWalkMusic Wow, thanks for such a quick, detailed response! I will have to re-read it more carefully. My other keyboard is Yamaha M8x, which has a triple sensor hammer action, and doesn't trigger the note until the bottom of the travel/throw. So, the Hyrda was throwing me off because it was triggering significantly earlier than expected. So just to confirm, yours behaves like mine, right? I guess my main prior was wanting to make sure it's on purpose, and that there wasn't a problem. Thanks again...I've recently gotten into sound design, and didn't have experience with synth keys.

[@hooch8395]

ya i have the desktop and i dont love actually using this synth like i do the novi peak but its capable of some great sounds and a fantastic tool to have

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for the comment, and for watching. I feel like the Hydrasynth is full of good UI ideas, like the mod matrix "quick assign" which is a really nice workflow, vs the Peak, but overall the Peak feels much more direct. I also find myself wanting to add velocity and aftertouch modulations often, but there aren't buttons to quick assign those so I have to scroll the list which really affects the workflow. I guess if they committed to making it the "ultimate sound design machine" vs trying to balance performability against sound design ease it might have sat better with me.

[@Romenet310]

Can the synth accept midi cc messages so you can use another controller for making quick changes?

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Hi, thanks for watching, and for your comment. It can both send and receive midi CC or NRPN. I haven't confirmed, but I presume NRPN might include more parameters. CC offers a decent amount of parameters (e.g macros, envelope and LFO parameters and the filters), but some are absent; I've found it works well for recording automation in a DAW or for external control; I actually use it as a controller for Pigments. I presume NRPN extends the control options making it better, but fewer controllers conveniently handle NRPN.

[@kgrant67]

Given what you consider drawbacks regarding luve sound design, what synth in this price range ir a little higher would you consider?

[@kgrant67]

Fwiw, the Gaia 2 is another one I've been looking at. Is that better in that regard? Frankly, I'm pretty much a total noob but live sound design is something I'm very interested in. Like just kind of jamming in real time

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. To clarify, by live sound design, I mean designing sounds while playing, in a live performance context; I exploring sound design is your goal, but you don't care about live use, the Hydrasynth works reasonably. If you want polyphony around that price you only have a few options: Minifreak, Hydrasynth Explorer, Minilogue XD, Deepmind 6/12, Yamaha MX, Korg "mod trio", Cobalt8, Argon8, Roland JDXi, Microkorg. Of those, I'd say the Cobalt8, Argon8, Deepmind, Minilogue XD and Minifreak are more suitable for live sound design. They all offer different feature sets, but my "top two" would probably be the Cobalt8 and Minifreak.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

So I replied on the other comment, but I didn't include Gaia as it's a bit more expensive. From my perspective, is biggest strength is the large number of panel controls, making it good for designing sounds live on. At the same time, it has quite a lot of depth, some of which is hidden in menus. I don't think it would be a bad choice for your use case. I'd say so a bit of a KZbin deep dive into the Gaia and the my to picks in the other reply and see which you could imagine yourself enjoying the most.

[@SD-ff1je]

Could I link my Yamaha MX49 and use that keyboard?

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for watching, and for commenting. There are two questions to answer here. First of all, can the device be connected? The answer is: yes, via din MIDI. The next is: will the polyphonic aftertouch work. I checked the user guide and reference manual for the Yamaha mx series and the Yamaha mx61 keyboard has channel pressure (aka mono aftertouch) and the sound engine has an aftertouch parameter to route. What the manual doesn't specify is if the aftertouch modulation source responds to polyphonic aftertouch. It is possible that you could test this out from your DAW, if your DAW has the capacity to let you enter polyphonic aftertouch in the piano roll. The easiest approach would be to use a patch on the mx49 setup to adjust the pitch of the notes based on aftertouch. In your DAW, draw in 2 notes playing in unison (an octave apart), held for several bars. Next draw in (however your DAW facilitates this) the polyphonic aftertouch for those notes such that both start with no pressure, one rises to maximum and falls back down over a bar, then the other does the same the following bar. Listening back you should hear the pitch rise and fall for each note in turn. The reason for all this investigation is that channel pressure is a feature commonly available on controllers, but polyphonic aftertouch isn't. If the mx49 does support polyphonic aftertouch the Hydrasynth family would be useful controllers for it, if not then many controllers could be usable.

[@SD-ff1je]

@Chalk Walk Music Thank you so much for that detail. My thing is that I just want to use 49 keys I'm not too worried about after-touch. I just want bigger keys. I'm new to synths but not new to piano or keyboards you see :-)

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

@@SD-ff1je I actually misread/answered the opposite question, assuming you wanted to use the polyphonic aftertouch keyboard from the Hydrasynth on the Yamaha. The other way round will certainly work, but the Yamaha mx49 doesn't provide aftertouch of any description. This loses one (possibly important) control dimension of the Hydrasynth.

[@SD-ff1je]

@@ChalkWalkMusic Yes. I might consider it useful later. I'm a simple chap, lol.

[@SD-ff1je]

Figured it out and I use both keybeds now. After-touch too ;-) I mess with the 3 volume buttons (MX has two) up to bring each keyboard functions in and out, lol. Also, the MX has an audio player to add spicey tunes and tons of backing kits et al. Speaking of Keys, I don't go for mini keys, DX Reface is quite good though. But the Explorer bed is even better than that. I think this is a very fine machine. Now, where is that MPC One? Oh yes, still in the shop. Lol...

[@johnwalter6410]

it’s so good. my Trigon 6 is getting dusty.

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for your comment, and for watching. It's definitely a fun synth. In the end I haven't found it to be my go-to for anything specific, but it ends up being an (often used) fallback option when nothing else fits. It's also become a permanent fixture for use as a controller for software. Very many parameters send CCs, so you can make quite refined mappings to just about any subtractive+ VST.

[@johnwalter6410]

@@ChalkWalkMusic Rad. Good to know.,. Ive been using my Sequential as am midi controller. Its nice to not waste space with a dedicated midi keyboard wgen that space could be used for a synth.. The hydra I think shines with sound design. There is a blade runner patch on it that I cant stop playing.

[@edoardolai8868]

👏👏👏

[@ChalkWalkMusic]

Thanks for watching, and I appreciate your support!