One synth EP Challenge (No competition or prizes - just for fun)

[Despondo]

Four track EP featuring the Nostromo synth. This is the most cohesive project I've ever done. Where to go from here...idunno.

Bloody brilliant! Great job on this!

[Peter]

Peter - Thanks a ton for the kind words and initiating reviews, it's invaluable in many ways. I've commented on loving your work before and the quality just keeps rising if anything. I'm enjoying the Nos EP as much as Proton. This isn't the type of music I personally gravitate towards naturally but you've opened up doors with force. The intense wave length you rock on is just inspiring and energizing, while being dark in such cool ways.

Bloody brilliant! Great job on this!

Thanks for the feedback! I'll have to spend time to think about my next project!

[TritoneAddiction]

So here's my FM4 project. I won't call it an EP because the songs I've written has absolutely nothing to do with each other.
They are all totally different, both in terms of style and the way they are mixed.
The good thing about all of this is I found that FM4 can be pretty versatile.

I must say I really came to love FM4 during this project. It's the first synth that's made FM synthesis make sense to me. Most sounds/patches I've tweaked myself which I'm quite proud of since I'm far from a synth tweaker expert.

They are all really great! Little Goblin I can imagine playing in the credits of a (g-rated) Halloween movie but could also take the video game route now that I listen again. Versatile! No Way Out is my favorite as I relate more to the functionality of this. Crazy good composition you got there! When it comes to tracks like this that have the potential to be played in a functional setting, I would focus more on the arrangement, building tension and releasing. Hero is a powerful track too more along the lines of rock though of course. Good work as always.

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it.

[artotaku]

Here is the release of my EP for the One Synth EP challenge.

It was pretty interesting to hear this coverage from one of my favorite synths. The YouTube uploads and connecting the music with image covers makes it a well-rounded experience.

Thanks for the feedback. When converting the tunes, I was pretty impressed what that Chip Music guy Jochen Hippel achieved with just three voices.
A common technique was to distribute notes of one sound over all three voices whenever there was space between notes of other sounds.
Which was quite some effort for me to clean it up

[Arrant]

Phew, my Thor E.P. is finished just in time

I seriously doubted I would finish this project on time, my life has changed a million times for the better after meeting a very special girl late last fall, and most of my energy has been directed at convincing / bribing / tricking her into being my girlfriend The great news is she said yes and we will move in together as soon as we find someplace
So not as much time for music at the moment, but -as always - deadlines help. So here is, if a little rushed, my Thor E.P. called "Singularity".

Drums are mostly sampled, some vocal samples in there as well on the last track, apart from that it's all Thor.
Thanks Tritone for this great idea, it's an inspiration for many of us as evidenced by this thread

[ravisoni]

I'll be unable to meet my deadline (too many started ideas, never completed any, which sort of defeats the purpose of this challenge, but still trying to work through it)!

[teddymcw]

Phew, my Thor E.P. is finished just in time

Awesome stuff from Thor! Congrats on finishing the EP and all the other stuff in the meantime You've created some very nice tracks and moments in this. Ride on!

[Arrant]

Awesome stuff from Thor! Congrats on finishing the EP and all the other stuff in the meantime You've created some very nice tracks and moments in this. Ride on!

Thanks man, really appreciate your positive comments

[FLVZ]

A sneek peak into the intro I created for my Vibro EP, having a lot of fun with this synth!

[TritoneAddiction]

Now that VST synths will be available in Reason, I thought I'd remind people about this thread.
I suspect some people will go on an endless VST chase, looking for all the best VSTs out there. But make sure you also take the time to actually make some music with your plugins. It's easy to get distracted when there's so many new toys around.

[theshoemaker]

Now that VST synths will be available in Reason, I thought I'd remind people about this thread.
I suspect some people will go on an endless VST chase, looking for all the best VSTs out there. But make sure you also take the time to actually make some music with your plugins. It's easy to get distracted when there's so many new toys around.

I won't go into VST so soon (maybe with Reaktor 6 during chrismas sale). Maybe for Mastering with Ozone 7. But to be honest ... I'm lightyears away from having my other synths conquered. I'm very surprised what kind of sounds I could squeaze out of MonoPoly for this challenge. Because I never used it before, but yet it is very limited. Put for example

into your rack. This is my next RE to buy.

Is it okay to stretch to rules for the challenge to mixin other single synth tracks? Looking forward to go to Nostromo and Parsec and the others again.

[TritoneAddiction]

Is it okay to stretch to rules for the challenge to mixin other single synth tracks? Looking forward to go to Nostromo and Parsec and the others again.

I guess you can if you want to. I certainly won't "forbid" anyone changing synths between different tracks, but I hope the thread as a whole won't deviate too much from the original concept. I think the most important thing is to just use one synth per track. If people don't want to follow that rule then they're probably in the wrong thread. Making an EP with one synth is just taking it a step further, going deeper with the synth and making it more like a project.

[teddymcw]

Now that VST synths will be available in Reason, I thought I'd remind people about this thread.
I suspect some people will go on an endless VST chase, looking for all the best VSTs out there. But make sure you also take the time to actually make some music with your plugins. It's easy to get distracted when there's so many new toys around.

When the big announcement came out it was like a horrifying tsunami of options on the horizon headed towards the relatively coastal city of Reason. I felt like scrambling to hide in a stable concrete structure, haha. This thread came to mind in that rush of thoughts as well. Would love to keep this train progressing if possible. There is still infinite terrain to travel with what we have.

I have the basis of a Vk-2 album and I really feel like doing just an acoustic gtr and vocal album but I won't have dates for either for awhile in this busy period. Just stating intentions at the moment. Best.

[theshoemaker]

Is it okay to stretch to rules for the challenge to mixin other single synth tracks? Looking forward to go to Nostromo and Parsec and the others again.

I guess you can if you want to. I certainly won't "forbid" anyone changing synths between different tracks, but I hope the thread as a whole won't deviate too much from the original concept. I think the most important thing is to just use one synth per track. If people don't want to follow that rule then they're probably in the wrong thread. Making an EP with one synth is just taking it a step further, going deeper with the synth and making it more like a project.

Figured out I'll continue with MonoPoly. Throwing more sequencers at it an changing the ADSR IN different ways I didn't before. Just saw a good clip about restrictions. But as before, I'm using the usual effects. anyway it's mostly basic stuff. Reverb, Delay, Reverser, Distortion, Saturation, a little compression and sometimes Sunder. I like the nuances and sublte details you can model when using it. How about the others here?

My deadline is ... 01.07. still 2 month but I'm full with work. One finished track 6-7 very satisfying 16 bar concepts. Can someone recommend a good mastering engineer? Because my home recording env isn't built up yet. At the end of the day I'd like to release it professionally.

[TheGodOfRainbows]

My brief review of everyone's EPs:
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Benedict Roff-Marsh - The Body Pool
Pixel Deep Plays
You have mastered the art of spacey atmospheric music. So soothing. Great for studying and focusing, or for falling asleep - it goes both ways for me. Very nice.
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modecca
Nostromo 3 song ep

Bobblecue - I don't know if it's your profile pic and/or the album art, but this song really evokes an 'insect' quality I can't describe. Weird beautiful organic bubbly sounds happening.

Many strange organic wonderful sonic textures and exploration. I love all the electro-organic bubbling and churning sounds. Very stimulating.
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Kuranes/ Ghosts in The Attic
7-Track-EP "Kaleidoscope"

How To Fail Epic
Nice big fat warm chords

The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled...
I love the "grim" melodies toward the end!

The Art Of Keeping A Smile Under The Most Adverse Circumstances (Do not despair!)
More strange beautiful melodies. It really matches the title I think!

I second what Tritone said about the "warm feeling" to the production. There are some very warm, all encompassing sounds that surround you. This is one of my favorite EPs. Well done!
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teddymcw-playground
Polysix EP

Intro
Probably my fav

Fluffy Ride
Great vibe
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teddymcw-playground
Antidote EP

Crowd Gathering
Lots of things throughout this song that keep it interesting

Sound of silence
Radio ready song right here!

Interlude
Beautiful use of vocals again
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East Island
Nostromo Ambient 4 track EP

New Clouds
Nice spacious atmosphere, great studying music

Transitional
Reminds me of Metroid Prime music (which I love), peaceful, meditative
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Sorped aka Alio Modo
Orbis EP

Slowhere
I like the slow evolving pad, and the bright bells

Bridled Flurry
This one makes me smile. It's a jaunty jig that beeps its way into my heart
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Despondo
Nostromo EP

Marooned
Very creepy and effective. Beautiful

Recourse
Gorgeous warm and luscious

Nowhere Is Safe
I love the deep warm pads. This one gives me goosebumps.
Very nice work.
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siln (Akita Dub)
Thor EP

Cool concept EP. Short but sweet. Thor still sounds great.
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TritoneAddiction
FM4 EP

Little Goblin
I see DMT Goblin Elves coming out of the walls

No Way OUt
Bread and butter. This is amazing. I love your melodies and solo lines.

Hero
Badass
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TritoneAddiction
Chip64 EP

You are a music making machine. Every song is great. Such solid melodies. These sound like real songs to games and never existed but should have. All tracks favorited. Wow.
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artotaku
Jochen Hippel - Astaroth Main Theme
I love the arpeggios and leads

Jochen Hippel - Prehistoric Tale 1
Great groove

I like the chiptune-ish leads. Great sounding production overall. Solid bass and beat.
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Arrant
Thor EP

Singularity
I like the intro, and when the beat comes in. Stronk deep kick sounds good.

Airwaves
I love the feel of this track. I like the mid song break at around 1:30 with the low pass filtering going on that opens up.

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I can't find Peter's EP. I may have missed some people's EPs. If I didn't comment on someone's, let me know. I might have skipped over someone by accident.

As far as my EP, well I've long since given up on my original time frame, but not on the EP itself. It's getting close to finished. I didn't want to submit what I had because I just wasn't satisfied. I felt I wasn't exploring the RYM2612 enough and needed to dig further before I release something. I have about 9 tracks, so it's turning into an album.

Although I failed on the original premise of this thread, the important thing is that we make music. And this thread is exactly what inspired my EP/LP that I WILL release SOON so help me god.

Awesome work everyone. There is alot of great music in this thread. Congrats to everyone who actually finished their EP on time, and thanks for sharing it and contributing to this thread!

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Yes, I am lame! Go ahead and throw lettuce and tomatoes at me.

...just for you.

Thanks for taking the time to dice up the lettuce and tomatoes before throwing them at me. But are you also throwing the knife at me?


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[EdGrip]

So here's my FM4 project.

I was on the train for a while on Friday, trying to think of something good to put in my ears on the journey. "Aha!" I thought. "The One Synth EP thread!"
I started with these tracks, and I just want to say - they are all really, really good.
A few months ago I listened to the Song Exploder episode on the BoJack Horseman theme - Little Goblin reminds me of that somehow. It's definitely the theme tune to some cult classic.

No Way Out is a banger! I loved it! That WILL get played at our next party! I think the only thing that could make it more fun is some daft vocals/vocal samples. Ace work with the faux electric guitar, and the drums are spot-on. I'd buy an album of that.

Hero was fun, but less my kind of thing - although it did inspire me to get out my ABL3 trial, make a bassline, duplicate the ABL3 in a combinator tuned a 5th above the first one, and run both of them through the Kuassa distortion pedal in metal mode into a Recto-ish setting on the Softube Amp; a funky filthy chuggy power-chord/heavy acid 303 mutant which was lots of fun!

This has definitely inspired me to dust off FM4 - do you have any favourite resources for learning to make tasty FM sounds?

I also listened to Redshift by Despondo - particularly good staring-out-of-a-train-window-imagining-you're-in-a-film vibes there. Can't wait to get stuck into this thread more - glad I remembered it!

(In case anyone's interested, the 303 guitar sounds like this - it ain't nothing but a thing, so I'll delete it if anyone feels it shouldn't be in this thread.)

[TritoneAddiction]

So here's my FM4 project.

I was on the train for a while on Friday, trying to think of something good to put in my ears on the journey. "Aha!" I thought. "The One Synth EP thread!"
I started with these tracks, and I just want to say - they are all really, really good.
A few months ago I listened to the Song Exploder episode on the BoJack Horseman theme - Little Goblin reminds me of that somehow. It's definitely the theme tune to some cult classic.

No Way Out is a banger! I loved it! That WILL get played at our next party! I think the only thing that could make it more fun is some daft vocals/vocal samples. Ace work with the faux electric guitar, and the drums are spot-on. I'd buy an album of that.

Hero was fun, but less my kind of thing - although it did inspire me to get out my ABL3 trial, make a bassline, duplicate the ABL3 in a combinator tuned a 5th above the first one, and run both of them through the Kuassa distortion pedal in metal mode into a Recto-ish setting on the Softube Amp; a funky filthy chuggy power-chord/heavy acid 303 mutant which was lots of fun!

This has definitely inspired me to dust off FM4 - do you have any favourite resources for learning to make tasty FM sounds?

Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it.

Regarding favourite resources for learning to make tasty FM sounds, I have non. This 3 track project is actually the first time I gave FM synthesis a fair shot. I know very little about it. I just tweak away till I find something I like. I think I mostly tweaked presets for this project, but many times I ended up with sounds that sounded nothing like the original patches.

[FLVZ]

I guess the Vibro ViP EP is finished 2 weeks ahead of schedule, so for now I'll only release it privately for this thread. The concept was a little different for me, I wanted to focus on ideas within ideas and thats why I decided to focus on ViP EPs for this challenge, as a way of challenging my old way of working. Thanks to Tritone for hosting



Updated link with all tracks:
https://flavolous.bandcamp.com/releases

[TritoneAddiction]

So I originally planned to make a Legend EP, well that didn't happen. But at least I finished one song with just the Legend for all synth sounds.
One song is still better then nothing I guess.

[Auryn]

I've been lurking in this thread for a while now and I never really "checked in" to say I was doing one, but as I'm currently finishing an Oberon refill I might as well participate. Generally limiting yourself to one synth really brings out the creativity, and it also really gets you familiar with that synth and its strengths and weaknesses - so as far as thread ideas goes this one is about as useful as they come! With Oberon, I find myself gravitating towards the sort of metallic sounds it does so well, but it also has a vaguely orchestral quality, which prompted a commenter to come up with the term "orkestrial" which I thought was very fitting. That led me to the idea of arranging a couple of well-know classical pieces... but don't expect to fall asleep, these are not for the faint-hearted!




I have to confess to using the punchBD for the kick, but as the rest is only oberons (around 20 in each track) I hope you can overlook my transgression

[TritoneAddiction]

I've been lurking in this thread for a while now and I never really "checked in" to say I was doing one, but as I'm currently finishing an Oberon refill I might as well participate. Generally limiting yourself to one synth really brings out the creativity, and it also really gets you familiar with that synth and its strengths and weaknesses - so as far as thread ideas goes this one is about as useful as they come! With Oberon, I find myself gravitating towards the sort of metallic sounds it does so well, but it also has a vaguely orchestral quality, which prompted a commenter to come up with the term "orkestrial" which I thought was very fitting. That led me to the idea of arranging a couple of well-know classical pieces... but don't expect to fall asleep, these are not for the faint-hearted!




I have to confess to using the punchBD for the kick, but as the rest is only oberons (around 20 in each track) I hope you can overlook my transgression

Nice. You got some really cool sounds in these tracks. All very well put together. I like it.
I've never tried Oberon, but judging from these two tracks it seems like you can make some unique sounds with it.

[TritoneAddiction]

Thanks TheGodOfRainbows for all the reviews.
That's a great contribution to this thread.

[TritoneAddiction]

I guess the Vibro ViP EP is finished 2 weeks ahead of schedule, so for now I'll only release it privately for this thread. The concept was a little different for me, I wanted to focus on ideas within ideas and thats why I decided to focus on ViP EPs for this challenge, as a way of challenging my old way of working. Thanks to Tritone for hosting

I've always found Vibro a very diffcult synth to work with and because of that I haven't played with it that much, but you manage to get some great sounds out of it for this EP.
Favorite track is "Vibrous". Nice beat and the part starting at 1:22 is really cool.

[FLVZ]

I guess the Vibro ViP EP is finished 2 weeks ahead of schedule, so for now I'll only release it privately for this thread. The concept was a little different for me, I wanted to focus on ideas within ideas and thats why I decided to focus on ViP EPs for this challenge, as a way of challenging my old way of working. Thanks to Tritone for hosting

I've always found Vibro a very diffcult synth to work with and because of that I haven't played with it that much, but you manage to get some great sounds out of it for this EP.
Favorite track is "Vibrous". Nice beat and the part starting at 1:22 is really cool.

Yeah i think its important to have fun with whichever synth you're using otherwise theres no chance you're going to make anything interesting. The patch mutator is one hell of a feature especially combined with the masking tools. I did have to look through the manual to understand Vibro as its got some unique features but I had plenty of fun experiementing with it, and in the end it proved to be quite a straightforward synth in many of the traditional ways we are used to.

Here's a little screencap of some of the patches in the intro:

[TritoneAddiction]

I feel like this thread kind of died off. Have people given up on their projects? Is everyone busy chasing new VSTs instead of making music? You can use a VST synth for this challenge too you know

A lot of music and great comments have been made in this thread, but there's a bunch of EP announcements that hasn't come to fruition.
Some people has their deadline set as far back as january and february, whithout having anything released. I'll give the jan-, feb-, mars-people a week or two to say something. After that I'll just assume that their project is never gonna happen and remove them from the list.

I would still like to encourage more people to join and make a "One synth EP". Come on guys, don't be shy.
Or if you have already finished one EP, to make another one.