Yesterday afternoon during a conference call a very interesting idea was suggested by OASYAN Count2Four123.
Probably you know iTunes and their podcasts? So his idea was to organise a weekly or monthly discussion of OASYANs to talk about OASYS, electronic music, music in general etc. The content of these kind of discussions should be kept flexible, but of course Tips & Tricks, new tracks of OASYANs, etc. would be the focus.
Now, more or less half a year after starting with this blog, I was looking into the visitors statistics again. To be more precise into the domains, as I wanted to get an idea from where the visitors are coming.
And there was one domain of a country I never heard of - Tuvalu. What a nice name!
So whoever you are and whatever the reasons were to visit my blog - I just wanted to send you my special greetings. It was you who made me look into the books and search the internet to learn more about Tuvalu.
… on the other hand the domain “tv” could also direct into a completely different direction. But I prefer the above explanation, as otherwise I never would have heard of Tuvalu.
Here you find the link to Daz’ free OASYS Randomizer.
It is a small …. unspectacular tool which most likely is underestimated by some OASYANs. Which is fine for those who just are using the HD-1 sounds like Piano, String, Brass, of course the GM bank and the factory sounds of the Virtual Analogs.
But in case you want to use AL-1, MS-20 and Polysix and do not have the time to read the manuals in detail but still want some more sounds…. hm, then there is no way around this tool. Together with RC’s & KARO’s new Analog Collection I highly recommend to install the Randomizer. And the nice thing about it is… you only have to press one button to open the door to some more sounds.
Here is one example consisting of just two sounds:
iRandom mix1
Sorry about the bad timing but I did not use a click, just recorded the “bass” and then added the “iRandom Giant Rotary” pad.
The pad sound is a randomized version of the great factory sound “Giant Rotary”. It is one of these sounds where a lot of controllers have an impact on the sound. This was not change in the randomized version. I called the factory sound up and pressed the button once! Yes, once. The new version is now a little bit “dirtier” and morphing from a flanging pad into a digital kind of noise when the Vector Joystick gets used. Again, probably not everyone’s taste, but defenitely mine and a must have, saved to several media.
The other sound, kind of Bass, is a modified version of one of my Polysix Sounds. The other meanwhile ten sounds are stored and two lead sounds let me seriously think of selling the Moog Voyager! Someone once posted - I guess it was Stephen Kay - that there is no real need to keep those instruments anymore… I was sceptical… I was.
usage of randomizer (aka iRandom) @ one’s own risk
It’s very simple to use. Just run it up and set the MIDI port/channel, select the Program type (type of EXi #1) and hit Randomize. The Depth slider sets how many randomly selected parameters will be randomized. You can apply the randomization to existing programs or an initialized program, it really doesn’t care (or even know).
Currently the software supports AL-1 (99 params), PolysixEX (37 params), MS20EX (64 or so params). The PolysixEX randomization is the most conservative and gives some interesting results, the AL-1 is okay’ish and the MS20 randomization is generally bizarre.
The way this software works is very simple. In my development version of this app I can put it into a learning mode and when I change a bunch of parameters for the selected EXi type the software records the MIDI/System Exclusive commands used to change each parameter and the maximum and minimum value seen. That “learned” data is then built into the application and when you hit Randomize it looks at the learned data for the selected EXi type and uses it to generate a spray of random parameter values. Without a sysex spec, this is the only way to make it work. The generated parameter changes are always valid because they are based on the learned max/min values.
It would be easy to add support for all the Oasys engines including HD-1 and of course any new engines. I suspect STR-1 would be very interesting to work with. The app just needs teaching about those, which can be a rather long procedure (setting the maximum and minimum values of every parameter on the Oasys !).
It’s a Universal Binary, but I haven’t tested on Intel yet. I don’t think there is any code in there that would be affected by running it on a different processor so it should be fine.
Enjoy … oh and keep the Oasys volume turned down, the results can get pretty wild !
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to open the door to some more sounds.
