Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

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Gps
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Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kK_HGNOo9A

At 40 seconds in, is that a pitch bend ? The peeww sound ?

What ever I try in LMMS, I don't seem to get that effect ? (LMMS can do pitch bend / note slides)

Then at 3.20 again that same effect ? Also pitch bend ?

In my mind I see a synth and or keyboard player, turning one of the two wheels to the left of the keys.
Am I right ? :P

I think those wheels are modulation and pitch ?

Been looking at Synth 1, I think Synth1 can do it, although it seems to expect midi input from those wheels.
My midi keyboard does not have those wheels, but maybe I can work around that with automation. :)
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Looks like you asked that too in 2019 here. I think they can tell you in a Synth forum.

Anyway, it sounds like a pitch strip to me. Vangelis used it much on the soundtrack for 'Bladerunner' on the (in)famous Yamaha CS-80. However, when he made "Alpha" the CS-80 didn't exist yet.

I don't know what he might have used for this "effect". Maybe his Synthi AKS (aka VCS3) could do it on the touch keyboard that was inside the lid of the suitcase. See this plugin version of it by Arturia. Maybe by setting the "pitch spread" of the keyboard you can glide over the keys or something. I don't know what pitch spread is... My guess is the VCS3: lots of people like J M Jarre used it for the strangest effects. The Synthi AKS is best known for "On the run" by Pink Floyd from their album 'Dark side of the moon' (1973).

He did 90% of "Spiral" on a Roland System 101 (link youtube) but that hasn't got a pitch strip either.

It must have been done on a synth from before 1976.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Toejam76 »

Sounds like a pitched sine or "synth flute" patch.
I think those wheels are modulation and pitch ?
Yes ,left is pitch, right is modulation.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

Toejam76 wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:00 pm Sounds like a pitched sine or "synth flute" patch.
I think those wheels are modulation and pitch ?
Yes ,left is pitch, right is modulation.
Thank you
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

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Linuxmusician01 wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:17 pm Looks like you asked that too in 2019 here. I think they can tell you in a Synth forum.

Anyway, it sounds like a pitch strip to me. Vangelis used it much on the soundtrack for 'Bladerunner' on the (in)famous Yamaha CS-80. However, when he made "Alpha" the CS-80 didn't exist yet.

I don't know what he might have used for this "effect". Maybe his Synthi AKS (aka VCS3) could do it on the touch keyboard that was inside the lid of the suitcase. See this plugin version of it by Arturia. Maybe by setting the "pitch spread" of the keyboard you can glide over the keys or something. I don't know what pitch spread is... My guess is the VCS3: lots of people like J M Jarre used it for the strangest effects. The Synthi AKS is best known for "On the run" by Pink Floyd from their album 'Dark side of the moon' (1973).

He did 90% of "Spiral" on a Roland System 101 (link youtube) but that hasn't got a pitch strip either.

It must have been done on a synth from before 1976.
Thank you, the big difference for me is, that my ears have improved a lot compared to 2019 ( distinguish more details in music)
Interesting it can' t be the CS80.

I am gonna try some more with pitch slide in LMMS. See what I can achieve.

A pitch strip might explain, why I am hearing it going out of tune in LMMS, were this does not seem to happen with Vangelis.
It might be some synth setting why it stays in tune ?
Or I am not using the right amount of semitones. :)

This going out of tune is why I always struggle with note slides in LMMS.
As I said in the 2019 topic though, it does make sense to me it gets out of tune in LMMS.
Maybe I need to speed up the slide so we cant hear it gets out of tune, and find the right note to start at and end at.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

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Found something:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IprlDVDPos4&t=92s

He never learned notes, and claims he still can't. ( there might be hope for me still :wink: )

It seems he has a complete custom set up. At 8.40 and on we see his newest ? set up.
Also a lot of foot pedals. :)
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

@Gps: Come to think of it, he might also have used the VCS3 for this the way JM Jarre did sometimes (see this YT video on "Oxygen Live" where you can see Jarre has multiple VCS3's and Synthi's).

In this series of tutorials somebody who's very good with the VCS3 explains a lot of VCS3 tricks. You can use one oscillator to "operate" the pitch of another. Thus making it's pitch go slowly down. I can remember this man had a tutorial in one of his video's on an effect done by Jarre. Sounded like the effect you're talking about.

Arturia has a good VST3 for the VCS3 (link to free demo). The free demo has little limitations. Works quite well on my old Linux PC. However, I had to upgrade Wine to Wine Staging on Ubuntu 20.04 and do some other things to get the VST3 version working (link Linuxmusicians topic).

Good luck experimenting! :)
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

Thank you , and I realized I do have a midi controller with those 2 wheels but it's not working.
The one I have that does work, does not have those wheels.

One attempt to fix it failed. I should try again, this time get an usb B connector you can solder on to a circuitboard.

Its the square usb type, and when I got this midi controller, it did work but you had to wiggle that connection. A new cable and an attempt to bypass that connection failed.

The only part interesting to this topic though, the pitchbend goes from 0 to plus or minus.
The modulation wheel goes from min (off) to max.

I have to check my vst collection. I might have one, which If I remember right, is a vst of a russian portable synth used by jarre.
It does have those pegs you put in a grid, like the auturia plugin.
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/789/

Wine should not be an issue here, because I am on openSUSE tumbleweed. (rolling release) I get the latest develop version of wine.
I think tumbleweed is like Manjaro in this context. A more user friendly rolling release compared to Arch.

VST3 does not work in LMMS yet.

I love LMMS but I am sometimes considering Ardour. Ardour can do VST3 and has LV2 support.
LV2 support should be in LMMS after the next update, but nobody knows when this will be.
I am already waiting for this for over a year now. :(
LMMS also does only 32 bit vst.

I think I am gonna watch those tutorials though. I already learned a lot from vids like that.
I also have watched vids of people using hardware synths.

Off Topic:
Yesterday saw a stat of daws on facebook. To my big surprise LMMS was listed higher then Ardour. :shock:
He searched Facebook for the User Groups of the various DAWs, and selected the groups with the highest membership for each DAW.

1) Fruity loops
2) Logic Pro
3) Albeton
4) Pro Tools
5) Cubase

15) LMMS
19) Ardour

For those that have facebook this link should work.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=482 ... 4534084594
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

I think this is what I need. (and a cable from usb B to usb A)

https://www.pcfelectronics.nl/nl/usb-b- ... zwart.html

I have contacted consumer support, To find out if male and female is the only difference. (or that there could be more differences)
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

Too funny not to mention I hope. Trying some pitch bending with the triple OC in LMMS.

Using an electric oboe preset, and I suddenly think of Ennio Morricone - Once upon a Time in the West.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MZw_Iv0wdU :lol:

I believe the pitch bending is done with the tongue though on the harmonica.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

I stumbled on this, this might help others too.

https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki/p ... _and_notes
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Gps wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:04 pm [...] I have to check my vst collection. I might have one, which If I remember right, is a vst of a russian portable synth used by jarre.
It does have those pegs you put in a grid, like the auturia plugin.
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/789/
That's the Synthi AKS! That's the suitcase version of the famous VCS3. The "KS" in the name stands for "keyboard sequencer". Wiki

About DAW's: you could try Qtractor. It's Linux native and its developer (@rncbc) is active on this forum. It's the only DAW that I understand.

Reaper also has a Linux native version. It free to use for "evaluation" for ever. It's only 10 MB (!) and only has to be extracted from the Zip archive and then you can use it immediately by running the executable. Has some great skins too.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Toejam76 »

He never learned notes, and claims he still can't. ( there might be hope for me still :wink: )
He is one of a kind. Have you seen how he transcribes his music with weird alien scribbles in his "spaceship" synth cockpit? (don't know wtf that is). But he has a guy who puts his music down in a understandable form.
Pink Floyd did a similar thing laying out the structure of the song with symbols. Well, whatever works.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

Toejam76 wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:57 am
He never learned notes, and claims he still can't. ( there might be hope for me still :wink: )
He is one of a kind. Have you seen how he transcribes his music with weird alien scribbles in his "spaceship" synth cockpit? (don't know wtf that is). But he has a guy who puts his music down in a understandable form.
Pink Floyd did a similar thing laying out the structure of the song with symbols. Well, whatever works.
Yep I did see that, a completely custom made setup with his synths.

Well its simple to some extent. If you have perfect pitch, you can forget about most or maybe even all music theory.
He started when he was 4, so changes of him having perfect pitch is big.
He often played below a piano, played by his mother if I got that story right. His mother was an classical singer.
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Re: Vangelis Alpha , Pitch bend ?

Post by Gps »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:13 am
Gps wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 3:04 pm [...] I have to check my vst collection. I might have one, which If I remember right, is a vst of a russian portable synth used by jarre.
It does have those pegs you put in a grid, like the auturia plugin.
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/789/
That's the Synthi AKS! That's the suitcase version of the famous VCS3. The "KS" in the name stands for "keyboard sequencer". Wiki

About DAW's: you could try Qtractor. It's Linux native and its developer (@rncbc) is active on this forum. It's the only DAW that I understand.

Reaper also has a Linux native version. It free to use for "evaluation" for ever. It's only 10 MB (!) and only has to be extracted from the Zip archive and then you can use it immediately by running the executable. Has some great skins too.
Thank you, and Qtractor looks good, I already saw some features LMMS lacks.

Its for me not easy to leave LMMS though.
There is humanization coming and strumming. Can you guess who asked for this? (and off course others asked for this too)

Its something that frustrates me to some extent.
Imagine the awesome DAW we could have if the Ardour, LMMS, and Qtractor devs would all be working on the same daw....
I know this is easier said then done though. Devs are like us only humans, and getting them to agree on things can be a challenge.
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