Scared!

- -

I suppose it is a bit like rocket science...
I mean...

you get your GT
you have a BLAST
then when you have your fill you come back down to earth
before taking off again..

Shimkey:

I just got a V-Synth GT too, and I don't know beans about programming it. The good news, is that you'll have a blast with it anyway! Although I wish there were more presets available, I'm having the greatest fun just playing the preset patches! Plus, it's real easy to play around with the preset patches with the eight hardware knobs under the touchscreen. You'll have quite a bit of fun just playing with the resonance and cutoff pots alone! Don't worry, and have fun!

P.S. Get a good general analog synthesis book in the meantime (search forum for book thread). Plus, check out the freely downloadable Roland help booklets—they serve as excellent supplementary primers to the user manual. They're linked in the sticky at the top of this forum, under V-Synth resources.

I don't know squat about sound programming and get easily lost in the droves of menus available on the GT- but I heartily agree that you can have hours of fun with the GT just playing the pre-sets. 3 hours or so flashed by whilst I was playing with lead sounds in Sound Control and I'll continue to pop down there on the odd lunch time for a quick blast until I actually get one of my own.

When you consider there's a fair number of pre-set patches that you can combine together with the upper/lower tones and quite easily tweak slightly/add effects to, PLUS the vocoder which is pretty fun and easy to use your only real problem is that you'll be too distracted playing with the easily accessible stuff to actually delve into the complex things- sampling and variphrase encoding audio to make your own interesting patches and such.

But, ultimately, it's quite rewarding when you DO find the time to delve in there and find something entirely new about the instrument- it gives it a lot of life as a musical "toy" and will get your creative juices flowing all over again.

I'm swamped enough by my Fantom and still want to make matters worse by getting a GT as soon as I can!

Read the manual

go to sleep

Read the manual

repeat


Mark

>

Check out "Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming" by Jim Aiken. This text will give you the basic info you need on analog synthesis (with some digital synthesis descriptions, too). Published in 2004, the book is current and easily found in most bookstores or online. Comes with an audio CD of sound examples, and even has a picture of a V-Synth on the cover!

Highly recommended for beginner and advanced synthesists alike.

The GT is indeed a little more complex than the classic V-Synth and the XT. This is due to the fact it adds some new synthesis and processing features, as well as two tones in one patch. However the synth remains user-friendly to to context control knobs and large touchscreen LCD.

Should you need to learn the basics or dive deeper, I would suggest you to check out the V-Synth Tweakbook: http://www.sinevibes.com/publications/v-synth-tb/

Thanks to all of you for your comforting, motivating words. I shall shop around Amazon and read the reviews of the books you've recommended.

Artemio, thanks again for mastering "Funeral" - it sounds great! When do you think version 3 of the Tweakbook will be out? Not for a long time?

The GT is a pleasure to program and everything is laid in a way that is very logical and accesible. Rather uniquely this most powerful of synths accomodates the new programmer by offering an "easy button" in the form of the Sound Shaper function. So whilst you will probably find it mind boggling if you've never done any sound design before it is a great synth to learn on IMO.

Book wise I'd recommend the Synthesizer Programming and Analog Synthesis books from wizoobooks.com as well as the Mark Aiken book. The former focuses more on actual sound design, rather than just how synths work. Both books focus on a type of synthesis called 'analog synthesis'. The GT covers a wider spectrum of synthesis techniques that just analog, however the books will still give you a good grounding in the basics.

I just got a call from my local music shop ... my GT has arrived!

I feel almost as excited as the night I knew I was going to lose my virginity!!

:O)

Shimky, Treat her right and don't get ManHandled, my understanding is that she's very powerful and complex but exciting to maneuver, she's been around the forum and I'm jealous ;-}

On the documentation front, I've decided this:
I'm going to play around with the GT with no knowledge of sound synthesis and see what I come up with. Then, later, I'm going to buy the books you guys have recommended and dig deeper into the world of sound.

Question now is, how do I pay for the damn thing?!

Hock a kidney?

That is extremely generous of you! Many many thanks. I'll pay for the ice.

:O)