 Congratulations, it's a good synth. Very good synth. So I'm just gonna make some sounds this evening and just have a bit of an explore. Maybe make some patches. Have you to take requests and questions in the chat, of course. This is a deliciously simple patch. Is that shiny two operators involved? Masha, how does this, okay, good, okay, right. This is a question that I feel like I'm going to be answering again and again on the channel. But let's give it a go today. How does this compare to the Digitone? That is a good question. How does this compare to the Digitone? Because if you know the channel, excuse me, I'm just gonna have a drink, I'm drinking mezcal tonight, if you're in. So how does it compare to the Digitone? So obviously I'm a huge fan of the Digitone. That goes without saying. The Digitone for me is one of those desert island scents. But part of the appeal of the Digitone comes from its incredibly powerful and wonderful sequencer. In terms of sequencing, the opposite doesn't come close. It has a really good sequencer actually, but it doesn't come close to the Digitone. But as a pure synth in terms of sound design and where you can take this synth as a sound design tool and the sounds that you can coax for it. I mean, from that perspective, it blows the Digitone away because there's so much that this synth can do. So if you're looking for something that is primarily a sound design tool, the Opposix is just fantastic in that role. If you're looking for something that's a complete instrument, kind of in the electronic music sense where you can take it and create entire tracks, just on the one instrument, the Digitone is just incomprehensibly good for that sort of stuff. So they're two very different instruments. So the cop-out answer is neither is better overall, but they do and are good at different things. But I really, really love them both in the Opposix. For a reason, I don't think it's anywhere near as popular as it should be. I think this is just a wonderful, expressive, creative synth. I think more people should have it. Maybe I'll show you some of the sounds that I've been working on recently during the stream. But the stuff you can do with this from a pure sound design perspective is just so, so wonderful. So wonderful. It always strikes me as a synth which was created by a team that clearly has a deep of synthesis. Do you feel that in the creativity of what you can do with it? That said, this synth, sorry, this patch that's currently going at the moment is really, really simple. This is a two-op patch. So you could happily replicate this kind of sound on the Digitone, only two operators involved here and actually operator two just barely. But through modulating things like feedback, sort of what I'm modulating on this one, so if you come to the V-patch here, so I'm modulating the pan of the sounds and that LFO is set to a per voice thing so it's going to be moving around of its own volition. And then I'm also modulating the FM feedback of operator one, which is where those lovely brassy sounds are coming from. That's primarily coming from the feedback on operator one. And then just a bit of pitch wobble, some of the lovely built-in reverb and the lovely built-in delay. And it's just a very, very nice place because this is probably not the kind of sound that you would maybe classically think about when you're talking about FM. Yeah, FM, people are obviously thinking of like harsh metallic glassy sounds, which you can obviously do, but it can be wonderfully mellow as well. And of course, you don't have to do FM on it as if you've caught any of the videos on the channel recently. I've been looking into the different operator modes so you don't actually even have to do FM on this. Armory, my friend, it's been a while. Good to have you here. I hope you're doing well. So it's got a better, more featured FM engine than the Electron. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any real competition there. Leaving aside the fact that you've got six ups rather than four ups, I'm not like I don't get hung up on the number of operators. Like I love the TX81, so I'm just saying you've got four operators as well. But you can do so much more within the engine. It doesn't just have to be FM. I think that's the really important thing that people maybe miss. The other thing that the Opsix has is a four, I'm sorry, a 12-slot V-patch, which is a mod matrix. And it has a very, very broad, exciting set of parameters that you can modulate. Let me give you an example. So I'll maybe use my second LFO for this, which is set to a random waveform, random time and level. And my destination can be, we'll just find the arpeggiator. So I can send my LFOs to the arpeggiator and I can change the resolution of the arpeggiator. Check this out. So now my LFO is modulating the speed of my arpeggiator. My arpeggiator now is being driven by one of my LFOs. Wicked. I mean, this is sort of stuff that just makes me think the people that made this really love this kind of stuff. Like the team that built the Opsix clearly just love synthesis. And then, okay, so let's carry on adding some things to the mod matrix. If I go, we'll use one of my other random LFOs. I think LFO 3 is set to random as well. So let's, so we've got obviously pitch as a destination in the mod matrix. Instantly, that's all set to semitones if you want to. So you can do things on that basis, but so we've got octaves rather than pitch. So now I'm modulating the octave that's been played by one of my random LFOs. Now we get all these lovely little sparkly twinkles. You can also send stuff to the sequencer as well. So you got the swing, I think it's just swing with a sequencer. But for the arpeggiator, you have like octaves and resolution and gate length in there. You have mod matrix control over the effects. And then obviously the filter, you can cross modulate the different modulation sources and then all of the parameters on all of the operators and all of their modes are available on the mod matrix as well. And that means you can do some really, really exciting stuff. Like it's incredibly fully featured from that perspective. Let's bring in another arpeggiator maybe. So I'll just play around with this sound for a little bit and then maybe I'll show you some of the sounds that I've been working on. Tom said this was going to buy a second digitone for extra polyphony and then realize this has up to 30 note polyphony. Six is, and did you change together would be wonderful, I agree. I haven't put the two up together. This does have very good CC and where it's not CC, but you can modulate stuff on this with the digitone. Maybe add like, so let's set up three. Also just sine waves are nice, aren't they? Sometimes. I did, I've got a real thing for just sine waves at the moment. One of the nice things on the Ops 6 incidentally is that you have three different types of sine waves with different resolutions. That's our pure one, we've got 12 bit one which is a little bit furry. And then 8 bit one which is furry and a bit gritty. Let's grab a saw and then set our mode to filter mode. And we'll set the pitch of, how should we do this actually? Yeah, actually, same thoughts. Let's turn the oscillator mix down and we'll push up four through it and set that to a saw instead. So now op three is acting as a filter just for op four. So we're not using the master filter here, which is cool. So if I set the frequency to pitch, that means that the pitch of op three now becomes the filter cutoff. And we could try that with our envelope generator but just miss 20 filter on it. What's the user preset capacity on the Ops 6? Good question. Two, might be two, five, six, later built in. Yeah, the reverbs and delays are fantastic on this thing. Let's just switch back to this. Yeah, and let's just explore the delays and reverbs for a second. So I'll just take the delay off. We're on the smooth hall algorithm, standard halls. It's a wet room, which I really like. Can I kind of use it as part of the sound? Space, just sort of modulated. The level control is wet, dry, so go ahead and set the wet one. But then you've also got the shimmer algorithms. So there's a clear version, which is like the shimmer algorithm without any pitching. Really nice for adding ambience without cluttering things. Despite that, that's a really long reverb, dialed in quite hard shimmer. You've got the submarine. So these are from the same ones you get in the NTS one. Submarine's lovely, this adds the lower octave to it. You kind of end up with it's almost like coral moon underneath. Got horror, which rises in. Then on top of that, we also get a pretty good sounding spring algorithm. Just got a good little spring and chirp to it. I was getting reflections in there as well. And some good tape and standard delays as well. I really like the smooth hall algorithm though. That's why I defaulted for just one sum reverb. DOS5GW says, I want the synth because saw HD and square HD being modulated in carriers. Very curious about it. Can I do some saw to saw two to one and one to one? Sure. Let's turn this patch off for a minute. In fact, let's just initialize this patch. So just a two op thing. So I'll start by having my carrier as a sign and the modulator as a saw because this is a pretty interesting sound. Sorry about the background noise. I have my window open because it's horrendously hot in here. So this is a one to one sine wave carrier with a saw HD modulator. It's also really interesting with the standard saw as well. If we set our carrier as a saw, if you have the saw as your, if you have saw HD and saw HD, kind of get a sync sound out of it. I think this sounds pretty good when the carrier is a square as well. Yeah. So you pull on sync sounds that way. The square being a carrier. And then changing the ratio is obviously going to give you more aggressive sync sounds. That's a really cool sound. And then if you, if it's for me and it is, in this case, my sync thing, do what I want, I guess, I would put a sub in there. So you're getting a bit of stepping there because we're doing it with a slider. If I assign that to a envelope instead. Oh, two. Yeah, that's fine. Set that level. With that sub as well. Perhaps we set that sub to a square wave instead. Yeah, so that's a square wave instead. And then we can set the mode on this one to be filter. And we can just take some of the... And of course, we've got a master filter on this. It's not just pure FM. So we can, if you want to take some of the top end off that. We can switch the filter model over to the... Where are we? MS-20 filter. We could also, while we're here, we can actually set this filter to track the keyboard. This, I know this is meant to be a chill thing, but sorry. And then we could stick some reverb on it. I'll get back to the chill stuff in a second. Root the filter cutoff through the keyboard velocity would be a good thing to do, so let's do that. Filter. I'm going to do destination. Filter, cutoff, source, keyboard velocity. Sorry, this is decidedly not chill. Well, I'll get back to this in a second. But while we're doing not chill stuff, just because we can, let's wham a chorus on that. Yes! And then let's throw it through a guitar ramp. This might be loud. So, I mean, it can do filthy as well. How many voices? It's 32 or 20 something depending on how you've got the stuff set up. But it's 20 odd. So anyway, that's a less chill voice. Perhaps there should be a phaser instead. Brilliant. Yeah. So, like, you can see how you see what I mean about this being like it feels like it's designed as a synth that's it's all about the joy of synthesis. Like, you can feel that in the design choices that they made. Good lead sounds as well. That needs some pitch wobble, doesn't it? So check this out. This is worth seeing. And I'll do a proper video on it, actually. Actually, you know what? Let's not do that there. Let's if we come into can we do this in Miss? In Miss, I think maybe. Yeah. So put some pitch wobble on there. So the brilliant thing about the way that modulation works on the up six, and this is this is just fantastic. So you might not be able to see on the screen. I'm sorry if it's not turning focused. But here I've got the LFO amount for the pitch bend. Whenever you have any modulation happening, there's always a second parameter here, which is like a via thing. So I can say LFO one via the mod wheel. And that immediately gives me control over something. But you can also say LFO one via like velocity. That's a good example. So if I play lightly, not a lot of vibrato, play hard, lots of vibrato. And this kind of thing is so easy and quick to set up in the patches. It's a really elegant solution for sort of doing this sort of via. Obviously, the other thing we could do in here is set this to be sorry, that's in the voice menu, isn't it? We can set this to be a mono with legato. Turn on the glide. And then we can also turn on the unison. So we have multiple voices. Probably not as obvious because we've got chorus on some way. So I'll turn off the chorus. Yeah, it's it's cool. How easy is it to dial in sounds versus the DX7 Volca FM? Microfreak FM much easier than so it's much easier than the DX7. It's much quicker to navigate that kind of thing. It allows you to set up much more complex patches, much, much more quickly. So it's definitely easier than that. Easier than the Volca FM. Yes, definitely for sure. Volca FM is all menu diving, paging across stuff. It is a nightmare at that set. Of course, some people have put out nice free editors for the Volca FM, which makes it a lot quicker. Synth Marta would be the one I would suggest, but then I would because I made it. Or Microfreak FM. I mean, the Microfreak FM is just a two op FM. It only has three parameters. So I mean, that's pretty easy in terms of doing stuff. But then you can't do any of the complex modulation of the different operators and stuff. So it's quick to do what it can do, but you can't really even begin to compare it honestly, because it's not really in the same league in terms of what the possibilities are. So maybe I'll maybe I'll show some of the patches I've been working on recently. So there is a project that I'm working on at the moment that is in the very early stages. But if it comes good, it's going to be really, really exciting. And part of what I'm doing for that project is is making a bunch of patches because there's going to be sounds in this project. I've been vague, I know. But I'll just show you some of the things that I've done recently with. Is that one of this? That's probably from the. Yeah. So here's something. Let's see how this sounds. There's no arpeggiator or sequencer going on here. So I mean, from pure sound design perspective, you can't do that on a DX7. So there's one patch I've been working on. None of these are finished, but let's try this one. There's a lot of texture to it. It's called formant space scaper. These patches aren't actually using it. So some of those are what bring a lovely digital feel to it. Distorted, broken digital, kind of almost like digital insect. So again, this has got very little like this FM, I think. So that's a filter operator, filter, filter, filter, filter, way forward, way forwarder, filter. There's no FM in this patch at all. The opposite is not an FM synth. And I think in a lot of ways, Korg did themselves a disservice by making the FM association with it. It's so much more like this has got like almost like a radio reception aliens in the background trying to talk. So yeah, these are all for a project I'm working on. The plan is alongside the output from that project. We'll release all of these patches as a patch pack as well for people to dissect and play with. So it'll be like a multifaceted release. There'll be the thing that's been made. There might be a recording, a straight up recording, and then also the patches as well. Yeah, so none of those are finished, but there's some cool stuff going on there. As people have asked any questions, hello. Yes, it is the void time. So one thing I think is really, really exciting about the Opsix, and I'll be doing a proper video on this shortly, is that through the user algorithms, which is rather than just being, so with like the DX7, et cetera, you are always stuck with a fixed algorithm. There are 32 of them. There's slightly more than 32 of them on this. There's some extra ones that you don't get on the DX7, but essentially have these fixed algorithms. This operator goes into this operator, this operator goes into this operator, and so on. On the Opsix, you also have a user algorithms section which allows you to say, of my six operators, these are the ones that you hear as outputs, and then you can route all of the different operators into each other, however you like, including feeding them back on each other in places to make sicklic. Modulation's happening. A lot of those patches I just did there have sicklic modulation on it. So you can have one, it's really cool, for example, to have two operators, which are both ring modernists, get them going in a circle and hear both of them. You get some really interesting stuff as you start to modulate the pictures. But you can do things like try and build entire synth architectures inside the Opsix. So someone asked on one of the Facebook groups how you would set up a Juno patch, for example. So here I've got a Juno, sort of. So I've got my saw wave, got my square wave there, which can also get pulse width on it. Got the sub there, my noise there. Operator six is basically acting as the VCA, but also we've got the high pass on there from the Juno, so we can put high pass stuff on there. And then if I change the envelope for Opsix, then that's my envelope for my patch as well. So I think that's a really, really interesting facet of the synth that allows you to do some really, really, really, really, really exciting stuff. So one of the patch that I made, and I've mentioned this on the channel already, but if you missed it, if I come all the way back up here, somewhere, yes, here, this patch, I've replicated more or less the architecture of a Buchler music easel, playing a Krell patch. So for all of you West Coast fans, this is doing all of the stuff that a music easel should do. So you've got the wave folder, you've got the FM between the two, hello there, the FM between the two operators. It's got sort of a faked low pass gate in here. I need to refine this patch a little bit now that I've thought about some other things. But actually, you've got up to like 31 music easels, really, all playing their own Krell patch. It's pretty fun if you're into that kind of thing. Which I am. Yes, so there's lots of really cool stuff you can do there, which you can't do on a DX7, needless to say. But anyway, let's go to a blank patch and make something, shall we? Obviously, the patches that come with it, there are lots of electric pianos, clearly. The built-in patches are very good, I have to say. There's a lot of really, really interesting stuff in there. Lots of stuff that early on I kind of learnt from as well. But a lot of them are electric pianos because it's an FM synth, obviously. But let's initialise that patch. And that will go back to the chill stuff, I think. Let's make some thin shell again. In the chat, shall I make like a pad thing? Shall I make like a arpeggio soundscape-y type thing? What shall we do? Let's start by adding some reverb. That much is clear to me. Let's try the shimmer clear mode. Let's do a pad, I think. We've already done like an arpeggiated thing. Let's choose a different algorithm for that. Let's go with, hmm, something where I have multiple voices. That might work. Algorithm 20. More drones. Well, a pad can be a drone, kind of, if it's very, very long. It's worth noting that the release on this can be 90 seconds long on the envelope. So you get a drone whether you want it or not sometimes. Yeah, so let's have a think. Shall we go FM? Let's go FM on the 2x1. Let's maybe go ring mode here. That's a nice place to start. Let's set our mode for operator 1 to ring. We'll come to operator 2 in a second. We've got our nice sign there. It's probably a bit boring for the mod. Let's at least go triangle, I think. We'll set the envelope for this. Of course, because this is based around the idea of operators. We have a level envelope for every single operator. It is easy to copy and paste them as well. But it gives you a great degree of control. So we can set our release hideously long. Shall we go, like, half a minute? So what I'll do is I'll come into the mod page and I'm going grab and start with LFO 1. Let's go LFO 3. Let's set the shape to random level in time, which is basically like a totally random thing that has some speed control. And then let's set the key sync to voice, which means there's a separate LFO for every single voice that restarts for every single voice, which means that anything that we apply this LFO to is going to be different on each note that's playing. So I'm going to come into the MISC page here and just, no, actually V-Patch, my source is going to be LFO 3 and my destination is going to be the overall pitch of the entire program. So when it says program pitch, what it means is voice, really. So it's per voice, not for the entire thing. So this is just basically putting some oscillator drift across the whole richness and the sound just naturally. So the other thing that I think I will do is I will also set LFO 2 to be one of these random things as well, and voice, so it's per note that's played and I'm going to route that to, should choose the right thing, route that to prog, so every note is going to be panning round randomly. Let's maybe go ahead and add some delay because we will know that I'm going to, whoa, hello, that I'm going to add some delay at some point. Should we go with a tape echo? Poly 6, it looks like, love it. Just emphasize that cutoff point. Okay, let's turn up Ops 3, which is the modulator for this. So let's give Ops 3 a nice long attack. And a nice long release as well. Ring mode is very forgiving, it's very gentle. So the richness that we get from it is, powering, it's just really, if we detune it a little bit, we'll get a little bit of movement in there as well. You can also change the shape control here. Just give us a bit more asymmetry, a bit more grip. So the question is, Ops 2 here, just set it in FM mode, and we can have that one come in straight off the bat as a plucky thing. So I'm going to make a small preset library. There's going to be a preset library that's going to come out based around the project that I'm working on. But I will probably do a patch pack for certain on this. Whether I will put that myself, or whether I'll approach Korg to put it out with them as I have for some of the other Korg sets, I haven't decided yet. But I'll see what they think. So I think maybe we add a bit of feedback. So let's give, let's modulate the feedback I think, because there's a couple of different sweet spots in there when you're just moving towards, moving through all of them. So into the V patch, I'll take one of the Ransom LFO 3, so we'll use LFO 3 for this. Destination op to 8%. So I think what we'll do with Operator 2 as well, if we come into the level page here, let's set a bit of velocity control over there. Cool. So we're left now with Operator 4 as another carrier, but that's got two things running into it. So I'm thinking maybe we go with FM on op 4 and think about the way that we can create. We could just do it as a straight up. That wasn't what I was thinking I was going to use it for. I'd really like to see the Synth as a module, similar to the Minlog XD module. I have out the Synth is that it responds to aftertouch in the engine, but the keyboard doesn't send out aftertouch. So I would quite like to just press op 6 to set this up. We could do just thinking about it, which might be fun, is in the V-patch here. So we've got that pulse width modulation thing happening. Chord I'm too scared to change the chord. I'm going to have to do it, my hands are getting tired. Should we go to like, let's go down an octave. Digital flies, but they're friendly flies, don't worry. So I reckon this sound will fade in slowly over the other ones and fade out slowly as well. What do we have like a half a minute to fade out before? So I'm going to have op 6's level, which is kind of creating these discordant overtones controlled by one of the LFOs. So it's essentially going to be op 6. Discordant thing that op 6 fades in is quite menacing in a way. So maybe we apply some filter modulation here. That's nice isn't it? Bringing resonance. Okay I'm going to stick that on the mod wheel. Always have control over that because that's ace. So again into the V-patch. Source can be mod wheel, destination. Bill to cut off. Okay, open it all the way up. Work out what the maximum is. Do I have a sustain pedal? No, I wish I did. My hand is tired. Also the latch only works on the arpeggiator what I've realised is just it would be great if you could latch without or you do have a sustain pedal somewhere just not to hand. How good is that? Filter. Model filter. It's great sounding. Chorus phase, blah blah blah. Not sure that there's a very different flavour on the patch isn't it? So this is our bit crushing. So the bit crushers got a high bass filter on it. Which is quite nice. Hello Trent Reznor. But it also has a mix so we don't have to have all of that happening. We can have that mixed in with... So that's an interesting one. A bit of creative bit crushing. Yeah expression pedal instead of instead of after... Shall I get a live with that as well? As a guitarist, that's pretty natural to me. I should get one actually. This does have an expression pedal in both. How I said, yeah. Decimator's pretty interesting. What else have we got? Grain shifter. That's interesting. So you can press the... Useful but boring. The decimator. Dial it in so it's adding a little bit of crunchy texture. Audio morseles happening on the left and right which I quite like. I absolutely lay into the deep mine keys and they haven't given up. That said, the aftertouch is very, very early. So it's not calibrated well across it. How hard you have to press on one key is not the same on others. But I absolutely... Keystep range has a lovely aftertouch if you can live with mini keys. Very smooth. Positive action on it. That's nice enough that I might actually save it. As it fades out you get a little crunchy friends in there. Yeah so goodbye mutated piano. Cherry says I'm one of the weirdos that actually finds mini keys to be quite comfortable. I do as well. Mini keys. And I think the... The keystep range are very nice feeling mini keys in terms of the action. That's maybe how we've been screen streaming for. Let's maybe do like an arpeggiated kind of pretty twinkly thing before we finish. Kind of finish where we ended. It's latched the arpeggiator. The minor chord. Been playing some major stuff today. So that's maybe... Let's give it some stereo for sure. So let's just do the trick again where we have things panning around because it's just nicer isn't it in these environments. So LFO3 will set to be something quite FME for this one. Maybe get it quite glassy. So let's choose a different algorithm to this. So that we get different attacks on that modulator. Unfortunately I don't have any inside scoop on that. That said you can the keyboard using operator leveling. That's a fixed frequency just happening short and plucky in there which gives you all sorts of interesting resonances and bell tones. But that's maybe set LFO sorry LFO1 as a step around it. It's too much. Too many tones too fast. Well we can just make it so much slower. How much of what I do is totally intentional versus just trying things. It's kind of both at the same time. When I'm making patches I usually go I'm going to make a patch that is going to be a base and I want the basic idea to be such and such and I'll move towards that basic idea but as I'm moving there if stuff happens that will then maybe make me change course and go to a different place with the patch rather than go where I think I was going but in terms of knowing my way around the synth and knowing what's going to happen when I do certain things pretty much always I pretty much always know what direction something will take me in so I know what changing the ratio of up6 is going to do and allow me to do I know whether or not it's going to give me a more integrated sound so if I have tighter ratios tighter ratio everything's going to get more integrated and together and as I turn up no it doesn't get glassier but it will also start to sound like there's a sound on top of the sound a bit more I know that simpler ratios are going to do simpler sounds and more complicated ratios are going to do more complicated sounds I know that for example with this particular arrangement of operators I'm mixing together different qualities top 5 is fixed and always going to be dissonant top 4 is tightly integrated and up6 is my glass and string sound that's where the kind of koto thing is happening but with FM there's lots of stuff which you're not going to expect and there's lots of interactions of the different waveforms that are going to spark ideas I talk a little bit about it in the wave folder and filter mode video where like the way that waves interact together in the wave folder like that's sometimes a bit hard to predict but you can kind of lean into the ideas when you see it sounds like writing fiction, you start with an idea but sometimes the characters take out a yeah that's a great analogy, attacks might be up4, you start with something in mind but get distracted on the way yeah and I think it's a bad idea to not follow the good sounds that pop out if something jumps out of a patch there's no way to do what I think I want to do that sounds great, I'm not going to ignore it than carry on with what I thought always chase after those happy accidents there I am being the Bob Ross of synths it's probably slightly happen happy little accidents and you lean into them so yeah, I think we're starting to wind up here it's been nearly two hours which is usually my aim but yes, frankincense penguins says I have to stop listening I've bought five synths since October 2010 and her was asked which and yes which, tell us let us live vicariously through your synth pouch please it's the end of the stream it's going to be no 145 feet we're getting slower and slower been a pleasure been a while since I've done one of these it's nice to get back to it thanks for the chat and the questions take everyone we'll see you soon