This was the last day of my holidays so I sat down on my synthesizer and did some music. What you see on the picture above is the entire equipment used in this production. This song was done entirely on the Virus TI synthesizer. No extra drumsets, no effect plugins, just the Virus and Renoise for sequencing.
I finally stopped trying to use the TI’s VST control plugin. It’s great in theory, but in practice it doesn’t render to wav correctly and it limits you to 16 parts on the synth - unless you render tracks to wav. And when I do that, I can just as easily play by hand and record one track at a time
The “star” of this song is a patch called “Karma Bells”, which I’ve been working on for a few days. Most of the other patches are also self-made, with the exception of a few leads and a couple of FX patches. All in all, about a day’s worth of work.
If you’re interested in the first part, there’s also a Viral Exercise 1 which was done entirely on a Virus Indigo 2 a while ago. And of course then there’s even older music which I’m even more ashamed about
All in all, I hope this isn’t all too painful for you to listen to. Feel free to give me feedback or, even better, offer suggestions
i have rarely disagreed more with anyone in my life. i own the TI, and i tell you the sounds you can get out of it can not be matched by zeta, or any other synth (hardware or software) for that matter. for a wide range of electronic sounds, the TI cannot be matched.
@Nazzard: Thanks for the kind comments! There’s more at www.playspoon.com/music although I have to warn you: some of that stuff is really, really old. (As in, 10 years and older)
@vadarfone: Well I can only judge z3ta from the demo, and I have to say that while it offers more oscillators, the sound clearly doesn’t match the TI. Many patches I do on the TI use Formant and Graintable synthesis, sometimes even just for subtle undertones, which you cannot really “emulate” with a plain substractive synth.
Plus, the TI’s hardware (as in, the keyboard!) is fantastic. I’ve seen $700 masterkeyboards with less good keys.
I’m sure z3ta has its advantages (and it is a lot cheaper!) but then again, you cannot really expect a $99 piece of software to really compete with a $2500 synth with dual DSP cores. You might achieve “similar” sounds, but they absolutely lack the spirit and the “oomph” of the Virus. And when you do hear cheap-sounding clicks and beeps, then that’s what the programmer of the patch wanted to do.
@xerxes: I agree. Whatever patch I load up, the sound is just mindblowing. I’ve been infected with the Virus since March 2006, having previously spent many years of programming the D50. At first I thought I’d miss the D50’s wonderful spherical pads, but I quickly found that there’s nothing to look back for. Especially the user interface. I’ve never experienced such a variety before, not on any virtual or real hardware synth. Purists will hate me for saying this but… I spent some time fooling around with a Moog Voyager, and I was honestly not that impressed. There’s still things you cannot really achieve in a VA synth, but things are getting close
I keep the others for the value of the memory, but I wouldn’t play them in public
As Manuel Schleis said in his interview at http://www.amazona.de/index.php?page=26&am…;article_id=610 it is far too easy to “get used” to a bad loop or sequence, hence a second pair of ears is important. I obviously lacked that in my early music…
Heh, I know what you mean. However, I got mine from ebay for 1700. Considering my disappointment with synths like the Ion or the Micron (which I even owned for a short time), as well as the amount of fun I had during two hours of playing around with the TI in the music shop, this machine does sound 1700$-sexy to me
Both, Viral Exercise 1 and 2 already made it into one of my playlists. Thank you! 
