Best synth(s) for Electronica?

[kevinmathie]

In an effort to expand my musical awareness -- and consequent composing skills -- in a wider range of styles, I've been listening to music in the Electronica genre. To be perfectly honest, Electronica is little different as a whole than I thought it was before I started listening to a lot of it. I'd like to start playing around with composing in that style, but I don't know that I have very many tools to build music in the genre.So, I thought I'd ask you. What are the best soft synths/samples/loops/etc. for the Electronica genre? I use an Intel Core Duo iMac and Logic Pro, although I do have Digital Performer available as well.Thanks!Kevin

[zircon]

It depends on what genre of electronica you are aiming for... ambient (eg. Brian Eno, Jean Michael Jarre)? Big beat (Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim)? Trip-hop (Crystal Method)? Downtempo (Thievery Corporation, Zero-7, perhaps Moby)? Trance (Ferry Corsten, DJ Tiesto, ATB)? Generally speaking though, Stylus RMX is brilliant for many genres of electronic music, mainly as a supplement to your main drum patterns. The new synth "Predator", by Rob Papen, is specifically oriented towards dance music. u-he Zebra 2 covers a lot of ground and has three expansion sets of presets, one of which I designed, that are all aimed at various forms of electronica. You might also try "Drums Overkill" which includes thousands upon thousands of kits and samples mainly oriented towards programmed drums.

[nickbatzdorf]

I'd look at software synths, Kevin. The ones in Logic are a good start, and I agree that Predator is a good all-around analog synth to start with and that RMX is great.

[mazz]

I think Reason is still a great resource for electronica sounds, I use it mostly as a Rewire sound module and it has some great sounds in it. The new Thor synth that is coming out in Reason 4 looks like it will be a nice upgrade.Reaktor is brilliant for more esoteric, off the wall sounds. It has stuff in it that nothing else has. It will tax your system but a little bit of Reaktor goes a long way!Stylus will allow you to import Rex files and there are plenty of collections of electronica Rex files out there. There are some good expansion libraries for RMX that are geared toward Electronica styles as well.I like electronica and am aiming to start doing more in that realm as well. I like Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers, Fat Boy Slim, Prodigy and some of the others Zircon mentioned. Let's put our efforts up on the forum as we go and let Zirc tear us to shreads, we'll get better as a result! Have fun,Mazz

[mazz]

Question for Zircon:Would you put Nine Inch Nails in electronica? I really like them and I find their new album (Year Zero) to have a lot of rock and what I would call Industrial influences. I know electronica is a big genre but just wanted to know your take on it. Thanks,Mazz

[zircon]

mazz; Reaktor is indeed wonderful. However I don't recommend it to people that don't like tweaking. Basically, Reaktor is a graphical programming environment for synths and effects. There is a massive user library (plus a small, but quality) factory library, but the presets across the board tend to be not usable. People that create synths from scratch seem to be less than proficient at creating musical sounds. Hence why Reaktor is often associated with experimental music and off the wall stuff. If you're good at programming synth patches then you can get a lot more out of it. If not then you might consider something like Albino or Predator that have well-reknowned preset designers on board.Reason is great too. The only complaint I have about it is simply that it doesn't integrate well... Rewire is not nearly as efficient as VST. If you do decide to pick it up, your best bet is to do your sequencing within Reason then bounce down your audio files for use in your main sequencer, rather than try to fiddle with Rewire... just my experience though.mazz (again): NIN is mostly considered 'industrial'. Trent Reznor is a huge gearhead and does use a lot of electronic sounds and processing techniques, but in terms of overall style, structure, writing etc. they're closer to that industrial and/or rock sound than say, breakbeat or trance.

[mazz]

Thanks Zircon,I have both Reaktor and Reason although I haven't used either that much lately. I have tweaked some Reaktor presets on the factory synths but have not tried to create any synths or FX from scratch. I do like it for strange stuff and will turn to it when the occasion arises.For Reason I've not noticed that much of a hit when using it as a Rewire slave but I don't run the sequencer, I just trigger the sounds from my main DAW (Digital Performer). I like having the seperate audio outputs, I will often run individual outputs from Reason synths and process them seperately in DP. On the other hand, I do like programming electro drums from the ReDrum. I started out on a real 606 back in the now cliche "day" and I like seeing the little lights flying by!I had NIN playing on my computer a while ago now it's Frank Sinatra. I'm just a music schizo, I can't help it!!!!Mazz

[kevinmathie]

Excellent! Thank you for your suggestions. This is the kind of homework I like best: shopping for cool new toys!

[dgolding]

Mazz talking about the TR606 brought it all flooding back to me. Those led's did look pretty cool in those days. I don't know if you remember the TB303, but we had one connected to the 606. You could only trigger a bass note from the tomtom, so that, a. rendered the tomtoms musically unusable, and b. made for some seriously long head scratching sessions trying to program the darn thing. We only used it for one song, anything more than that was too traumatic to contemplate. Then there was the briefcase-sized Roland 64 note sequencer....

[mazz]

I never had a 303 but I sold the 606 and moved in to the Yamaha and Emu drum machines (12 bit samples!). Easier to program but at 24 clocks per quarter note, pretty darn stiff!songwriter, I have Way Out Ware ARP 2600 and Waldorf PPG, both of which sound great and are a bit easier to grok for an old hardware guy like me. They both work well for electronica. I also have the Korg MS20 emulation. That synth is a staple of certain kinds of electronica music as well.Anybody still have some vintage hardware synths laying around?Mazz