hey guys,
ive been trying to play my bass and my guitar (not at the same time) through my little phatty by plugging one or the other into the input. i dont hear anything, and the volume on my bass and guitar is all the way up. i thought that my guitar has a built in preamp, but i may be wrong. do i just need a preamp? can someone suggest one that works for the cheapest price? is what im trying to do even possible?!?!?
if it is possible, what exactly is happening? does the little phatty start working as sort of a vocoder?
playing something thru the little phatty
-
analoogalamoog
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:20 pm
playing something thru the little phatty
thanks bub,
dylan
dylan
Little Phatty Q & A
There's not much documentation regarding the Little Phatty's audio in jack. Can you give us some insights on how and what it can be used for?
Excellent question! The Little Phatty’s audio in jack can be put to a number of good uses. My favorite is probably to use the Little Phatty as a sequenced filter/gate module for my MIDI rig, but I will walk you through the whole process and on the way you will see several examples of what can be done with external audio through the LP.
It can be helpful to start by saving a dedicated patch for use with external audio. You’ll want to turn the OSC 1 LEVEL and OSC 2 LEVEL parameters all the way down, so that you don’t hear the oscillators sound when you press a key. Turn the Filter CUTOFF all the way up to begin with, and the RESONANCE all the way down. Turn OVERLOAD all the way down so that you can set a good, undistorted level on your external audio material. There is no adjustment for the external audio level on the Little Phatty, so you will need to control the signal level externally. The audio input is designed to sound best with line-level signals. There is enough headroom so that you don’t have to worry if you want to crank up your external audio and overdrive the circuit for a crunchy, saturated sound. Set the output level on the device whose audio output is connected to the Little Phatty audio in jack so that the signal sounds good to your ears.
If you want to hear the external audio all the time without having to hold down a key on the keyboard, you can plug a dummy jack (or a patch cord with nothing connected to the other end) into the GATE CV input jack on the side of the Little Phatty. This will leave the Keyboard Gate open, and the volume envelope will remain at its Sustain level for as long as you like. Due to the design of the envelope circuits, you will need to turn the envelope DECAY parameter down below 12:00 in order for the sustain level to remain constant. If you hear the volume of your external signal slowly fading away, check to be sure the envelope DECAY parameters are not too high. Also, changes in the SUSTAIN level are smoothed out at a rate proportional to the DECAY time. If you change the SUSTAIN level and nothing seems to happen right away, you may want to lower the DECAY parameter for that envelope. We can use this behavior to our advantage, as I will discuss when we get to MIDI control.
So if you have your LP set up as I have described above, you now have a very nice filter box you can use with any monophonic audio signal. Listen to your external audio and experiment with tweaking the Filter CUTOFF and RESONANCE parameters. You may find that a certain fixed setting works well as a treatment for a whole recorded audio track, or another live instrument. You may spend hours just tweaking the filter cutoff in realtime, with a silly grin on your face. You can get even freakier with the filter by adding modulation; set the Little Phatty’s Modulation SOURCE to whatever you like and set the DESTINATION to Filter. Turn the Mod Wheel all the way up and then set the AMOUNT parameter until the amount of modulation is the maximum you want to hear for this sound. For alien burblings, you can set the Source to Osc.2 and then experiment with the Octave, Tuning, and Wave shape controls for Oscillator 2. You may need to turn up the Filter RESONANCE fairly high to bring out these filter frequency modulations to best effect. Even with low resonance settings you may get some interesting amplitude modulation effects on your external audio signal. You can apply simple filter sweeps by setting the Modulation Source to one of the LFO waveforms… although these can create strange artifacts as well if you turn the LFO RATE up high. One way you can have hands-on control of Filter Frequency and Resonance at the same time is to set up the modulation section with the Filter Envelope as the Source and Filter as the destination… this way you can tweak the filter cutoff with your left hand on the Mod Wheel, and you can set the Filter RAC knob to control Resonance with your right hand.
If you want to play another live instrument through the LP filter (Fender Rhodes perhaps?), you can plug a CV expression pedal like the Moog EP-1 into the FILTER CV input jack, and perform expressive filter sweeps with your foot while your hands are free for playing.
So while all of these controls are available for tweaking your external audio in real time, there is even more you can do when you add MIDI control. If you take out the dummy jack from the GATE CV input, then you will only hear your external audio through the Little Phatty’s filter and volume envelopes when a note is triggered. You can use these envelopes to shape the contours of the sound just as you would with a normal synthesizer patch. Most modern sequencer/DAW programs allow multiple channels of simultaneous audio and midi, with very low latency. My favorite trick is to drop a track of audio into my sequencer and send it to an auxiliary output from my sound card; connect this output to the Little Phatty’s audio input jack and the LP’s audio output to a main input on my sound card for recording.
I can then set up a MIDI track in sync with the audio, and use it to write sequenced gate and filter effects for the audio track that will match my mix exactly.
If you look in the Little Phatty manual on page 34, “How the LP Handles MIDI,” you will see the MIDI Continuous Controller (CC) numbers for all of the parameters recognized by the Little Phatty. You can sequence filter sweeps and stabs while you have long held MIDI notes playing (to leave the KB Gate/Volume Envelope open), or you can intersperse stuttery “trance gate” –style effects by sequencing many short notes or abrupt controller changes in whatever rhythmic patterns you like. You can draw slow modwheel-CC curves over top of the above for a more interesting, evolving sound. While the LP does not respond to CC7 (Master Volume), you should be able to simulate volume sweeps and swells by sequencing CC#30, Volume Envelope sustain level. Create soft notes from your external audio by sending a low value for CC#30 along with the note, and loud notes by sequencing a high value for CC#30 with the note. Remember that changes in the envelope sustain are affected by the Decay time, so you can in effect add “glide” to your envelope level changes by varying the Decay parameter from minimum to a longer setting. Minimum Decay allows near-instant (~1ms) changes to the Sustain level, while longer Decay times will add more of a glide to changes in the Sustain level. You can use this to sequence faster “notes” by gating the volume of your external signal, while your Filter envelope plays out a long, slow change. Set the Filter envelope so that it has the long rising and/or falling time that you would like, and send a long MIDI note to the Little Phatty so that it plays audio for the duration of the filter envelope sweep. Now over top of that note, you can send a series of rhythmic or stuttering pulses of CC#30 (Volume Envelope Sustain); everywhere this CC is high you will have a “note” of audio playing through your LP, and everywhere CC#30 is at zero will be a rest. You can adjust the Volume Envelope Decay parameter to get harder or softer attack on these pulses.
Lastly, you can use the Little Phatty’s audio input to expand the tonal palette of the synth’s own voice. The external audio is mixed with the oscillators just as an extra oscillator or noise source would be on a bigger synth. To create the “chiff” of a flute sound, you can connect a source of white noise to the external input (we, of course, recommend the ever-handy CP-251 for this). Set the filter envelope so that it begins with a brief spike up to a high cutoff frequency with a swift and steep decay down to a low filter sustain level. This will allow through a burst of the white nose at the beginning of a note, followed by a lower, breathy sustaining tone. Adjust the contours of the sound to your taste. You can also use the LP as an expansion module for another synth, new or old. Connect the output of the other synth to the LP External Audio input, and then control the LP from the other keyboard. If the other keyboard has MIDI, connect the MIDI out from the other keyboard to the MIDI IN on the Little Phatty and set their MIDI channels to match. If your other synth has Pitch/Gate CV outputs, you can control the LP with these voltages. Now you can blend the sound of your other synth with the LP’s oscillators and run the mix through the LP’s filter and envelopes for a totally new hybrid sound.
Courtesy Of AMOS :) cheers
There's not much documentation regarding the Little Phatty's audio in jack. Can you give us some insights on how and what it can be used for?
Excellent question! The Little Phatty’s audio in jack can be put to a number of good uses. My favorite is probably to use the Little Phatty as a sequenced filter/gate module for my MIDI rig, but I will walk you through the whole process and on the way you will see several examples of what can be done with external audio through the LP.
It can be helpful to start by saving a dedicated patch for use with external audio. You’ll want to turn the OSC 1 LEVEL and OSC 2 LEVEL parameters all the way down, so that you don’t hear the oscillators sound when you press a key. Turn the Filter CUTOFF all the way up to begin with, and the RESONANCE all the way down. Turn OVERLOAD all the way down so that you can set a good, undistorted level on your external audio material. There is no adjustment for the external audio level on the Little Phatty, so you will need to control the signal level externally. The audio input is designed to sound best with line-level signals. There is enough headroom so that you don’t have to worry if you want to crank up your external audio and overdrive the circuit for a crunchy, saturated sound. Set the output level on the device whose audio output is connected to the Little Phatty audio in jack so that the signal sounds good to your ears.
If you want to hear the external audio all the time without having to hold down a key on the keyboard, you can plug a dummy jack (or a patch cord with nothing connected to the other end) into the GATE CV input jack on the side of the Little Phatty. This will leave the Keyboard Gate open, and the volume envelope will remain at its Sustain level for as long as you like. Due to the design of the envelope circuits, you will need to turn the envelope DECAY parameter down below 12:00 in order for the sustain level to remain constant. If you hear the volume of your external signal slowly fading away, check to be sure the envelope DECAY parameters are not too high. Also, changes in the SUSTAIN level are smoothed out at a rate proportional to the DECAY time. If you change the SUSTAIN level and nothing seems to happen right away, you may want to lower the DECAY parameter for that envelope. We can use this behavior to our advantage, as I will discuss when we get to MIDI control.
So if you have your LP set up as I have described above, you now have a very nice filter box you can use with any monophonic audio signal. Listen to your external audio and experiment with tweaking the Filter CUTOFF and RESONANCE parameters. You may find that a certain fixed setting works well as a treatment for a whole recorded audio track, or another live instrument. You may spend hours just tweaking the filter cutoff in realtime, with a silly grin on your face. You can get even freakier with the filter by adding modulation; set the Little Phatty’s Modulation SOURCE to whatever you like and set the DESTINATION to Filter. Turn the Mod Wheel all the way up and then set the AMOUNT parameter until the amount of modulation is the maximum you want to hear for this sound. For alien burblings, you can set the Source to Osc.2 and then experiment with the Octave, Tuning, and Wave shape controls for Oscillator 2. You may need to turn up the Filter RESONANCE fairly high to bring out these filter frequency modulations to best effect. Even with low resonance settings you may get some interesting amplitude modulation effects on your external audio signal. You can apply simple filter sweeps by setting the Modulation Source to one of the LFO waveforms… although these can create strange artifacts as well if you turn the LFO RATE up high. One way you can have hands-on control of Filter Frequency and Resonance at the same time is to set up the modulation section with the Filter Envelope as the Source and Filter as the destination… this way you can tweak the filter cutoff with your left hand on the Mod Wheel, and you can set the Filter RAC knob to control Resonance with your right hand.
If you want to play another live instrument through the LP filter (Fender Rhodes perhaps?), you can plug a CV expression pedal like the Moog EP-1 into the FILTER CV input jack, and perform expressive filter sweeps with your foot while your hands are free for playing.
So while all of these controls are available for tweaking your external audio in real time, there is even more you can do when you add MIDI control. If you take out the dummy jack from the GATE CV input, then you will only hear your external audio through the Little Phatty’s filter and volume envelopes when a note is triggered. You can use these envelopes to shape the contours of the sound just as you would with a normal synthesizer patch. Most modern sequencer/DAW programs allow multiple channels of simultaneous audio and midi, with very low latency. My favorite trick is to drop a track of audio into my sequencer and send it to an auxiliary output from my sound card; connect this output to the Little Phatty’s audio input jack and the LP’s audio output to a main input on my sound card for recording.
I can then set up a MIDI track in sync with the audio, and use it to write sequenced gate and filter effects for the audio track that will match my mix exactly.
If you look in the Little Phatty manual on page 34, “How the LP Handles MIDI,” you will see the MIDI Continuous Controller (CC) numbers for all of the parameters recognized by the Little Phatty. You can sequence filter sweeps and stabs while you have long held MIDI notes playing (to leave the KB Gate/Volume Envelope open), or you can intersperse stuttery “trance gate” –style effects by sequencing many short notes or abrupt controller changes in whatever rhythmic patterns you like. You can draw slow modwheel-CC curves over top of the above for a more interesting, evolving sound. While the LP does not respond to CC7 (Master Volume), you should be able to simulate volume sweeps and swells by sequencing CC#30, Volume Envelope sustain level. Create soft notes from your external audio by sending a low value for CC#30 along with the note, and loud notes by sequencing a high value for CC#30 with the note. Remember that changes in the envelope sustain are affected by the Decay time, so you can in effect add “glide” to your envelope level changes by varying the Decay parameter from minimum to a longer setting. Minimum Decay allows near-instant (~1ms) changes to the Sustain level, while longer Decay times will add more of a glide to changes in the Sustain level. You can use this to sequence faster “notes” by gating the volume of your external signal, while your Filter envelope plays out a long, slow change. Set the Filter envelope so that it has the long rising and/or falling time that you would like, and send a long MIDI note to the Little Phatty so that it plays audio for the duration of the filter envelope sweep. Now over top of that note, you can send a series of rhythmic or stuttering pulses of CC#30 (Volume Envelope Sustain); everywhere this CC is high you will have a “note” of audio playing through your LP, and everywhere CC#30 is at zero will be a rest. You can adjust the Volume Envelope Decay parameter to get harder or softer attack on these pulses.
Lastly, you can use the Little Phatty’s audio input to expand the tonal palette of the synth’s own voice. The external audio is mixed with the oscillators just as an extra oscillator or noise source would be on a bigger synth. To create the “chiff” of a flute sound, you can connect a source of white noise to the external input (we, of course, recommend the ever-handy CP-251 for this). Set the filter envelope so that it begins with a brief spike up to a high cutoff frequency with a swift and steep decay down to a low filter sustain level. This will allow through a burst of the white nose at the beginning of a note, followed by a lower, breathy sustaining tone. Adjust the contours of the sound to your taste. You can also use the LP as an expansion module for another synth, new or old. Connect the output of the other synth to the LP External Audio input, and then control the LP from the other keyboard. If the other keyboard has MIDI, connect the MIDI out from the other keyboard to the MIDI IN on the Little Phatty and set their MIDI channels to match. If your other synth has Pitch/Gate CV outputs, you can control the LP with these voltages. Now you can blend the sound of your other synth with the LP’s oscillators and run the mix through the LP’s filter and envelopes for a totally new hybrid sound.
Courtesy Of AMOS :) cheers
[EDIT: ^^ Dang, I'm too fast for myself! 
]
nope, no vocoding; that is actually a pretty complicated thing to do in the analog domain. You can use digital horsepower to do the job, which is why several modern virtual-analog synths have vocoders thrown in... but I wouldn't expect to see a real analog synth with an all-analog vocoder built in any time soon...
As for why you aren't hearing your external input:
The way the external input works, is it adds your external audio to the Mixer section of the LP, before the filter. After the filter is the VCA (output amplifier). If you aren't playing any notes, or you don't have the Gate held open, you won't hear anything.
If all you want to hear is your external audio thru the filter, do this:
set the OSC1 LEVEL and OSC2 LEVEL to zero
plug a dummy plug, or a patch cord that isn't connected to anything else, into the GATE input jack on the side of the LP. This will hold the Gate open and let audio come out. I usually use one of those shorty patch cords made for guitar pedal boards.
Make sure that the DECAY parameter on both envelopes is set to 50% or below. If the Decay is too high, your audio level will gradually diminish and fade out.
I find it helpful to save a special patch for processing external audio, where the Decay levels are set correctly and the oscillators are both turned down already. That way I can just dial up the EXT IN patch, plug un my external audio, and go to town.
Remember that if you set up the Modulation bus to affect the filter, this will modulate whatever external audio is coming through. It can be fun to apply LFO filter sweeps, or even set the source to oscillator two and see what some filter-FM sounds like on your external signal (adding resonance and adjusting the cutoff frequency will bring out this effect).
Cheers,
Amos
]nope, no vocoding; that is actually a pretty complicated thing to do in the analog domain. You can use digital horsepower to do the job, which is why several modern virtual-analog synths have vocoders thrown in... but I wouldn't expect to see a real analog synth with an all-analog vocoder built in any time soon...
As for why you aren't hearing your external input:
The way the external input works, is it adds your external audio to the Mixer section of the LP, before the filter. After the filter is the VCA (output amplifier). If you aren't playing any notes, or you don't have the Gate held open, you won't hear anything.
If all you want to hear is your external audio thru the filter, do this:
set the OSC1 LEVEL and OSC2 LEVEL to zero
plug a dummy plug, or a patch cord that isn't connected to anything else, into the GATE input jack on the side of the LP. This will hold the Gate open and let audio come out. I usually use one of those shorty patch cords made for guitar pedal boards.
Make sure that the DECAY parameter on both envelopes is set to 50% or below. If the Decay is too high, your audio level will gradually diminish and fade out.
I find it helpful to save a special patch for processing external audio, where the Decay levels are set correctly and the oscillators are both turned down already. That way I can just dial up the EXT IN patch, plug un my external audio, and go to town.
Remember that if you set up the Modulation bus to affect the filter, this will modulate whatever external audio is coming through. It can be fun to apply LFO filter sweeps, or even set the source to oscillator two and see what some filter-FM sounds like on your external signal (adding resonance and adjusting the cutoff frequency will bring out this effect).
Cheers,
Amos
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analoogalamoog
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:20 pm
so i dont need to buy a preamp, because the synth will amplify the sound? into an amplifier of course... im specifically trying to use my bass, which is a fender jazz bass made in the past 5 years or so. also, would the bass signal also travel through the envelope generator? or does it only go through the filter to the modulation to the amplifier?
thanks bub,
dylan
dylan
-
hieronymous
- Posts: 487
- Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2004 8:09 am
- Location: northern CA
- Contact:
Here's my experiment playing my bass through the LP:
the third oscillator
On both tracks I'm using the CP-251 to control the frequency of the filter; I've also got Woolly Mammoth Fuzz on the bass, and controlling the pitch of the LP with MIDI pedals.
I found that I really had to crank the gain of the signal going in to the LP. I used an Alembic preamp to boost the gain. Also, I didn't read the article from Moog Space that describes how to set it up so that you can just send your signal through the filter while bypassing the oscillators in the LP. So I was trying to match the level of my bass to the volume level of the LP's signal - if you are just putting it through the filter that might not be necessary.
Here's the thread that I posted before.
the third oscillator
On both tracks I'm using the CP-251 to control the frequency of the filter; I've also got Woolly Mammoth Fuzz on the bass, and controlling the pitch of the LP with MIDI pedals.
I found that I really had to crank the gain of the signal going in to the LP. I used an Alembic preamp to boost the gain. Also, I didn't read the article from Moog Space that describes how to set it up so that you can just send your signal through the filter while bypassing the oscillators in the LP. So I was trying to match the level of my bass to the volume level of the LP's signal - if you are just putting it through the filter that might not be necessary.
Here's the thread that I posted before.
Re: playing something thru the little phatty
i run my turntable through my LP stage 2,
im going to get a radial j33 phono preamp and a ortofon q bert needle, could sending a really hot signal damage the phatty?
im going to get a radial j33 phono preamp and a ortofon q bert needle, could sending a really hot signal damage the phatty?