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"There We Have Been" is the most recent song I have composed and recorded on the Oasys. Go the bottom of the following page to find the song:

http://www.gregorysidakmusic.com/compon ... lbum_id,2/

After a discussion with my oldest son about the "loudness wars" resulting from the pervasive compression of pop songs, I intentionally turned off the master limiting, to allow more dynamic variation. All sounds were made on the Oasys, with no external signal processing, mixing, or sequencing. I used a lot of Karma on the guitar and bass lines (other than the guitar solo).

Incidentally, I have found recently that I am exhausting what I consider to be all the interesting drum patterns on the Oasys. If anyone can suggest where to get, or how to create, more interesting patterns, I would be interested. The drummers whose styles I would like to emulate are players like Bill Bruford, Chad Wackerman, Terry Bozzio, Neil Peart, Pat Mastelotto, Omar Hakim, and Vinnie Colaiuta. I am interested in getting more odd time signatures and some patterns with tasteful beat displacement.

Greg

G -

Nice job. Will have to give a more detailed listen to the other tunes soon.

Re: different time signatures -- one thing that always annoyed me on my KARMA keyboard was that some combis had a restart or retrigger function when what I wanted was a reliable 4x4 chug. It occurs to me that that could be the solution at least in part, to your problem -- it's tough to do real-time, but should be easier to get if sequencing is something you do as part of your process. In a pattern that is nominally 4/4 you just re-trigger on 4 which would effectively give you a bar of 4 and a bar of 3 with a bar of 4 following if you don't re-trigger early again. I always thought that feature would be more useful if it could be linked somehow to change on the beat (live) to allow for a little slop in the playing. Steven Kay must be monstrously accurate in his playing if he can do this live.

Try this link:

http://secure.keyfax.com/mm5/merchant.m ... Code=DRUMS

Twiddlybits has a line of MIDI loops (as opposed to .wav) that should be loadable as user drum patterns in the OASYS. Link is Bill Bruford's own drumming and patterns including some odd signatures; "Swaggering 7" caught my eye.

BB

Bill,

Thanks very much. The Bruford beats interest me. Pardon my ignorance, but which format should I order for use on the Oasys, and how would I get to the point where I could be calling up particular Bruford patterns?

Regarding your question about triggering a "restart" of a drum pattern while playing in Karma, I have used precisely this technique. But I have done it in the studio, not live--for exactly the reason you mention. It is very hard to come in on the precise (premature) beat. So I carefully quantize a phrase that I have recorded live and then build the drum track and other Karma-generated tracks from there. An example of my use of this technique is "When the Wall Fell," from my collection, "The Common Man." I don't think it would be humanly possible for me to play the odd beats live on the Oasys and consistently come down correctly on the desired offbeat.

Regarding beat displacement, I wish that it was easier to edit drum tracks on the Oasys. If there were a graphical interface, it would make the task vastly simpler to move the snare ahead or back an 1/8 note from the backbeat.

Greg

G -

the tracks are loops in .smf or.mid, I think mapped to GM spec, so you can just select and drop into sequences as you would building a track with logic or acid. Because they're midi you can edit them and re-map to different kits.

I'm not an OASYS owner, so I'm not sure how you'd go about loading these patterns exactly, but if there IS a way to load them the format for doing so should be .smf or .mid.

On the last disk I bought (a while ago, now) both formats were represented.

Be forewarned, some sort of sequencer is pretty much required to get the most out of these files. The loops tend to be stacked: you'll get a file that says "furious 5 - 125bpm" - if you just play it you'll swear you were in the drum room at G.C. on saturday afternoon because every loop is playing at the same time. You need to isolate tracks to hear the different takes lumped under the "furious 5" file header.

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Just looking over the pdf OASYS parameter guide - pg 411 introduces the idea of user drum patterns I think, and pg 489 may give a better picture -- I believe you have to load midi files into sequencer, then you can save them as User Pattern 00-99 using a "GET IT" function that lifts the pattern track (1) whole (length is not mentioned so it could be multi measure loop) from seq and stores it as a reference pattern. This is also how YOU'D be able to generate and store your own odd meter patterns if you were dissatisfied with OASYS's stock drum patterns and handy with playing 'em in.

You could also try posting at the M3 thread here to see if there's a way to download/upload the drum patterns from the m3. I'm not sure how much duplication there might be but I think there may actually be more patterns on the m3 than the stock OASYS.



BB

Dear Greg,

I liked this song. You compose, record and finalize very sophisticated and complex music with the OASYS. (It's also a proof itself of its enormous capabilities.)

This one reminds me again one of our favourite bands, Rush. I like the quickly moving bass/unisono theme a lot!

Unfortunately I don't know T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets - I have to complement my knowledge, I guess.

I think it's good you disabled the master limiting.

Best regards,

Akos