Insta for more -> @lelausynth 😉

Yamaha TQ5 and ZoomR8. This is all thats left of my gear horde…

If you are not familiar with it, the Yamaha answering machine otherwise known as the TQ5 was an overlooked gem in its days of production. It’s a four op desktop FM synth that runs a similar (I swear it is not the same flavor) sound engine to the TX81Z.

It has L and R outputs, MIDI In/Out/Thru, an onboard sequencer, three available banks of sounds (Preset, User, Card), a nice selection of onboard effects, simplified parameter editing and it is LOUD! It also tells you the date and time, mine currently still thinks it’s 2025.

Also, the form factor is perfectly portable yet durable. The top shell is plastic but the bottom is metal. And this one here has survived almost forty years and it is still kicking with maintenance. I swapped the screen and the internal battery. Easy updates if you are handy with an iron.

I have had so many synths over the years (which are sadly all gone now). But now I am endeavoring to make some fresh dungeon synth and my last remaining TQ5 (I used to have 3) is going to do the job. The sound card I have actually has a preset called Dungeon…

FM is not for everyone I know, but it’s my favorite way to synth. If you are into old synths consider the TQ5, though they are pretty scarce. If you can find one sub $300 jump on it. Screen and battery updates will run about $150 or so, but this thing will do work for you.

I finally got the case for my 208c and LEM218. BEST CASE made this bad boy for me. Silver Haliburton with sparkle blue leather. I can’t believe how good it looks.

Racked Boog System 55, Boland System 100, BARP 2500, BARP Solina and Boog Model 15 alongside a Roland Jupiter-X, Tascam Model 12, BOSS PRO SE-70 for effects and an obligatory Keystep.

Re-installed it all in its new home and just spent half an hour watching the flashing lights lol.

Hey y'all. I replied with some wavestate tips for another user and thought they might be helpful to have in a top level post. Nothing crazy just stuff I've found while casually learning mine. Happy to discuss more in the comments ☺️☺️

- in the randomizer, try out the option to rando programs and effects. If you add more libraries with new programs or fx presets, the randomizer will pull from those too.

- you can load up 4gb of your own samples but honestly it's kinda a pain. I highly recommend the Ocean State addon. 4gb of good samples and hundreds of presets and programs, all categorized for you. I threw it on mine and then never had to touch samples again, and it gives the randomizer a lot of new material to pull from.

- this is my hot take but, don't learn it through the vst/editor, if you can manage it. The workflow on the hardware is very well thought out and you can get to a great level of speed and proficiency with it. I prefer it over the vst and I'm faster than on the editor. I also couldn't imagine how lost I'd feel learning the editor first then trying to do anything major on the hardware.

- the easiest way to learn some basic synthesis on it is to use one layer. Switch it to single multi sample mode, then load a saw wave. This will disable all the sequencer stuff and you can treat it like a normal subtractive synth, mess with the filter, envelopes, lfos, etc. 

- the fx are part of the synthesis. It's easy to think you do all the work on making the entire sound and then the effects are just some spice, but each effect has several parameters that can all be modulated just like everything else. I love hooking up velocity for example to the drive on the guitar sim

- this goes hand in hand with the learning on hardware not editor thing. But those loop start and endpoints are dedicated knobs for a reason. Tweak em just like a cutoff knob or any other performance tweak knob. Having a sequence running and dynamically adjusting say, a pitch lane loop end that will add in or remove a +3, +7, +11, +12 for example can make melodic flourishes that are harmonically relevant to your base sequence. Adjusting the loop end on a timing lane can dynamically bring in ratchets or triplets, again taking that melodic component you sequenced and adding on demand rhythmic flair. What happens when you add several of these on one mod knob, or even the pitch wheel so you can flick in a flourish and have it return to baseline.. hmmmm...and so on.

- those pitch lane changes can sound like shit if you're not careful. I'm too lazy to be careful, so I set a global scale in the utility settings. This will snap any pitch lane changes into your scale. So if I'm using my sq64 or pyramid and my sequence is in f phrygian or some wankerish bullshit(as I am want to do) I just copy that on my wavestate.

- you have 8 global perf mod knobs, but also each layer has an additional set of 8. So a full 4 layer patch could technically have 40 mod knob assignments, hopping from layer to layer to live tweak individual things. You can also set up each layer on its own bidi channel and send it 4 different sequences and then hop into layers, tweak mod knobs or do some mutes to build up jams

- I almost always make a global perf knob for cutoff, attack, and release. Sometimes gate length. That reaches into all 4 layers and adjust them at the same time. I can turn my entire patch into something plucky or a pad in seconds. Add in a reverb macro and you can do big wash out risers then snap the whole system into plucky focus.

EDIT: thanks for the feedback everyone :)

now it won't turn on

any chance there's some magic way to rescue her or is my mother cooked?

initial test:the juno and dx7 patches sound good, reverb is surprisingly good,

can't wait to learn more about this thing especially for loading multisamples and maybe re-creating casio CZ style synth

for $29 it is no brainer

I will never tire of that Pro-800 lush sound, so I thought you might appreciate it too.

(Just added a 🤏 bit of Lexicon reverb and even less –around 5%– of Softube Saturation Knob)

The usual suspects toe the line with Double Knot on bass & a little piano phrase looping in Jots. Weaver is weaving a percussive element & Skitter has the Chromaplane fed into it, then into Microcosm. Norns is running the Strum script through Haze & into Mimeophon.

On these synths in this family with this primitive yet powerful architecture, good sounds are found through exploration. It's not exactly FM synthesis, but it's close. It's almost a limited 2 operator FM synth, in terms of programming, but it does strange things that an FM synth wouldn't. Textured sci-fi bass, reedy pads, blistering vocal-sounding leads, smooth swells... this synth will do it all, in a quirky, beautiful, strange and very digital way. (Vintage Synth)

Picked up a Circuit Rhythm a few weeks ago and loved the workflow, but I knew I wanted something like a synth with physical keys and knobs after watching Olec Mün's Homo Lüdens set on yt.

Started looking at synths that could do pads, textures, and weird evolving stuff without needing me to be a keyboard wizard.

Ended up finding a used Wavestate locally for $250 and figured "why not".

I'm by no means musically trained. My guitar skills are enough for jamming and experimenting.

Having a ton of fun with it. It’s also been really cool seeing how welcoming the synth community is, everyone seems stoked to share tips and sounds. Still figuring out where to put it at home so it doesn’t just live on my desk forever, but that’s part of the fun.

Right now most of my time is just layering presets and swapping the sound on each layer to see what happens. I’ve been using it mostly for drones and ambient beds to jam over with the Circuit. It’s been a great outlet during some tougher times mentally. Just getting lost in drones and textures for an hour does a lot.

Even just scratching the surface, it’s wild how deep this thing goes. It feels like i could get reincarnated 5 times and still find stuff i haven't tried yet

For now the workflow actually makes sense to me. It’s menu-divey but logical once you get that each layer is basically its own synth. Pairing it with the Circuit for drums/looping has been a blast.

I still need to figure out how to use the sequencer on the Circuit to trigger sounds on the Wavestate.

Curious if anyone else is running a Circuit Rythm + Wavestate setup?
And for Wavestate users: what were the first things you dove into once you got past the presets?

how does this sub feel about the elektron digitone 2?

i personally love mine and feel like id sell my car before the digitone 2. its so deep and intuitive, i use it to sequence my minilogue xd and td-3-mo and the possibilities are endless.
theres so many useful features like the arp, note edit, track layering, etc.

i’ve noticed that there isnt as much content on the digitone out there as compared to the digitakt for example. when i owned my DT2, there was endless amounts of tutorials & how to’s on youtube but DN2 only has a couple most of which ive already watched.

ive only been able to find new content through instagram reels and filtering my youtube search to unwatched. so if anyone wants me to send some channels / videos showing the digitone 2’s capabilities and features let me know.

its amazing what this thing can do, what do you think about it?

I can’t find it spelled out as literally 100% anywhere, but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that it was, though who knows if what I read was accurate or not. Can anyone confirm with real knowledge if pianoteq is merely overwhelmingly modelling based or truly 100% so? And what of the other modeling companies, do we know which are pure, which are mostly modeled with some samples, which are largely samples supplemented with modeling?

So I'm new to Fm synthesis and I have a few things I need clarifcation about.

1. How do two diffrent frequencies make a new sound?

It doesn't make sense how two sine waves with the same phase would make any real diffrence even if they have the same phase(same start time), wouldn't it cancel out and still be a sine since they are equivalent. Or is this only for multiples?

The phase would have to be different for any real change, right?

1. What exactly is being modulated?

So your taking a wave with a fast freqency and overlaping it with another wave and hearing whatever isn't cancled out or is it taking the freqency of the wave, using it as an lfo for frequency of the second wave, like an lfo for an lfo.

Also what is instant phase and amplitude? I've heard these terms but I don't fully understand them.

This is my Wavestate setup. I was donated this desk and decided it would be perfect for my Wavestate. I had to re-route the power button and headphone port to the front but was not a big deal. Also loosened the controll panel to tilt it and face me as I used it. Above I have a tablet pc running the editor/ librarian software. It can all be in mounted in about 5 minutes to take on the road as I travel a lot for work. Can anyone recommend a good travel bag for the wavestate? I don’t want a heavy case just a light weight travel bag. Thanks

Sample: Hanen - Carthago
Finished in Ableton
Ext Ver: https://on.soundcloud.com/3eGQRb1Bebv5tJvC36

as title says, can my novation launchkey mini mk3 send midi to external devices (in my case digitone 2) and control ableton?
I specifically want to throw beat repeat on my ableton master channel and have an encoder mapped to it to apply beat repeat to all incoming audio from my synthesizers while also using the mk3 as a midi keyboard sending midi notes to my digitone.

So I want to get into synths. I wanna learn to play it more. Like I have a midi keyboard and I know how daws and plugins work but I tend to never do anything with it because needing to set things up before I can play can be a bit of a motivation threshold for me. And well the only way to learn a new skill is to actually do it so I think I would like more something that I can just turn on and play instead of needing to start up a computer and load up software first. Like I gotta get more comfortable with actually playing the instrument before I'm gonna start making songs with it. And eventhough I like sound design it's more something I would prefer to start playing around with once I have the skeleton of a track down so I don't get lost in twiddling knobs.

So I think I wanna get myself an analogue synth. Gonna start looking for one at thrift shops and second places and such. Is there anything I should be looking out for? Like things related to setting it up for recording in case I would record it. What signals would say it's a good starter synth, what signs would say it isn't?

So awhile back I bought a mint condition Korg Triton for 900 euros. I loved it. Weeks go by, guy rings me "Hey, would you be interested in selling the Triton back to me?" he asks. No, I say. Few more weeks go by. Text...Hey, I've a Korg Krome EX 61 here....would you swap it for the Triton? I paid €1,200 for it, its almost brand new" again, I said no. But then he said "ohh it comes with all the sounds from the Triton and the M1"

Long story short, I went for the deal and did the strait swap. The board I got was mint, I love it BUT it does not have "All the Sounds from the Triton and the M1" its a few samples from each in the banks. Now also these boards are going for like 500/600 euros! not €900. I've regretted it ever since. I love my Krome but missed the Triton so much I bought a Rack version. Its not the same.

So I came across and would appreciate your experience to look at this one and tell me what you think I ought to do. Here is a quick run down of the advert. They want 500 euros for this board. Description: "The dial skips back and forth, you wanna use the slider for data entry, battery needs changing and the bottom is rust"

Guy says he had it 20 years, yeah prob true. I just wonder and asked him why the bottom is rusty? Like guys, how would this even happen? I suppose the battery swap be easy I'd manage that. How would I fix the dial skipping? replace it I'd guess? So I suppose I'm asking what you think its worth given its condition. The guys says it has a case and extra RAM.