Is it also good for anything else than ambient / pads and evolving textures?

Hi,

I’m considering that synth but nearly all the demos I’ve heard have been these never ending lush evolving pads and ambient textures and it kinda feels like this synth is getting cornered into that niche.

Any experience in sound designing classic tones? stabs? funky/housy, heavy basses kinda sounds? Is it capable of doing anything else that pads and more importantly if it is does, does it still sounds great?

Cheers! :slight_smile:

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Watch the Matt Johnson videos.

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That would be totally unfair. The S6 is good at doing ambient but it has all the bite to get you in other things than pads.
Think Jupiter, Juno and beyond. I have owned both Jupiter6 and Juno60 over the past twenty years and the super6 can get you such tones. But much much more.
So it has the classic Roland sound should you wish so. Think UR , Classic Detroit , German tech house etc.
Think « easy to mix » Roland sound rather than thick American sound you’d get from a prophet.

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I bought the S6 for this very reason because I love it’s character and only recently did I start using it for other sounds. It’s probably because the wide stereo sound often lead me that way but recently I’ve begun removing the right jack and using the S6 in mono; often with binaural mode off if I need more voices. Doing it this way, I’ve programmed some Lorn/NIN-sounding leads, Moog-ish basses/leads, P5-esque keys, and 90s ROM/PCM-style stabs with custom digital waveforms. It was @trond.olsen’s experiments that inspired me to try pushing some boundaries.

The best part is when I start the S6 up again, don’t remember to remove the right jack, and completely forget which patches were made in mono or stereo.

Lol also, since the S6 doesn’t have wavescanning currently (praying @udo-audio adds it), I slide my fingers across the waveform selector, speed the audio up, and resample the resulting sound.

Another user, @plas , also did a really cool feedback loop test with the S6 and got some cool distortion out of it. I’ve yet to try this myself.

Currently, I’m using the S6’s noise floor as part of my patches by turning the amp ENV down and the master volume up, allowing me to use 3-OSC (DDS 1+2+LFO1) patches and do all my filtering while keeping all the noise post-filter. Or, even a pseudo 4-OSC sound by making the filter self-oscillate and keytracking it (still experimenting with this).

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Plucks / poly key / seq / arps are unreal on the Super 6.

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Short answer, yes.

I’m actually not really into long pads and evolving stuff, I mostly make leads and keys, and this synth does really well with those sounds. It does great with stabs, lots of classic sounds from the 80s can be replicated pretty well with this. I’ve had fun making some more classic sounds and then putting kind of a slight twist on them. This thing definitely has some funk in it with that sweet filter. My suspicion is that a lot of people make evolving sounds because they show off some of the cool quirks on this synth a little more.

One I want to comment on is how one user said he was able to make “Moog-ish” basses and leads. It’s possible that person knows something I don’t, but I would say that the filter on this thing could hardly sound further from a Moog, especially for the bass sounds. I have a good Moog, and I love both that and my UDO, but to me their sounds have very different qualities. This is just my subjective opinion though

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It’s heresy but don’t sleep on playing the synth in mono.

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Absolutely.
The fact that lots of demos showcase slow evolving pad design might lead you to believe that it is a “texture synth”. It is much more than that, it can be whatever you want it to be. I will give a few examples:

  • i quite often create snappy bass patches in mono and legato mode. The reason being envelopes are super flexible, and even if needed with recursive modulation you can change envelope shapes further. This allows you for any snappy short decay bass, all kinds of “moogish” basses, as filter is super nice.

  • evolving arpegios - sounds made with either classic waves or wavetables, that can pluck away, plus you can modulate and morph these plucks.

  • i think lots of people dont get this synth can roar. While it has its gentle side, it most certainly can do agressive leads - overdrive the filter, add some cross mod and see where it takes you

  • any kind of weird and modular - this synth IS a modular in a box, in a way. Turning oscillator into lfo and vice versa, complex lfo shapes, cross modulation (and I don’t mean FM only), delay modulation, it can sound like anything you want.
    So to sumarize, and compare Super 6 with my Jupiter 6, Prophet 10, REV2, OB (here we do have certain differences because of the SEM filter on OB), Super 6 can do all “classic poly bread and butter” really well, while expanding into modular teritory. Looping envelope, mod matrix, cross modulation, unique oscillator mod targets you won’t find that often on a synth, many intricate controls and performance section make Super 6 stand out way further than just a “ambient synth”.

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I got the UDO to use as a more live-friendly, less fragile version of a Juno-106. Having used it for a while now I’ve realized it can be used for much more than that. I don’t really like ambient music, but I’ve used the UDO live with bands like this and this. Sometimes for textures, sometimes pads, rhythmical embellishments, bells, lead sounds and so on. It’s a bit glossier, more hi-fi than a Juno or other older synths/organs. But that’s usually a plus in live settings. I’m more into William Onyeabor, Alice Coltrane and the likes, and have tweaked my sounds in that direction. Works great!

If you fancy loopy techno, the bassline is the S6…

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Sounds awesome. How did you make this patch? @Zvuk

DDS2 in sub osc mode, get a nice blend with DDS1 an octave above (saw i think), no binaural, and play with snappy filter env settings, tiny bit resonance…

Pretty SH-101-ish I’d say, S6 is great at it…

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I love this!!! Would love a go at mastering something for you one day. I recently did Ibrahim Alfa Jnr’s new album for Mille Plateaux and it’s a similar vibe in places.

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Cool, didn’t know Force Inc/MP were back in business. Nice gig!

Yeah I think Achim got it together again the last few years, happy to see it!

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That soundcloud is amazing and everything I was hoping to find scouring through hours of YT videos. Thanks for sharing!

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I agree. Nice sounding bass from the S6 :grin:

You can also do recursive envelope modulation if you need even snappier envelopes.

I also like how the envelopes have a fine range in the first half of travel and then speed up in the second half. Gives you precision where you need it but length when you need it too.

I’ll admit, I love the pads and stringy stuff it can do. Also the brassy style leads and pads.

I think it does those so well that many people are still exploring those types of sounds. Or they have other synths that can do bass and save the S6 for those pads because it does it better than most. With time, we’ll hear more (like @Zvuk‘s example above).

S6 has all of the necessary quality of components to make great analog style basses and leads imo.

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