Subharmonic Synths

[Todd Madson <crash@waste.org>]

I've always had an octave divider in my rig - I don't always use it
but it produces a great synthetic bass sound for doing loops.

I'll do a low, supportive line below some of the other looping for
more of a full-range loop effect.

The most effective use I've seen of subharmonic synths in a band
context was the 1981 Frank Zappa band, live.

Scott Thunes, the bass player at the time played his Carvin basses
through one and for his bass solo produced some ridiculously low
and powerful single notes for certain things.

I believe he used it on the piece "Envelopes" from "Ship Arriving
too Late to Save a Drowning Witch".  The live version I saw then 
was far superior to the anemic version on LP and even the version
that was on "YCDTOSA".

I'd love to get one.  I actually have used Octave Divider on digital
drums to make them sound more real and mix the effected signal at about
1/3 volume.  It works - try it.

The latest thing I've been playing with is the Vocoder in the Roland
VS-840 workstation.  But not for a conventional vocoding effect - 
rather I have used drum machine through vocoder, bass synth through
vocoder and drone guitar through vocoder.

The dynamic effects make the drums sound more alive and more rhythmic.
The bass has a punchu sort of flanged effect but this is a poor 
description of the effect I'm getting.

The most impressive effect is the drone guitar effect.  For those not
familiar with this, I use a guitar through multitap delays to create
the swelling sound Holdsworth sometimes would get.  When I vocode the
result, the dynamic filtering creates a really unique sound - it's 
like a rhythm guitar and keyboard all in one.  When I loop the result
of that it produces a very unusual sound.

Compressing the result of that kind of puts you in a weird space, but
I won't give all my tricks away today.

-Todd