Re: Yamaha VL-70

[improv@peak.org (Dave Trenkel)]

>Hi Steve, welcome to the list! Your live setup is pretty interesting to 
>me,
>I'm a big fan of the VL70M myself. ==
>
>Yeh, the VL70 is very interesting.  What I did is, got those Patchman
>patches for it and then spent a long long time editing from the buttons on
>the front panel.  I agree, the software editor is pretty daunting - I only
>went in there once to do something very specific --

The one time I tried to build an instrument model in the software editor, I
ended up with a pretty brutal noise patch. I use it and like it, but it
definitely doesn't sound like a wind instrument (well, maybe a brontosaurus
fart).

>but you can do a lot
>with the front panel stuff to make it much more musical.  I never tried 
>too
>many other controllers -- just a breath controller and pitch bend wheel,
>which you can do a lot with.  I usually have the pitch bend wheel
>controlling many parameters -- sometimes absorption and damping, for
>example, as well as pitch -- which makes it very musical.

I do the same thing from the front panel. You can make radically different
sounds just by assigning controllers. I've tried things like using the
extreme end of the breath controller range to bring in throat and growl
parameters. Made a very Evan Parker-ish patch out of the factory soprano
sax this way.

>Also,  I use the
>modulation wheel to control the depth of the effects, which is easy to
>program from the box, too.  I'll probably be changing that, though, since 
>I
>got the Kaos pad and am using that.

I generally bypass the onboard effects, to me they've always seemed to be
the weakest part of the VL70.

____________________________________________
Dave Trenkel : improv@peak.org
New & Improv Media
http://www.newandimprov.com
Now available: Admiral Twinkle Devil: Wabi Dub
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