KLANG - Oberheim Eight Voice
Release Trip Day #2
Nebelmensch
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If you’re a musician yourself, I would like to encourage you to give it a try and get a feeling for working with the Oberheim Eight Voice. Don’t have one at hand? No worries, GForce Software has got your back.
With their faithful recreation, OB-E you can dive into the sound and workflow of the original at your computer.
Already own OB-E? Congratulations! If not, head to the GForce OB-E page, scroll down and find a demo version you can download and use for seven days, which is just sufficient for the rest of this trip.
If you love it as much as I do, give the incredible folks at GForce some love and buy it – it’s on sale right now.
From England with love
Ready for some presents? I recreated all the Oberheim Eight Voice sounds I used on the album with OB-E for you to get creative with. Below this paragraph, you can download my sound pack – for free!
If you are using the OB-E demo version, you can’t load external presets. BUT, knowing this, GForce Software generously gives away 100 OB-EZ plugins for FREE to you, who are devoted enough to be here.
OB-EZ is a version of OB-E with all the sound and features of the Eight Voice under the hood, but with a simplified user interface, giving access to the most important parameters to quickly adjust a given sound to your needs. This one can load the presets in my sound pack and it will be yours to keep, if you’re one of the first 100 to claim it.
To do so, just reply to todays email with the subject line “OB-EZ” and I will send you the details and an activation code.
Sheet music
Nebelmensch being one of the precomposed pieces, I jotted down the chord voicings for the main theme so I could read the sheet music when replacing the tracks from the demo with the real Eight Voice.
If you are just curious or maybe want to create your own version using the OB-E presets from my sound collection or something completely different:
You can download a copy of my original handwritten notes here.
Nebelmensch – sketch.pdf
NOTES
Nebelmensch
As stated yesterday, the KLANG series tries to capture my perception of the sonic essence of one particular synthesizer by mixing spontaneous improvisations with compositions tailored to its unique features.
Nebelmensch is one of these compositions. As the SEM’s rather simple structure wouldn’t allow vast options for drum sounds – and I don’t really use those in my solo music anyways – I went for a propulsive bassline as the rhythmic driving force. And with that bassline, I wanted to present the Eight Voice’s unique possibility of playing monophonic lines while cycling though all of the eight modules. That means each successive note of the repetitive bassline is played by an individual synthesizer module and – so I hoped – would have a distinct sound, just like on a real bass guitar each pluck of a string would produce a slightly different sound, even if it’s the same note.
And I wasn’t disappointed, the Oberheim even exceeded my expectations for the desired effect. But lets start at the beginning:
As there are only a handful of Oberheim Eight Voice Synthesizers in the world and none of them is in my possession, I used GForce Software’s virtual instrument OB-E to prearrange this piece at home. This faithful digital recreation of the Eight Voice allowed me to both quickly try out different sounds to familiarize myself with the sonic pallette of the Oberheim and also to get an idea of how laborious and time consuming it would be to actually dial in these sounds on eight individual synthesizer modules.
OB-E makes programming really convinient by allowing you to edit one module and having all the others automatically follow. But I turned all these nice features off and dialed in each module manually: Oh yes, this would be time consuming.
But little did I know about how much more time consuming it would even be in reality, because I had yet to discover how different the individual SEMs on the real Oberheim would sound and behave.
Creating a uniform polyphonic sound on the Eight Voice is not only a matter of setting all the knobs on each module to the same position, but you have to constantly check and adjust for the different personalities of each of those eight vintage analog synths packed in one case.
One of them is a little brighter than the others, the next one a little softer, the third has a more pronounced resonance. Some of the envelopes are faster, some slower, some have a different shape and so on.
It’s like getting to know eight different people of the same town, but each with their own life story and character. But that’s exactly what’s to love about the Eight Voice.
I imagine owning one of these gems would allow you to build a relationship to each of them over time and know the quirks and tempers of every single SEM, as well as their sweet spots and where they shine. Which stories they have to tell.
But I would only have a couple of days with the Oberheim and I had set my mind to record a complete album in that time (and even a second one with another synthesizer…), so I better prepare the best I can.
So I completely prearranged the whole piece with OB-E and then I’d replace each track with the real thing, one after the other. Dialing in the first sound, playing the part, going to the next track, repeat. Simple and straight forward, right?
Once in England, I had to face several obstacles to overcome and my ambitious time plan was shattered right on the first day…
My prepared projects didn’t open on the studio computer. Of course, I had checked that the same software I used was availlable, but I wasn’t prepared for a version conflict. So I would have to rebuild all the arrangements from scratch. Even worse, I intended to set up the sounds on the Oberheim by looking at the settings of the OB-E patches I prepared at home and get at least in the ball park that way and refine from there. Further, I wanted to read the music for each part from the midi tracks I had created. None of this would work. I was even clever enough to bring my own computer as a fallback for cases like this (my luggage filled with strange technical gizmos granted me an extensive special treatment at the airport), but it wouldn’t connect to the studio’s screen. D’oh!
We spent half the first day setting up my camera gear and the audio paths for recording and the other half trying to make my projects work. In vain. First day was gone without recording a single note.
On the next day, Dave luckily managed to get hold of a tiny display to connect with my computer. So I could at least export the miditracks to the studio computer and read the OB-E sound settings from that tiny screen.
Setting up all that and exporting/transferring the files ate up another couple of hours.
I wasn’t sure if I could still make it to record two full albums in the remaining three and a half days…
Obviously I managed to finish at least this one and in today’s video you can get a glimpse at how I recorded the first piece, including the joyful struggles with the Eight Voice.
Listen to the original demo using GForce OB-E:
13 thoughts on “EVS #2 – Nebelmensch”
OMG I love this track!
Great to hear, thank you!
Haste ja gar nicht erzählt, dass das so ein hustle war. Grundsätzlicjh davon auszugehen dass einfach mal gar nix so funzt wie benötigt hebt aber die Motivation ja auch nicht 😀 … Na morgen wirds hoffentlich anders. Auf jeden Fall cooler Track. Im übrigen werde ich sicher da sein und wenns mich gesundheitlich nicht unerwartet umschmeißt, kann ich auch filmen…
It is a beautiful track indeed.
Tuning to 432? I’m intrigued!
Thank you for the music, which is beautiful and very inspiring, and of course for the OB-E presets.
You’re welcome. I’m excited to finally share this and glad you dig it! 🙂
A hauntingly beautiful piece, Marius – the interplay between the shimmering lead sound, airy pads and the pulsing bass along with the graceful solo towards the end is sublime. As a synthesist myself, I’m fascinated by the attention to detail in your sound design on the Eight Voice. I’m really enjoying the whole album and appreciate the sheet music and presets.
Thank you very much. Appreciate your attentive listening.
Hi Marius…the second Chapter…interesting how you Build ” Nebelmensch” with only one Oberheim Eight Voice Synth.
Question for me…. Is from the Software Side the same “Problem” with the Tuning of the Eight Voices?
I know this is the Feature of the Original and i hope there are on the Soundpresets enough to decide between tuned and detuned Presets.
I Apologize myself but i’m not the typical Soundfreak on the Keyboardworld 🙂↕️. More an Producer/Player( Guitar/ Bass) with different Interesst’s on different Styles around the Music.
Best Regards from Hamburg
First of all, it’s not really a problem, it just belongs to the workflow with the instrument, just like the guitar and every acoustic instrument has to be tuned regularly. I just showed it so people who arent as deep into the technical side could get a glimpse into what it is like to work with an analog vintage synthesizer of that kind and what’s so special about it.
Regarding the software version: OB-E of course gives you all the convenience and precision that you would expect from a modern software synth. When you load it up, all the modules are in perfect tune and you can easily edit sounds. You can for example hit the “Group” button and then edit ONE module and all the others will just follow. But if you like, you can go deeper anytime and dial in slight differences between the modules in tuning, envelopes or whatever you like.
The sounds in my collection are oriented on my experience with the real thing and I actually went and dialed in each module manually, including the pitch. But you can bring it in perfect tune with a single mouse click, if that’s what you need.
Hui … nicht nur technische Probleme! Analog zum timelapse-Video (Rhodes track) fällt mir dazu nur eins ein … Hingabe. Dann kurz überlegen, streichen und durch >Aufopferung< ersetzen! W A H N S I N N ! Ich freue mich sehr auf das OB8-Paket Marius!
Austonisched with allthe work that got in creating this awesome track! Again great to have the over sholder look with you creating it! Big thanks for sharing it with us!
As always great playing again😃👍🏼
Cheers bart
Amazing music and amazing work, as much as I would love to play the OB-E, I realize that my ADHD could never coup with all of the struggle. With that said, nothing sounds like it and you really mastered it in your production.