Compromise

Sometimes nearly good enough is as good as it gets.
Compromising is a difficult thing to do especially when you're 99% there. It's like riding a bicycle with a flat tyre that last mile home because it's still quicker than walking. If the end result is all one is after does it matter how it is achieved?
In my case, no. So it has been this past week with trying to iron out a couple of problems with Windows software and trying to get it to run successfully on Linux. The end result is that I got my way but I had to be content with 99% and a couple of work-arounds. This means that time and money invested in my studio has been well spent. I can still do what I intended to do and that is good news.
One of those things is that I can after many years run FL Studio on my Ubuntu Studio laptop. It isn't as good as Bitwig Studio in that environment but it can be used as an audio processor and sound source which is all I need it for these days.
One thing that is working 100% is the Yamaha MU100. As you can see I've created my first patch and it sounds amazing. I could spend hours sound designing, it's a lot of fun and very rewarding especially as I can multi-sample my results into Bitwig.
I intend to add one more piece of kit to the studio and then that's it. I will have to wait, there are more pressing things that I need to spend money on.
Maybe I'll treat myself at Christmas.

Layers Of Complexity

I've learned a valuable lesson.
Years ago when I started writing my own tunes I had few sound sources and I wondered where people got their sounds from. In the 80's there weren't any samplers to speak of until the Fairlight. What I thought was that electronic bands had access to a multitude of synths and that they messed around with them until they found the right sound. I have spent hours sound designing only to settle on something that was only 'near enough'.
Last week I bought the Yamaha MU100 simply because it could layer 4 sounds at once, I thought that might be interesting. It's a brilliant sound module for a whole load of other reasons, too many to list here. My Korg Liverpool similarly has the ability to layer sounds but thus far I had only dabbled in that side of it. Back to the MU100. The presets for the layered sounds are nothing short of amazing. The videos I had watched online don't do them any justice. I also started double layering tracks with the RM1x and it instantly became obvious that the years I had spent thinking that amazing sounds came from a single source were totally misinformed.
I think just about every one of the tracks I have ever released had every sound as a single source sound, regardless of how many oscillators were involved. The secret all along was to get simple sounds from various sources and layer them.
I really do feel stupid. My search for those elusive sounds is over. I know how to make them now.
It's a shame it took so long.