BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire. My name's Bill Holland, and today we're looking at the Access Virus TI. Now, if you remember from last time, we looked at the filter bank but this time we're going to get into the actual programming of the synth. Now, I can't go into the software because they haven't sent it to us yet, but we do have the hardware so we're going to look at to how from a very basic standpoint you open the box, you've got the keyboard in your lap and you're ready to program your own patches. We're going to go through how to do that and the various parameters you can change. Now, whether or not we actually get everything, that's another story, but I'm going to get you started on creating your own synthesizer with the Virus.

This keyboard, although I've heard otherwise, was actually really easy to figure out. I think part of the advantage to that is the fact that they have successfully combined analog components with digital components, which most companies are starting to do pretty widely now. My first keyboard was purchased from the late 90s or early 2000s when most keyboards did not have analog knobs on them. I think the most prominent one that had a good amount of control on it was I think there was one by Oberheim, and there was of course the Nord Lead which was huge when it came out. Now, I've created a patch in here called "GeArWire!" [BILL PLAYS GeArWire! PATCH]. Yeah, I know; it's kind of Keith Emerson, whatever. Not a big deal.

Let's look at what you get when you first open a patch. Now in this case, you have three value knob controls right here. These control whatever you want. You can actually go in and set it to different parameters. In this case, we have vibrato, glide, and pulsate. Let's take a look at what those do just for a second just so you have a basic idea of control when you're first looking at a patch. Now remember, this could be anything; this could be a reverb, delay, chorus, flange, whatever you want to put in there [BILL TWEAKS VALUE KNOBS].

Alright, so keep it in mind you realize you can apply pretty much anything to this patch. Let's hit edit. Right now it says "unison 1". You have the option to put a unison filter on here. Right now, the pan spread is set to 127 but the voices are off. Let's see what happens if I turn that to twin [BILL AUDITIONS TWIN], to five [BILL AUDITIONS 5]. You'll notice the duplication of voices [BILL AUDITIONS 7] and I can detune it to give it a little bit of a bigger sound [BILL SETS DETUNE VALUE TO 20]. Notice that it sounds all big and prog rocky, um [BILL PLAYS SOME LEAD LINES]. Okay, enough of that but unison you'll notice has 1/2 listed here; that means that when you use the parameter key -- so you can use the parameter key to go back and forth the different parameters -- 1/2 is accessed. In this case we also can edit LFO phasing [BILL TWEAKS LFO PHASE].