Alesis Micron Tasting Menu, Chef Holland Presiding
Did you know that the common black worker ant can lift over 500-times its own body weight? Just goes to show you can't judge anything by its size, and that includes the Alesis Micron vintage-synth-emulating keyboard. Also, like the common black worker ant, the Micron cannot reproduce.
That doesn't mean it isn't loaded with plenty sexy synth sound, however. In this, part two of our Micron walkthrough, Bill goes through some of the many sounds available. To get an idea of the basic control functions on the Micron, check out Part One.
BILL HOLLAND: So, let's go through some patches real quick, and I'll show you what these sound like. Go to my bass first, some closet bass.
[BILL PERFORMS RIFFS ON "CLOSET BASS"]
Electro Bass
[BILL PERFORMS RIFFS ON "ELECTRO BASS"]
I can go up through my leads and we have the Joan D'Arc pad.
[BILL PLAYS CHORDS WITH THE "JOAN D'ARC PAD"]
Movie pad.
[BILL PERFORMS CHORDS WITH "MOVIE PAD"]
This thing's like the Oberheim pad for example
[BILL PERFORMS LINES USING "OBERHEIM PAD"]
Go up to my strings. We had "Aquarian String" before, also "Oberheim Strings".
[BILL PERFORMS LINES WITH "OBERHEIM STRINGS"]
The "Yo Yo Mas"
[BILL PERFORMS LICK WITH "YO YO MAS"]
Kind of a synthesized cello. The "Violacoder".
[BILL PERFORMS CHORDS WITH "VIOLACODER"]
Moving to the brass, we have the "J-Brass".
[BILL PERFORMS RIFFS WITH "J-BRASS"]
Within the keys, we have a variety of keys. "60's Organ."
[BILL PERFORMS LICK WITH "60'S ORGAN"]
Moving on to comp effects, we have "Animated" which is very similar to a Tomita-type sound.
[BILL PERFORMS LICK WITH "ANIMATED"]
We have our drums. A variety of drums included. "Filter Kicks".
[BILL PLAYS "FILTER KICKS"]
So you have individual kit parts [BILL PLAYS SOME DRUM SOUNDS] but then you also have complete kits in here as well [BILL PERFORMS SOME DRUM SOUNDS]. So these are all your kits, and then you go into programs, or rhythms actually and you could program beats [BILL PERFORMS PROGRAMMED BEATS] and if you set up, you can program separate kit as well [BILL PERFORMS DRUM RHYTHMS]. We'll get to rhythms in the next video.
Moving really quickly, at the end here we have S-Effects which include the vocoder. I'll look at that in the next video. Also we have exterior delay FM In so you can bring in sources here. We have filter, and you can actually filter them using the synthesizer's vocoder or gate, or you can use [SOUNDS LIKE] "hobbittronics", which I;m not going to ruin it for you now. You'll just have to wait and see what that sounds like.
[BILL PLAYS "BOMBS AWAY"] This is "Bombs Away", "Dog Versus Cat" [BILL PLAYS "DOG VERSUS CAT"], [BILL PLAYS "HATCHING"]"Hatching", "Helicopter" [BILL PLAYS "HELICOPTER"], "Landing" [BILL PLAYS "LANDING"], and "Ocean Sliders" [BILL PLAYS "OCEAN SLIDERS"].
Under rhythms, you'll see number four. We have just -- if I go back to the very beginning of rhythm, we just have a basic kit [BILL PLAYS RHYTHMS], some good electro kits in here. If I go up to 44, we have "Electro 2" [BILL PLAYS ELECTRO 2]. Number 70 is a basic four-on-the-floor kit [BILL PLAYS FOUR-ON-THE-FLOOR], and 81 is good for Hip Hop [BILL PLAYS NUMBER 81].
Well, that was the end of my Micron demo part one. In part two, I'll take a look at the vocoder, basic editing, programming and creating your own step sequences. For now though, this is Gearwire.Com, and my name is Bill Holland.
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