# Accessible synthes?

Category: Jam Session

## Post 1 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 13-Feb-2009 16:08:46

Hi all,
This is my first time on the zone's boards. This is the closest thing I've been able to find to a blind musicians' mailing list and so I thought I'd post here. Hope this is a good place. I'm a huge fan of French composer Jean Michel Jarre, who for those who don't know is a composer of electronic msic. Needless to say I've become fascinated with the idea of composing electronic music as a hobby. So I'm curious if anyone knows of some blind accessible and relatively inexpensive synthesizer keyboards. I'm already considering buying a therimin as part of my collection and so I'm curious if anyone knows of some blind friendly synthe type keyboards. Granted if I do this it'll be over time as I slowly add to my collection, but I figured I'd try and get some input here. Thanks in advance for your help.

## Post 2 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Friday, 13-Feb-2009 16:14:49

Well, you might start by looking at older analog synths, as they have buttons, knobs, and sliders as opposed to being menu driven. Of the newer breed of synths, the Motif from Yamaha is menu driven, but it has a large number of controls that give you real-time control over various parameters. Also, there is quite a bit of accessible documentation on the Motif series from the classic Motif to the newest generation, the XS. The link for the site as at home. I'll try and remember to post it here.
Lou

## Post 3 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 13-Feb-2009 16:57:20

Thanks. How much would one of those run me though?

## Post 4 by Jesse (Hmm!) on Friday, 13-Feb-2009 22:22:34

I'm with Lou on the Motif. I've seen the 61-key version for $1600 or so. Shop around though. You might find a used one of the previous generation for a great price.

## Post 5 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Monday, 16-Feb-2009 13:53:02

Well I've seen a few Korg synthes that are more in my price range, and I've heard Korg generally makes pretty good synthes. And of course there's still the Therimin, which probably fascinates me even more than the others. It is, unless I'm mistaken, the only instrument in existence that's played without actually being touched.

## Post 6 by charrington (Zone BBS is my Life) on Monday, 16-Feb-2009 21:01:57

How is that possible?
what do you do, control it tellapathically?
lol.

## Post 7 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Monday, 16-Feb-2009 22:33:24

I'd imagine you'd play it the same way a sighted person would. It's not as if you don't get audible feedback after all.

## Post 8 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Monday, 16-Feb-2009 22:49:15

It's got a pair of antennas that control the sound. Well the true Therimin does. Some have just one. But oe antenna controls the pitch of the sound while the other one cotrols volume. So what you do is move your hands in the vicinity of the antennas. Like any other instrument it takes practice but from what I've heard it's a fun instrument to play...and it makes one of the coolest sounds I've ever heard from any instrument.

## Post 9 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Thursday, 19-Feb-2009 13:44:29

So does anyone know of any other accessible synthes? I've seen quite a few on Musiciansfriend.com that really intrigue me, a few Korg models and an Alesis Micron to name a few, and I just wondered which ones, if any, were blind friendly. There are also a few Moog synthes that interest me, but they're more expensive and again I don't know how usable they would be.

## Post 10 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 27-Mar-2009 12:54:04

Well since I posted here last I bought the therimin. I've been experimentig with it for several weeks and I can definitely understand why there aren't many virtuosi in its use. It's a hard instrument to play whether you're sighted or not. Although blindness might actually be advantageous here since it means you rely on your ears alone. Right at the moment I've been working on simply maintaining a steady pitch and volume, which seems to me the best place to start before moving on to making actual tunes. So far it's been a lot of fun. But I'm still curious about other types of synthesizers and which might be blind friendly. Guess it's back to musiciansfriend.com...

## Post 11 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 27-Mar-2009 12:54:46

Well since I posted here last I bought the therimin. I've been experimentig with it for several weeks and I can definitely understand why there aren't many virtuosi in its use. It's a hard instrument to play whether you're sighted or not. Although blindness might actually be advantageous here since it means you rely on your ears alone. Right at the moment I've been working on simply maintaining a steady pitch and volume, which seems to me the best place to start before moving on to making actual tunes. So far it's been a lot of fun. But I'm still curious about other types of synthesizers and which might be blind friendly. Guess it's back to musiciansfriend.com...

## Post 12 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Friday, 27-Mar-2009 15:36:47

Congratulations! If you have perfect pitch, or nearly so, I would think it would be an asset to you, otherwise, Max might get upset? *smile*
Lou

## Post 13 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 27-Mar-2009 16:55:09

Well I don't know about perfect pitch, but we'll see. So far Max doesn't seem to mind.

## Post 14 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Friday, 27-Mar-2009 21:26:10

When Iwas programming my old dx7 my cat would let me know with claws on my leg if a sound displeased her. She was a tough critic.
Lou

## Post 15 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Saturday, 28-Mar-2009 9:57:28

I wonder if any of the Korg models are accessible. I've seen several on Musiciansfriend.com at what seem to me like fairly reasonable prices bu I'm wondering if I'd be making a mistake. I'm talking about models like the Korg MicroKORG Synthesizer / Vocoder. There were quite a few others also. I'm just wondering if any of them are worth saving up for.

## Post 16 by Jesse (Hmm!) on Saturday, 28-Mar-2009 22:31:28

You can access the Microcorg pretty easily, but stay away from their flagship workstations, as they're touchscreen devices, and won't be accessible for you.

## Post 17 by monkeypusher69 (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Sunday, 29-Mar-2009 10:15:28

I am guessing you aren't able to get to a local music store and mess around with these things to see how user friendly they would be for you? Well if you don't mind using a computer, you can always get a midi controller and soft synths on the computer for your sounds, Just a thought, as its what I am thinking of doing as I can't afford a synth and would like to add piano and synth parts to some of my recordings.

## Post 18 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Sunday, 29-Mar-2009 10:59:19

Hmmm, now theres a thought. I'll have to call the music store where I got the patch cord for my therimin and find out if they have anything like that that I could fiddle with. So I'll keep the Microkorg in mind. There was one other one that was in the same price range that I'll have to go refresh my memory on the name. Listening to so much Jean Michel Jarre has got me pretty close to obsessed with the idea. I don't know how accessible the synthes he used on, say, Oxygee would be, although since we'd be talking about 1976 here it's at least possible. But I know he's made use of a lot of Korg synthes so I was curious. I don't imagine the Fairlight would be too accessible since it's also a touchscreen odel if I remember correctly. Only problem with getting soft synthes is I don't know if you can use those to reate the sort of sound effects I'd want to add to any ieces I created.

## Post 19 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Sunday, 29-Mar-2009 16:42:41

It was the Korg R3. I'e heard demos of both the Microkorg and the R3 and they sound great, so it's just a matter of finding out how usable they would be by a blind person. I'm also curious about the Alesis Micron Analog Modeling Synthe but can't find any clips of it.

## Post 20 by monkeypusher69 (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Tuesday, 31-Mar-2009 13:48:13

well as faras i know you should be able to do just about anything with soft synth that you can do with a hardware synth, the problem could also be accessablility there depending on what format the synth comes in .. if you can go to a music sotre and see if you can get some soft synth demoed for you, or buy a midi controller you can return in 30 days or so and download a demo of sonar (if you are a jaws user there are free scripts that make it really accesable) then get fimiliar with some of the soft synths that come with it and add some other third party ones if you like and play with that over the course of the 30 days or so and see if it works for you.

## Post 21 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Tuesday, 31-Mar-2009 16:47:27

I stopped using JAWS about two years ago. I use Window-Eyes now. So I hope Sonar is accesible with WE. Where can I find it anyway?

## Post 22 by monkeypusher69 (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Monday, 06-Apr-2009 1:39:29

can't speak for window eyes as i use jaws and the free jaws scripts . www.cakewalk.com is the site. its not a free program though

## Post 23 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Thursday, 09-Apr-2009 0:16:42

I did some research and it's about 400 bucks. That was about the same price as the Korg and Alesis models I was considering. And aparently those aren't very accessible.

## Post 24 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Friday, 08-May-2009 10:44:36

Well I also recently bought Sound Forge because I'd heard good things about how well it worked with Window-Eyes. And I'd demoed it before and liked it. But I was looking through the menus and it looks as though Sound Forge can handle software synthes. If there are any SF users on here who've had more experience with the program I'd appreciate it if you could shed a little more light on this.

## Post 25 by dj outrage (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Saturday, 28-Nov-2009 8:59:15

I think soundforge can handle softwear synths, but their a bit of a bastard to work with if their plug ins, I tend to find that anyway.

## Post 26 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Thursday, 03-Dec-2009 13:58:50

Well I found one synthe that sounds like it may work for me once I can save up for it. It's the Moog Minimoog Voyager Old School. It's about 2500 bucks but from all I've heard and read about it it would be fairly blind friendly since it incorporates all or at least many of the features in more modern Moog synthesizers but without the digital controls. This means there's a button, slider or knob for every function. About the only possible down side might be learning what all the knobs and things do, but I'm one of those who'd much rather have physical controls than have to try to learn a bunch of menus. If the menus didn't wrap it would be different, and that's one thing that the Moog Little Phatty Stage II, the other synthe I'm considering, incorporates. There's apparently an option or a toggle that makes it so the menus don't wrap. I've met a few blind folks who use the Little Phatty for that reason. And the LP is considerably less expensive than the Old School and probably takes up less space.