Recreation of Roland D50 "Soundtrack" patch

Hello all! I've had a bit of fun today remaking the soundtrack patch from the Roland D50.

 

This sound is all over the place (maybe not quite as much as the DX7 Electric Piano, however) and is one of my all time favorites.

 

There's actually a variant of this sound already built into logic, hidden away in the QuickTime Music Synthesizer found within the plugin: DLSMusicDevice, and is accessible with just a program change to the right value. But this variant is based off of Roland's General MIDI sound set, which is strictly PCM-based ––– meaning that the sound is just coming from a poorly sampled and looped audio clip (Not particularly coherent or completely accurate, but I'm painting a picture here).

 

While they did an O.K. job with the GM version of this sound, a lot of the magical dynamic character of the original sound on the D50 (and other synths in the same series) was lost. Therefore, I have recreated the original patch in alchemy and added a few fun twists to the sound that you can control via the Smart Controls section. If you want to sound closer to the original, all you really have to do is keep those knobs in the Smart Controls at 0.

 

Attached I have provided the Channel Strip which contains this sound – please let me know if you enjoy it! And if you do, use it a lot

 

And a demo: https://instaud.io/2Slx

 

Thanks for the time to read my small novel, now get out there and play some music.

 

 

 

 

 

For those who do not know where to place the channel strip:

Users/•yourname•/Music/Audio/Audio Music Apps/Channel Strip Settings/Instrument

 

If you have not already, I highly recommend creating at least a little bit of a folder hierarchy here where you can categorize and store your sounds for easy access and use, like so:

Cinema Score.cst

One thing I might add, is that you may consider tweaking the envelope of this sound. I personally like very dry and short releases, though you may do something such as extend the release time of the first ADSR envelope to get a more traditional pad-like sound. I did not include a method in the smart controls to change these envelopes, so that may also be something in which you consider.