Demoing Zynthian

Hi!

Our local Hacklab is having a workshop on electronic music (pd, Rpi etc). I’m going to take my Zynthian setup along to show it off. Does anyone have suggestions for which of myriad of features that I should demo?

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I would showcase the Piano, Rhodes, Wurly and Hammond.

Then I would have a snapshot with a few layers of synths and a DAW running many channels of midi.

I would also have something like Raffo with some parameters cc’ed to knobs on a keyboard

Í would also make a long effects chain on something like a Rhodes. Compressor, amp sím, reverb, etc.

Then definitely MOD UI

Show how MIDI and audio recording can be used as sketchpads for ideas. May be worth demonstrating how a minimal build can be created, i.e. with QWERTY (or similar) keyboard, HDMI and built-in sound. This allows people to get into Zynthian immediately whilst waiting for their kit to arrive. (You don’t need to configure yours this way but take a keyboard to demonstrate.)

Also, print out some promotional materials, e.g. cards (slips of paper) with Zynthian website details. Maybe @jofemodo has a suitable template - like business cards that can be printed many to a sheet and cut out.

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Great idea.

Maybe you could have the website and forum open on a computer.

Is there any possibility this demo can be videoed and shared? I’m sure there are lots of forum users (including me) that could benefit from watching this demo!

Hi @Andy!

Regarding the demo itself, i think @Humi advice is quite wise. Of course, it depends a lot of your audience. Most of pianist-keyboardist will be interested in classic piano/organ sounds (Piano, Rhodes, Wurli, Clavinet, Hammond) and also on vintage synthesizer emulators (DX7/Dexed, OBXd, Minimoog/Raffo, etc.). If your audience are Electronic Music Producers, then they will be more interested in multi-timbric features, remote control (MIDI learning, RTP-MIDI, etc.), …

Perhaps you could ask to them what would they like to do with Zynthian … :wink:

Regarding promo material, i have some designs for cards, diptychs, posters, etc. although a little bit out-dated. In the next weeks, everything will be updated.

pildoras.pdf (810.5 KB)

visit_card.pdf (91.7 KB)

flyer_mfbcn17.zip (6.9 MB)

Hi Guys,

Lot’s of good suggestion here. It’s going to be a small event with a handful of geeks showing their homebuilt gear to each other. Hopefully it leads to good discussions and further collaborations. One of the themes is pd which I’ve dabbled with in PC but never attempted in the Zynthian. Maybe I’ll connect with a pd Guru or two at the event.

I’ll create a few snapshots to demo the different engines & show the MOD-UI. There will be PCs around so I can show the website/community. I’m reluctant to hook the Zynthian to a DAW although it’s a great way to show midi channel usage. It would be hard to explain which sounds are coming from MAC & which from Zynthian. The audience are Finnish and it is not my native language :wink:

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Touch screen XY demos seem to interest people . . .

Also stress the reliability. I’ve had machines up for months and they have just appeared as pianos to non technical people ( my kids). They expect them to work and they do.

I made the demo last night & got very warm feedback. Most popular features were midi learn, rotary encoders, the active forum & professional feature/bug handling.

I got a few questions about latency & didn’t have any numbers to share. People who tried my setup didn’t notice any latency problems.

There was no network available so I couldn’t show the WebUI. My WiFi hotspot wasn’t working.

The other part of the workshop covered music making with pd. Now I’ll have to try it in Zynthan.

There was also an interesting demo of axoloti. It looks like a fun toy to play with.

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