As I covered in an earlier blog post, getting new synth patches in magazines was a cool thing - and while entering in the patch charts back then for a cool new patch was quite fun (the sense of anticipation as the sound gradually emerged as you set each parameter I always found enjoyable) - today, it's probably a bit tedious for many folks.

New Feature - Patch Files

In order to add some value to these patches in the archive, I've added the ability to upload audio demos of each patch, sysex files for the hardware synths, and plugin presets for the various emulations of these synths alongside the patch charts, so a patch can be quickly auditioned, and, if you like it, the preset can be downloaded for you to load up and use.

Here you can see for this CZ patch, "It's Krafty", I've added brief audio demos from the two CZ plugin emulations (this is interesting as you can compare differences between them) - a sysex file for the hardware synths, and plugin presets for each of the two CZ plugins in various formats.

(I no longer have any CZ hardware.)

See: "It's Krafty" - from Patchwork (MT Apr 1989)

I've made a start of creating presets and audio demos of the synths I can, starting with the CZ series, and will continue to work through them bit by bit - but I obviously don't have all the synths, so I could do with a bit of help from the community to enter in patches for synths you have, and create audio demos, and/or preset files.

Whatever you can do will be a great help and useful to the community.

To this end, on articles featuring patches, there is an upload form where you can upload your files. If you can help us out, that would be great, and the more patches that other people do, the smaller the queue I'm working through will be, so I can work on other content too.

Articles that have file downloads will be indicated in the search results and issue contents with an orange "Downloads" badge:-

Remember that individual articles often have a few patches for different synths, so even if an article already has downloads it doesn't mean it's complete - there may be other patches that also need files.

As before, you can find synth patch articles by going to browse by Features, and choosing "Synth Patches" as the topic:-

> Features, Topic "Synth Patches"

Or, going via the browse by Gear pages, you can choose synth options (eg, "Synth -> Casio" or "Synth -> Yamaha -> DX7", and entering "patchwork" or "patch" into the text filter field to narrow the search results down.

I'm looking forward to hear some of those patches I've only seen, and maybe hear some of your synth chops in the process! So let's get patching!