The Vortex is a morphing effects unit meant to be used with a pedal and several switching options. It is also true stereo so both ins and outs are LR or mono if desired but not recommended necessarily. With the (volume type) pedal you can slowly go between and mix the presets or your own versions so it's not being used fully
I used to have a Vortex! LOVED that thing. Played it in my guitar setup. Fantastic, especially once you learn to program (very very easy). As you said, not many have that unit. It is über-fantastic. If you put in an expression pedal, you will be flying. But, in any case, have fun!
Ha! I have not seen the Vortex since my old band split ways. It belonged to the guitarist. We used that thing all the time. Lexicon also had a similar device called the "Alex" and they also had a delay unit I believe but the name escapes me now. This brought back some cool studio days when we would sit there and experiment. Enjoy!
I have used the Lexicon Vortex extensively over the last 20 years for my music and sound design. It is a one of kind, highly unique piece of gear. I think you will find there is a lot to explore Christian.
Awesome!!! Can't wait till we see some vids of him MORPHING with it!! (I guess, requiring an expression pedal?) If you don't mind me asking... How did it magically lock to his tempo when he hit Patch 07 @ 4:31? Maybe it's not 100% perfect, so it's a coincidence? Regardless, badass box!
ah good. that's one of the groovy things about the vortex. many of the patches are also envelope sensitive, so the modulation rates of choruses and tremolos with vary with signal strength. try it on a variety of sound sources (the rhodes will sound lovely on some patches as the chorus on the vortex is delicious and very dynamic). i can see why lexicon gave up on the vortex, as it's very non-traditional, but rtfm, experiment, tweak and i'm sure you'll find some really inspiring stuff!
AWESOME!!! Seems many don't come with a PSU, nor that "double tap" pedal. But, from what I gather, in addition to its included pedal, an expression pedal can be used to scrub through parameters and "morph" between the A/B settings of each preset? Which is supposed to be the coolest feature of this beastly bugger! (I see @Outsider Sound Design uploaded a vid using it as well, and his LCD is changing all over the place, for morphing fun! Morphine!)
You need the pedal to explore the Vortex to A-B the morphing. The Lex MPX-1 also has the same morphing algorithms, plus PCM-80 quality reverb, and 4 additional simultaneous efx, 56 algorithms...so it can really take you places not many other efx processors can, with footswitch and expression pedals...really sets the MPX apart, is the sweepable emulated analog filter. If you're willing to spend the time with it, it will be worth well more than the $300 you paid for it.
RTFM. Vortex became discontinued due to excessive complexity for a guitar pedal (which it is). With the manuals and external pedals, it is fantastic 1990's time effect. Don't criticise for lack of "one knob" (presence-absence) usability, criticise for lack of MIDI and digital i/o. Lexicon should make a plug-in using the Vortex algos, with unlimited delay time.
just checked that out Sandy - er...thanks..? - that was an 'experience' ha. guessing youre maybe pulling my leg here a bit..not sure..but anyway - genuinely meant it - really nice piece of music you did - and that strumming synth effect is really inspiring.
If you fancy something from the other end of the spectrum, checkout Beaver and Krause / Fountains of the depth of water and power - pretty dated (45 yrs or more), but a great modular track.
Maybe it sounds especially derivative to you because you made it :). I listened to Flash Drive and it was nice but really had a different vibe completely from your beat. I also want to hear more.
This is the sort of solution I ended up with to get creative with hands-on synths and not get lost in a mouse-tweaking hole inside the DAW. I used a rackmount behringer X32 mixing system (for space) and patch bay so I can switch the analogue (and digital) synths stuff from out of the box (analogue outs on the behringer straight to monitoring) or digital outputs to DAW. I'm also giving cubasis on an iPAD a go to see if I can get a sequencer going for more instant but saveable composition with less of the DAW hassle. If that ends up feeling too DAWish or clunky then I'll probably unbox an old MPC to do it! Hardware sequencers should be next to make a comeback...
Still have mine. I particularly love the weird looper that drops out parts of the loop as you add new signal. Somebody will make a hit ambient record with this and suddenly they’ll be worth $2000 😂 This video doesn’t really tell anyone what it does, shockingly bad at what it claims to do. but that’s okay. It’ll stay underground.
I always wonder why noone does their reverb demos with one single impulse to really get an idea about the trail. Its either synth arpeggios or guitar strumming.
Shows they don't understand what it does, and don;t understand what potential owners want to hear. Most demo's are to show off the guitar player's skill, not demo the unit. Sad.
This particular effect is super weird, you seriously wouldn’t understand what it does from just an impulse. You need tonal info because many of the patches have harmonic-resonance filters and such.
Christian, Love that your going out of the box. I did skip the 500-series and went with the vintage Danner Cassettes (broadcast, ex Neumann stuff). Absolutely gorgeous sound and a really good vintage wibe. Look it up ;) they are also better to work with if you got big fingers. I've gone all the way lately and summed all of my mixes trough a vintage high end analog console. I really dig it, and the sound satisfies me.
Oh connected some dots. Oct 25th is the special event at the Royal Observatory, the email newsletter about this had a distinc looking US theme desert as the back ground. I wonder which video teasing the choir has a US desert background in. Choir announced this Thursday. and christian maybe shooting a video for it? Loving the modular mondays, never tried modular but these videos temp me so much
Love these videos. I also had a "separate" setup which was more hands on and out of the box, however, with some tweaky template setups and using the sequentix cirklon as the midi / cv hub of the studio, I have found a happy place where the two worlds co-exist, which means I can use the "hands on" stuff much more readily within the more in the box world that pays the bills. Plus, it makes the 'work' music much more fun for me :) I do miss the slightly different physical space that was required with the separate setup though. That felt like an important thing to have. but.... can't have both I guess! :) thanks Christian for the amount of work that goes into these videos
For info on the Vortex, see www.loopers-delight.com/tools/vortex/vortex.html, particularly Andy Butler's page. Here is a good video tutorial, courtesy of Andre LaFosse, ruclips.net/video/RsuDyAh05IM/видео.html.
bleen, maze & mosaic are my favorite patch start-points (and really thats all they are, this thing can get WAY nuttier than your demo just fyi) and i used this thing constantly on my recent pieces of music. this, a midiverb and roland sdx i got all for probably less than 600 and theres loads of gear out therre from this time that still rules and its cheap cause its not fashionable. but its a damn good tool.
hi, thanks for the demo! I actually have some issues with my Vortex, especially when I want to chose a preset (patch) on the right knob, the led screen doesn't display the right number, it's almost always stuck on “3“ and “7“... Well my question is : do you know if there is a factory reset ? Can't find the answer... Thanks!
it's interesting to see that you leave the modular patched up. I think the longest I've ever left a patch is until the next day. Usually I come up with a patch.. mess around a bit and if it's worthy, record it (or leave it till next day) normally I unpatch before going to bed I never really know what's going to happen until it happens and I like that a lot. on the subject of polyphony, the mutable instruments plaits has a 4 note chord mode that is pretty nice. (you can pick chord type/scale do chord inversions and transposition mutable rings also does similar things to the pluck (with a little more refinement possible) both are fantastic modules. ruclips.net/video/JLHgWQVyP2c/видео.html (the first 50 seconds of this is all rings (through clouds)) thumbs up to Sandy for covering his apple logo with a Maschine sticker :)
Sandy, ace work on the Pluck!. You'll LOVE Rings, which offers 1, 2 or 4 voice polyphony. The thing is that more voices = lower sample/bit rate. On Rings the 1 voice sounds massively better than the 4 voice. I suspect its the same for Pluck, in that the processor can only do so much. Is it better to concentrate its goodness into 1 voice or dilute/spread it across 4? its a dilemma.
Damn! I knew that lunchbox rack was going to hurt my wallet! You guys have reminded me that I'm looking for a Lex. Reflex to mod and a Yamaha SPX90 delay to go with (kinda spaced on that search a couple of months back). Nice sweatshirt Sandy my good friend/buddy! Maybe trade a tut on using the Seaboard Rise with BT Phobos for an XL?
If the Vortex is anything like the JamMan you need to keep an eye on the input levels or it distorts nastily. Those 90s “-ex” platform Lexicons (Alex/Reflex/Vortex/JamMan) were interesting but a bit frustrating - e.g. the JamMan really popularised live looping and was great until you realised the device was stereo but the loop itself was summed mono (bah !)
i think both the vortex and the jamman were designed to work at instrument level, rather than line level. i had both and they were a pain to integrate with my rack stuff that was all running at line level.
Simeon Harris I was trying to feed mine from a mini mixer and didn’t have a decent compressor at the time so spent most of my time watching the input like a hawk or the loops would turn into distorted yuck after two overdubs - ended up running input quiet and output cranked until the noisiness of that got annoying ...
you'd think that adding a simple -10/+4db switch on the back wouldn't be too hard. it's a rack unit, not a pedal, so why on earth they thought people would plug their guitars straight into it, i don't know. possibly one of the reasons it didn't sell so well, imo...
The thing to do is to get your wife involved in the process, the way surgeons have assistants in operating rooms. She could keep the patch cords organized. You could hold out your hand and call out the length and color of the patch cord needed, and she could slap it in your hand the way a nurse would hand a scalpel to a doctor.
Its luscious on acoustic guitar. This guy needs the manual to get full results. One of the last presets basically echoes a continuous loop of what you play then when you play extra notes it drops that part of the loop and inserts the new bit. It can get very creative
In the modular world, isn't leaving a path in place for a prolonged period of time sinful? Perhaps not a mortal sin, but certainly a venial one. You don't want those plugs and jacks getting tarnished. ;)
Ha precisely why I tell people in Reddit’s modular group every 6 months to turn all your knobs! I need to add unplug and move around anything that’s been plugged in too long. Every so often I take a plug and q tip with deoxit, like one a year, and make sure my jacks are cleaned. I’m wary of telling people to do that though cause you know at least one person is gonna come back and be like, “I broke my synth!”
The Vortex is a morphing effects unit meant to be used with a pedal and several switching options. It is also true stereo so both ins and outs are LR or mono if desired but not recommended necessarily. With the (volume type) pedal you can slowly go between and mix the presets or your own versions so it's not being used fully
I used to have a Vortex! LOVED that thing. Played it in my guitar setup. Fantastic, especially once you learn to program (very very easy). As you said, not many have that unit. It is über-fantastic. If you put in an expression pedal, you will be flying. But, in any case, have fun!
Ha! I have not seen the Vortex since my old band split ways. It belonged to the guitarist. We used that thing all the time. Lexicon also had a similar device called the "Alex" and they also had a delay unit I believe but the name escapes me now. This brought back some cool studio days when we would sit there and experiment. Enjoy!
Believe that was the Reflex...
Vortex, Reflex, JamMan
one of the best videos i see in my life,thanks for that greetings from miramar,buenos aires,argentina
I have used the Lexicon Vortex extensively over the last 20 years for my music and sound design. It is a one of kind, highly unique piece of gear. I think you will find there is a lot to explore Christian.
Awesome!!! Can't wait till we see some vids of him MORPHING with it!! (I guess, requiring an expression pedal?) If you don't mind me asking... How did it magically lock to his tempo when he hit Patch 07 @ 4:31? Maybe it's not 100% perfect, so it's a coincidence? Regardless, badass box!
Similar at 5:42.
I think its a coincidence.... oh yeah... and just found the pedal!
ah good. that's one of the groovy things about the vortex. many of the patches are also envelope sensitive, so the modulation rates of choruses and tremolos with vary with signal strength. try it on a variety of sound sources (the rhodes will sound lovely on some patches as the chorus on the vortex is delicious and very dynamic). i can see why lexicon gave up on the vortex, as it's very non-traditional, but rtfm, experiment, tweak and i'm sure you'll find some really inspiring stuff!
AWESOME!!! Seems many don't come with a PSU, nor that "double tap" pedal. But, from what I gather, in addition to its included pedal, an expression pedal can be used to scrub through parameters and "morph" between the A/B settings of each preset? Which is supposed to be the coolest feature of this beastly bugger! (I see @Outsider Sound Design uploaded a vid using it as well, and his LCD is changing all over the place, for morphing fun! Morphine!)
You need the pedal to explore the Vortex to A-B the morphing. The Lex MPX-1 also has the same morphing algorithms, plus PCM-80 quality reverb, and 4 additional simultaneous efx, 56 algorithms...so it can really take you places not many other efx processors can, with footswitch and expression pedals...really sets the MPX apart, is the sweepable emulated analog filter.
If you're willing to spend the time with it, it will be worth well more than the $300 you paid for it.
RTFM. Vortex became discontinued due to excessive complexity for a guitar pedal (which it is). With the manuals and external pedals, it is fantastic 1990's time effect. Don't criticise for lack of "one knob" (presence-absence) usability, criticise for lack of MIDI and digital i/o. Lexicon should make a plug-in using the Vortex algos, with unlimited delay time.
used it for techno recordings. AMAZING. Sold it for 4 times what I paid for it to someone in japan.
Really nice piece of music Sandy...wanted to hear more:)
just checked that out Sandy - er...thanks..? - that was an 'experience' ha. guessing youre maybe pulling my leg here a bit..not sure..but anyway - genuinely meant it - really nice piece of music you did - and that strumming synth effect is really inspiring.
If you fancy something from the other end of the spectrum, checkout Beaver and Krause / Fountains of the depth of water and power - pretty dated (45 yrs or more), but a great modular track.
Maybe it sounds especially derivative to you because you made it :). I listened to Flash Drive and it was nice but really had a different vibe completely from your beat. I also want to hear more.
A touch of *Bleen* on your tracks never hurts.
This is the sort of solution I ended up with to get creative with hands-on synths and not get lost in a mouse-tweaking hole inside the DAW. I used a rackmount behringer X32 mixing system (for space) and patch bay so I can switch the analogue (and digital) synths stuff from out of the box (analogue outs on the behringer straight to monitoring) or digital outputs to DAW. I'm also giving cubasis on an iPAD a go to see if I can get a sequencer going for more instant but saveable composition with less of the DAW hassle. If that ends up feeling too DAWish or clunky then I'll probably unbox an old MPC to do it! Hardware sequencers should be next to make a comeback...
Would love a video on your use of the NEVE 8816 with fader box. Setup and how you bus out each element.
Still have mine. I particularly love the weird looper that drops out parts of the loop as you add new signal. Somebody will make a hit ambient record with this and suddenly they’ll be worth $2000 😂 This video doesn’t really tell anyone what it does, shockingly bad at what it claims to do. but that’s okay. It’ll stay underground.
I always wonder why noone does their reverb demos with one single impulse to really get an idea about the trail. Its either synth arpeggios or guitar strumming.
Shows they don't understand what it does, and don;t understand what potential owners want to hear.
Most demo's are to show off the guitar player's skill, not demo the unit. Sad.
This particular effect is super weird, you seriously wouldn’t understand what it does from just an impulse. You need tonal info because many of the patches have harmonic-resonance filters and such.
Mike Dearborn Djax eps. Birds on e. The acid double pack n more used this. Used to blow your mind.
Christian, Love that your going out of the box. I did skip the 500-series and went with the vintage Danner Cassettes (broadcast, ex Neumann stuff). Absolutely gorgeous sound and a really good vintage wibe. Look it up ;) they are also better to work with if you got big fingers. I've gone all the way lately and summed all of my mixes trough a vintage high end analog console. I really dig it, and the sound satisfies me.
Oh connected some dots. Oct 25th is the special event at the Royal Observatory, the email newsletter about this had a distinc looking US theme desert as the back ground. I wonder which video teasing the choir has a US desert background in. Choir announced this Thursday. and christian maybe shooting a video for it? Loving the modular mondays, never tried modular but these videos temp me so much
Love these videos. I also had a "separate" setup which was more hands on and out of the box, however, with some tweaky template setups and using the sequentix cirklon as the midi / cv hub of the studio, I have found a happy place where the two worlds co-exist, which means I can use the "hands on" stuff much more readily within the more in the box world that pays the bills. Plus, it makes the 'work' music much more fun for me :) I do miss the slightly different physical space that was required with the separate setup though. That felt like an important thing to have. but.... can't have both I guess! :) thanks Christian for the amount of work that goes into these videos
For info on the Vortex, see www.loopers-delight.com/tools/vortex/vortex.html, particularly Andy Butler's page. Here is a good video tutorial, courtesy of Andre LaFosse, ruclips.net/video/RsuDyAh05IM/видео.html.
I think that you nailed that Vortex on Preset 05!
Have you tried playing with the Auto-sampler for EXS? I think it may only be in main stage, but obviously once saved....
What a lovely " modular monday "! You reach something...
bleen, maze & mosaic are my favorite patch start-points (and really thats all they are, this thing can get WAY nuttier than your demo just fyi) and i used this thing constantly on my recent pieces of music. this, a midiverb and roland sdx i got all for probably less than 600 and theres loads of gear out therre from this time that still rules and its cheap cause its not fashionable. but its a damn good tool.
Oh yeah I got one! Daft Punk used in their pre-popular era for their live mixes ('96-'97)
Creamy oscillations. Your videos and samples inspire more than words can say
hi, thanks for the demo! I actually have some issues with my Vortex, especially when I want to chose a preset (patch) on the right knob, the led screen doesn't display the right number, it's almost always stuck on “3“ and “7“... Well my question is : do you know if there is a factory reset ? Can't find the answer... Thanks!
Where did you get your new rack or the brand of it (housing the lexicon)? The wood grain / colour is lovely.
Hi Christian, is that a Apogee Symphony MKII in your studio what's your thought on this interface.
Kinda missing the point of the Vortex here. It. The cool thing is customizing the presets and controlling the morphing with a pedal or CV.
Don’t speak too loud... there’s little non overhyped and overpriced 2nd hand gear left out there :(
@@javiceres Too late 😒
it's interesting to see that you leave the modular patched up.
I think the longest I've ever left a patch is until the next day.
Usually I come up with a patch.. mess around a bit and if it's worthy, record it (or leave it till next day) normally I unpatch before going to bed
I never really know what's going to happen until it happens and I like that a lot.
on the subject of polyphony, the mutable instruments plaits has a 4 note chord mode that is pretty nice. (you can pick chord type/scale do chord inversions and transposition
mutable rings also does similar things to the pluck (with a little more refinement possible) both are fantastic modules.
ruclips.net/video/JLHgWQVyP2c/видео.html (the first 50 seconds of this is all rings (through clouds))
thumbs up to Sandy for covering his apple logo with a Maschine sticker :)
Sandy, ace work on the Pluck!. You'll LOVE Rings, which offers 1, 2 or 4 voice polyphony. The thing is that more voices = lower sample/bit rate. On Rings the 1 voice sounds massively better than the 4 voice. I suspect its the same for Pluck, in that the processor can only do so much. Is it better to concentrate its goodness into 1 voice or dilute/spread it across 4? its a dilemma.
Damn! I knew that lunchbox rack was going to hurt my wallet! You guys have reminded me that I'm looking for a Lex. Reflex to mod and a Yamaha SPX90 delay to go with (kinda spaced on that search a couple of months back).
Nice sweatshirt Sandy my good friend/buddy! Maybe trade a tut on using the Seaboard Rise with BT Phobos for an XL?
If the Vortex is anything like the JamMan you need to keep an eye on the input levels or it distorts nastily. Those 90s “-ex” platform Lexicons (Alex/Reflex/Vortex/JamMan) were interesting but a bit frustrating - e.g. the JamMan really popularised live looping and was great until you realised the device was stereo but the loop itself was summed mono (bah !)
Yeah, clocked the overdriving thing, probably because old stuff didn't have massive Limiters in. The one on logic is ridonculous.
i think both the vortex and the jamman were designed to work at instrument level, rather than line level. i had both and they were a pain to integrate with my rack stuff that was all running at line level.
Simeon Harris I was trying to feed mine from a mini mixer and didn’t have a decent compressor at the time so spent most of my time watching the input like a hawk or the loops would turn into distorted yuck after two overdubs - ended up running input quiet and output cranked until the noisiness of that got annoying ...
you'd think that adding a simple -10/+4db switch on the back wouldn't be too hard. it's a rack unit, not a pedal, so why on earth they thought people would plug their guitars straight into it, i don't know. possibly one of the reasons it didn't sell so well, imo...
Merging one set of modules with another set of modules… I think someone is hooked! 😅
Hah, which one of you bought it that Lexicon?
You could put an envelope with a slow attack after the pluck...
Quite interesting! 👍
Maag EQ is probably my favourite. Use it loads of stuff
Pluck is simply the gateway drug to Rings...
Both of you shush shush shush, I want to say married!
And Rings is a gateway to not getting anything else done...
2x Rings, Elements, 4x Braids... She hasn't left me yet...
The thing to do is to get your wife involved in the process, the way surgeons have assistants in operating rooms. She could keep the patch cords organized. You could hold out your hand and call out the length and color of the patch cord needed, and she could slap it in your hand the way a nurse would hand a scalpel to a doctor.
Where did Sandy get that jumper?
Anyone know how it sounds on stuff like vox, acoustic instruments, etc? (Cheesy?)
Its luscious on acoustic guitar. This guy needs the manual to get full results. One of the last presets basically echoes a continuous loop of what you play then when you play extra notes it drops that part of the loop and inserts the new bit. It can get very creative
You can't Vortex w/out the Morph.
I hear a Scottish accent.
This reminds me of using ADAT machines at music college 😂
In the modular world, isn't leaving a path in place for a prolonged period of time sinful? Perhaps not a mortal sin, but certainly a venial one. You don't want those plugs and jacks getting tarnished. ;)
Ha precisely why I tell people in Reddit’s modular group every 6 months to turn all your knobs! I need to add unplug and move around anything that’s been plugged in too long. Every so often I take a plug and q tip with deoxit, like one a year, and make sure my jacks are cleaned. I’m wary of telling people to do that though cause you know at least one person is gonna come back and be like, “I broke my synth!”
I have a Vortex that needs a new home... msg me if your interested :)
interested. still have it?
dissapointing