Introduction to the G2 system

Hardware and software

In the rest of this book the Clavia G2 system will be used to conduct experiments. The G2 system is a fully fledged modular synthesizer system based on fast DSP hardware. Clavia has released free demo software that emulates this G2 system in software. The demo software is less powerful as the DSP hardware, but is still powerful enough to conduct the experiments described later in this book. The good thing about the demo software is that there are hardly limitations in synthesis functionality or sound quality. Instead the limitations are in polyphony; as the demo software is basically monophonic while the hardware system is both polyphonic and four part multitimbral. The demo software is the ideal tool for learning and can be used very well in a teaching or workshop environment. There are versions for Apple Macintosh and Windows PC platforms. But although the demo software is somewhat limited in power, it still requires a fast personal computer with a 2 to 3 GHz CPU.

The latest demo software can be downloaded for free from the Clavia website at www.clavia.se. The full G2 manual can be downloaded as a .pdf file. You should always refer to the G2 manual for G2 specific subjects, as they go beyond the scope of this book. In the rest of this book it will be assumed that you have familiarized yourself with both the G2 demo software and the G2 manual.

The next few chapters will familiarize you with some of the general principles used in the G2 system that are not explained in detail in the G2 manual. These principles can in many instances be mapped on other systems as well. So, if you are using another system you will find most principles back on your system, although they might in cases be named slightly different.