Sunday, March 29, 2020

New! A photo-realistic Stylophone GEN R-8 patch sheet

One of the biggest challenges with using most analog synthesizers is coming up with a reasonable way to save patches. The Stylophone GEN R-8 is no exception. Yesterday, because I had to stay at home all day due to COVID-19 restrictions, I decided to do something about that.

First, I spent multiple hours manipulating photos of my GEN R-8 to create a rather elaborate patch sheet template in Photoshop.  Buttons lights up when you turn them on. Knobs can be rotated. Even patch cables can be connected between four output jacks (SQR2 out, both LFO outs, and Env out) to any other input jack, with each source getting a different color of cable. It's a really cool tool for making a photo-realistic patch sheet for saving and sharing via computer and the web.



It's not so good if you want to print it and manually mark it with a pen, then save the sheet in a 3-ring binder.  So, today, I made some further modifications and came up with this more simple version:




You can draw lines on the knobs to indicate their positions, and write "ON" or make a check mark on the buttons that are turned on.  To indicate patch cables between two jacks, you can color them in with highlighter pens using a different color for each cable.

You are welcome to download and print blank copies of this patch sheet for your personal, non-commercial use. (Don't sell the blank document but you may share it for free. Don't remove the row of copyright and website information at the bottom.) Click this link  or the thumbnail image above to get the .pdf document.

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UPDATE July 8, 2020 - I received some feedback that my template isn't ideal for printing because it uses too much black ink.  So here is a revised template that does away with the photo realism and allows room for two patches on a single sheet of paper.



The label text is less sharp than before, but I think you should still find it useful. Click this link or the thumbnail image above to get the revised .pdf document.

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UPDATE July 9, 2020 - On the Stylophone Official Facebook page, Markus Schroeder has shared a template he just made using vector graphics and text.  It is much sharper and cleaner than mine, which I made from a photograph of the actual instrument panel.  If you don't love my template, try his. I like it! His .pdf template file is downloadable at this link.




Creative Commons License

The Stylophone GEN R-8 printable patch sheets by Rick Reid are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be requested at https://www.rickreid.com.