A bumper collection of music technology news, synthesis and modular with a ton of software and a heap of hardware too. Links to the products are below and I’d be grateful if you could use my affiliate links if you are planning to buy something.
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FLAT SIX SHROUD OF TURIN SPONSOR
This month’s Monthly is sponsored by the lovely people over at FlatSix Modular and they wanted me to point out the new firmware update on the Shroud of Turing. The Shroud of Turing is a brilliantly named Turing machine in 1U that has some cool unique features. First of all it has a keyboard so you can put in a custom quantize which you can save in up to 6 slots. The knob lets you go from random to fully locked in a twist, you can nudge sequences, vary length, range and reset it. The new firmware brings in portamento, full saving and recall of everything and the ability to shift the window. Shroud of Turin is on my list of things to review and so I hope to have a full video soon.
If you’d like to sponsor a Molten Monthly and have your product or event right up the front then just get in touch.
Right, since suggesting that software people are welcome to tell me about their software, I’ve had a bumper inbox full of NFR codes and weird and interesting bits of software. I will include as many as I can and then relax into quite a lot of cool hardware.
Let’s start with a quick bunch of audio effects plugins, which is not something I cover that often.
Audio Spices Anise – A weird and interesting hand-crafted pitch-gliding reverb. Rather than just fading out it starts to drift, like the whole space is moving. In some ways it makes it super-niche, but on the other it’s a really lovely idea to have knocking around in the plugin folder
https://audio-spices.com/anise
https://youtu.be/MsturhUSf_U
Martinic TG100 Reverb – talking of reverb Martinic has had a crack at the reverb from the Yamaha TG100 General MIDI tone module from 1991. Martinic has already released a modelled TG100 virtual instrument that you can have for free, but now we can use the digital effects on other things. It has 8 algorithms spread across Hall, Room, Plate and Delay. It has a compact digital sound that’s not often found outside 90s sound modules. It looks appropriate and sounds like nicely 90s.
https://www.martinic.com/en/products/tg100-reverb
https://youtu.be/guWRIQAnmys
Sampleson Aeronaut – the latest in a never ending line of synths and effects from Sampleson is Aeronaut that reports to generate cinematic sound from anything you plug into it. I guess it’s like a shimmer-style granular reveb that freezes and mixes it with the original. It has a cool 10 second loop and an astronaut knob that turns the thing upside down in space. I guess AI generated videos are becoming normalised which is a shame because it sucks the energy and believability out of a marketing video, but then Sampleson have been doing all sorts of AI stuff with generating funky piano lines and guitar effects so I guess they are super-comfortable with it.
https://sampleson.com/aeronaut.html#
https://youtu.be/Nv4RYGF_Z2Q
Kael Alden Headspace – A great looking tape effect plugin that has tape emulation on one side and spacey dub echoes on the other. It’s designed to look like a cassette and because we’re easily pleased it definitely adds to the experience. How delicious is it? Oh it’s fantastic – I love all the warbly vintage wobble stuff, just excellent. Nicely designed nostalgia.
https://kaelalden.com/products/headspace
https://www.instagram.com/p/DWXA0YICjtN/
Stranis Focus – This is a loudness and clarity plugin that’s beautifully designed with an interface that definitely reflects the intention of the plugin. It uses a filtered signal from the mid channel as a sidechain for a compressor which pushes the Focus into action as the sound builds. It also has clipping and limiting modes.
https://www.stranis.com/
https://youtu.be/AVV8TmulXqw
Noctalune Audio NoctaTape – A nice little tape saturation plugin with a lot of warmth, movement and imperfection. It’s Noctune’s first plugin and it both looks and sounds nice. Could do with being animated – we’ve almost come to epxect it from tape plugins.
https://www.noctaluneaudio.com/shop
Raredata Compa – This is one of those furious developments that’s definitely solving a problem or adding badly needed functionality that the developer is convinced is essential for life and music to continue, but leaves the rest of us slightly baffled. Compa is a Pi-based companion app for grooveboxes and samplers like the Roland SP404 Mk2 and Roland P6 but could do similar things with a lot more bits of hardware. It gives you a touch-screen interface over every aspect of the hardware and builds in all sorts of usability features. You can get in really deep to features you didn’t know existed. He’s also working on an iOS version for your phone and ipad.
https://raredata.net/compa
Samplescout – a QWERTY keyboard-based sample manager that makes you a whizz at pulling together collections of samples from the masses of files on your computer. So you have a long list, you scan through with some keys, hit a key to audition and hit another key to throw the sample into a bag with other samples. It’s very fast, it will auto-audition and it’s remarkable how easy it is to build a bag of samples you might actually use. Rename, export in whatever format you like and off you go
https://samplescout.app/
https://youtu.be/W5AdeSH8wbw
Stronghand Audio Archangel – Apparently, we don’t want cables in our modular synth and Archangel solves all that by removing the little buggers and being a new generation of modular synth – ooooo. Archangel loads with a massive screen of never ending rectangles into which you can load various modular-style modules. So oscillators, filters, envelopes etc. Then, instead of looking at inputs and outputs, and dragging an exploratory patch cable from one thing to another, you click on the “Connect” button and choose destinations from a list. It sounds all right, it’s got a basic collection of modules, and looks like it was programmed on the ZX Spectrum but for someone with a very ordered mind it could be very clean approach to modular synthesis. Me? I prefer the mess of accidental modular mayhem.
https://stronghandaudio.com/
https://youtu.be/loygPtGK1n8
Tim Exhile Karst – Tim has been hatching world changing ideas again. He’s come to the conclusion that what he likes to build are systems rather than instruments. That if he could design a system in which people could make music on the instruments they build themselves, then he really might be onto something. It feels like an evolution of Native Instruments Reaktor which has been the platform Tim has developed on for decades. Reaktor hasn’t seen an update for years and NI, since being acquired by InMusic, has laid off loads of staff. So, perhaps, this has prompted Tim to take what he loves about Reaktor and design his own system. Karst is the result. It combines pattern generation, sound design and modulation with a node-based instrument builder. It looks amazing already and it’s still only in beta. He’s looking to release in the autumn but is open to people having a fiddle right now.
https://app.karst.systems/?wasm=1
https://youtu.be/Cy4P2kGC0ss
Dev Ocean Modular – Here we have another software modular environment, this time it’s all nodes and cables. It’s an infinite canvas with 140 modules and a complete ecosystem of synthesis building. It has a ton of effects, lots of modulators, generators, filters and then you can always build your own… sounds familiar. It looks immense and fiddly, probably intimidating, but gorgeously done. It runs alongside your DAW and sort of bridges itself in – which sounds like a Rewire-style nightmare, but hey, it’s probably easy.
https://youtu.be/7ribwLi3kzo
Soundpaint looper – I remember being quite impressed when Soundpaint first emerged a few years ago. It looked a bit understated but the sound and libraries was excellent. I’ve lost track in recent times but they did ask me to review some of their library which I just haven’t got around to yet. Anyway, they caught my attention with some kind of looper thing that appears to be running in their host software. Apparently it’s a tape-style recording studio with 5 tape machines and the ability to loop and layer. It will record anything – doesn’t have to be a Soundpaint instrument, it could be a dropped in audio loop or a voice from a microphone. It looks like a lot of fun and great shift away from the usual orchestration you’d normally associate with sample libraries.
https://youtu.be/29JorZLsUms?list=PLUkCIeBrEKHE
https://youtu.be/kzDxqmykOzg
https://soundpaint.com/products/looper#looper-content
Broekn Labs ChopGrid – Cool, slick app that grabs 16 samples from your computer, chops them out and serves them back to you as a random loop of awesome stuff. You can flip them, reorder them and let ChopGrid give you a loop you’d never make on purpose. It has 18 modules of percussive and melodic sound generation that you can use instead of samples and let ChopGrid do the work of looping it all together. Looks like a lot of fun.
https://chopgrid.com/
Tunary Instruments Argish and Silt – A pair of fascinating diversions from Tunary Instruments. Argish is a self-playing drone synth. You just set it going and fiddle with parameters – or not. It moves through chord progressions, through moods and concepts, all the time reshaping and moving forward. There’s no AI at work here it’s all synthesis and music theory with stochastic algorithms pushing notes around. You can run it in your browser and just dream your way into it – lovely. Following on is Silt which is a generative tape machine of self-playing loops combined with atmospheric sounds and general crappiness. It drifts in and out of phase and encourages us to do the same. Both these instruments are little generative works of art – fascinating. I just wish the tape itself animated 😀
https://tunaryinstruments.com/play/
Jagger Software Ph@Controller – This is clever MIDI wrapper for Bluetooth devices to turn them into expressive MIDI controllers. So you could turn your game controller, mouse, remote control, ring mice (whatever they are) and other jazzy devices and map them to controllers in your software or hardware. All the cleverness happens in the app which provides the mapping of control-to-MIDI but if you have bluetooth widgets knocking about then it could be a useful way of getting them involved in your music making. Or it could just be a website trying to sell me a bluetooth thingy from Aliexpress via an affiliate link.
https://www.jaggersoftware.jaggernet.com/
MPE Insight – A beautiful MIDI visualiser that’s specifically designed for MPE but handles regular MIDI too. It has all sorts of looks and themes and is pretty spectacular – fabulous for live performance and stuff. Almost worth patching a MIDI output from something in modular just to run it.
https://youtu.be/Hu1zvj9w2Ak
https://www.christophek.de/MPEInsight/#top
Rhodes Clav Pro – Another fantastic emulation from Rhodes Music, this time it’s the Clav, probably my least favourite classic piano sound. Yes I know it’s terribly funky and has all that energy and attack to it, but I always loved the vibes of the tines. Anyway, sounds phenomenal, packed with vintage pickups, effects, adjustable cabinets, mic positions and all that funk.
https://rhodesmusic.com/rhodes-clav-pro-plugin/
https://youtu.be/2cINWzs2IIM
XAOC Skopje – Dual quantizer with two independent channels and another one of those screens we love so much. It has a bunch of scales inside and you can add more via a micro sd card. I get the feeling that the length and depth of scales is what’s important here. So is Glide which gets its own field on the menu for easy access. The other control is assignable and mapped to the CV In, which, among other things, can change scales and stuff – excellent! You can make your own scales which actually means you can create a map of voltages which you could actually use for precise parameter modulation of other things. There’s clever stuff in here that is probably beyond what I would use a quantizer for.
https://youtu.be/4wDTkn1bgZs
https://xaocdevices.com/main/skopje/
Tremodular Interactive build guide – Tremodular have come up with a really cool interaction build guide to their modules that I just wanted to highlight. It takes you through the build component by component with an overview of the PCB. Befaco do something similar with their build guides and I’ve found it really useful. Tremodular’s take is really clean. Anyway, they’ve sent me their Permida module to try out the guide and I’ll do a video on how I found that. Permida is a voltage controller switch and comparator that I think could be a really interesting way of switching between sequences.
https://tremodular.com/guide/
Mach Devices MD-7 – The latest achingly cool looking music box is the MD-7 from Mach Devices. What makes this groovy and different is the two haptic discs on the front – looking like and behaving like tape reels – or something. It has a cool looking keyboard and a really nice screen, but the MD-7 wants you to keep fingering those discs – that’s where the action is. It’s all open source and there’s very little information on what sort of synth it is, but there’ some seriously cool stuff going on with those discs.
https://machdevices.com/collections/all
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O3mH7BuhEOw
ATOV Punkbuss – We’ve all been enjoying the Faderpunk and it’s array of modular possibilities – but there’s been once annoyance, in that taking it to a gig you have to repatch all 19 sockets. Not any more. With the magic of PunkBus you can now patch it all with one cable. Punkbus is a module that sits in the your rack and mirrors all the connections on the Faderpunk – then attaches to it with (weirdly) a HDMI cable. Potentially this means you can leave everything perminantly patched in your system and this, for me, highlights exactly where Faderpunk gets the most awesome. While it is brilliant to be able to constantly reconfigure Faderpunk, it only really comes into its own once you decide what you’re going to use and start learning to use it. Punkbus will encourage this approach and I think will make it far more likely to become the centre of what you’re doing, rather than a fun thing to play with.
https://atov.de/products/punkbus
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbTLsi1kfXi/?img_index=4
Jasmine & Olive Trees Doppler and Door – There’s some funky firmware shinanegans going on with these two, or is it three modules. It uses some clever magic to switch firmwares and functionality when you drop an overlay onto the module… which is weird, but fabulous. Anyway, one firmware is Door, which is a stereo lowpass gate that dynamically responds to triggers and pitch to vary the response of the LPG. It has wavefolding for some excellent growl and filter controls to really get creative with what is often a boringly useful function. Watching the demo it feels more like a characterful filter with a built in envelope rather than what I’d normally expect from an LPG. Another firmware turns it into an ADSR with VCA and VCF and another is a dual AD envelope. Doppler is a weird idea that takes any input and turns it into a percussion sound. It can morph anything into everything and so the output is entirely dependent and what you feed it.
https://youtu.be/_oi-4kkprow
https://jasmineandolivetrees.com/products/doppler
Synido TempoKEY K32 Play – Synido sent this to me a while back and sadly I’ve been too busy to get into it. I hope to do a full review soon. But I was initially sceptical, it just seemed like a chinese knock-off of the Akai MPK Mini Play, but when I looked into Synido I found that they are actually trying very hard to bring a sense of their own style and character to chinese knock offs – and that’s to be applauded I think. So the TempoKEY K32 Play is a mini-key MIDI controller with 8 knobs, 8 pads. Bluetooth MIDI, battery powered, internal sounds and a built-in speaker. The sounds are the classic General MIDI set, good for everything and nothing, has an arpeggiator, a headphone output. Whack it through some effects and it will sounds awesome. It’s a cool looking MIDI controller, with sounds that you can just play.
https://www.synido.com/en-gb/collections/musical-equipment/products/synido-tempokey-k32-midi-keyboard-controller
https://youtu.be/pK-WhkVYYvs
Analogue Solutions Filtopia – a limited edition desktop synth from Analogue Solutions that gives them a break from making the massive Collosus and lets them talk to normal synth people again. Filtropia has five analogue filters, wired in parallel. You have a master lowpass/hipass and then three bandpass filters offset from it. In a fabulous control panel you can route envelopes, LFOs and sequences to each one. Then it has 3 VCOs for a massive sound, 2 VCAs, 3 ADSR.s 2 LFOs, noise a sub and an 8-step sequencer. Sounds amazing, lovely box, slightly odd looking.
https://youtu.be/B7SxgzSLOkQ
https://www.analoguesolutions.com/filtopia
Timo Rozendal Filler – Gosh darn it, I was talking to Mzourack about a very similar idea like 6 months ago which ended up with me using the Molten Bypass module as a switch to switch between drum patterns in order to throw fills into a performance. Because, as Timo says, drum patterns in modular can get a bit boring – you tend to set them and let them go so you can play elsewhere. Filler takes incoming triggers and builds variations and fills to throw in over the top. It’s far more complex and versatile than what I was looking at, but offers an amazing amount of control over 6 channels of drum triggering. It makes perfect sense to me – you need to put something in between your drum sequencer and drum modules that interrupts the sequence with fills – that’s what this does. It’s brilliant, although if I’m being honest, it’s a little overcomplicated and I definitely think there’s room for something simpler from me 😀
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7KtK0vi_JNY?feature=share
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4528492199/eurorack-filler-built-module-drum-fill
Arcaico Stigma – a massive, crazy-bonkers dual tube stereo processor designed for sonic destruction. It’s fully analogue, built from decaying circuits and is full of unpredictable feedback and a heavy noise floor. It can filter, saturate, manipulate and destroy, but when given the right amount of encouragement it will self-oscillate in to ominous waveforms and percussive explosions. Araico has gone to a lot of trouble putting forward a story and background with stop-frame animation and wild idea – it’s awesome. They’ve also produced a desktop version that’s more than the module in a box – they’ve added proper jacks, a footswitch, power switch and cooling grill.
https://www.arcaico.eu/prodotto/stigma-eurorack-tube-processor/
https://youtu.be/P5Y8nup4xGQ
Erica Synths Razornator – Stereo effects unit developed with 112dB which features 5 tuned resonating delay lines that emulate the resonance of physical objects such as bodies, rooms and structures. You can create chord-like intervals that alter the harmonic content of what’s going through. It has an envelope follower, filter, preset morphing and save/recall for all 12 parameters. It’s like adding ghost pings to something; it picks out harmonics and emphasises things in a beautifully musical way.
https://www.ericasynths.lv/razornator-3816/#description
https://youtu.be/catz17mAlFs
Hampshire Electronics Cerberus – This is a hybrid synth voice that centres around an analogue VCO that’s used to tie its character to a pair of digital synth engines and control system. Each engine can be 6-operator FM, wavetable, chords or a noise source and you can run the independently or together with the analogue core for a super-thick and juicy synth voice. It has a quantizer, voice mixer, reverb and chorus, stereo output and each digital engine has a multimode filter and envelopes. You can even store patches. It’s another module with a screen that brings an awful lot of power, but you have to entangle yourself with an encoder to access it.
https://hampshireelectronics.co.uk/products/cerberus-full-hybrid-analogue-digital-voice
https://youtu.be/eZIC0Ow_Ssw
Trilling Synths Darp – From the gloriously colourful Trilling come Darp, a dual arpeggiator. They share the same chord or scale but have independent modes and control. There’s a disappointing lack of knobs with everything reduced to four buttons, a screen and an encoder. But the idea is that you set up a scale and off it goes. What I can’t quite work out is whether the chords being played can be changed or accessed via CV. It has a MIDI input, which is something Trilling really like in their modules, and that can bring in note and scale changes, but for modular I feel it needs to be CV-able and it’s not clear to me yet how that works or if it does.
https://www.trillingsynths.com/products/darp
https://youtu.be/XQw25IGLqNM
Moddict Modular Orphiser and Poet Selector – Something fascinating from Japan modular makers Moddict. Orphiser is built around an Accumulator, inspired by the Cirklon and held inside a physics engine that adds inertia, gravity and randomness. I don’t fully understand it but what I can make out is that it’s a generator of interesting shapes and dynamic modulations. Their other module is the Poet Selector filter which combines a digital filter and lo-fi processor with the analogue filter from the Akai S612 sampler. It’s key feature is being able to morph between 8 different presets.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DasMKUpzPsr/
https://youtu.be/aLiHKt6rX_Y
https://moddict.stores.jp/
Ethereal Electronics Shooting Stars – Delicious looking stochastic sequencer that uses 4 encoders to pull together an engine of interactive melody making. There’s a bit of holding and turning and selections going on but then you can access transition times, length, scales, slew, vibrato, gates, variation, accents and all sorts. The notes fall from the top of the module down the fabulously slanted LED lines just like shooting stars – it’s a beautiful thing. The master of Stochastic is of course the Stochastic Inspiration Generator, with its per-note interaction, but it always had trouble with menus and navigation to get any deeper – I’m interested to see how well this copes with accessing things while still staying creative and on top of things. The First batch sold out in 24 hours, they should be shipping more in August.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DW689XQAHpg/
https://etherealelectronics.nl/products/shooting-stars