It’s another month of modular, synth and music tech goodies with lots of Eurorack, a chunk of software and the occasional sampler.
Synth South West – Had a lovely time down in Devon for the very first Synth South West hosted by the Pro Synth Network. It was less of a manufacturers expo and more of a coming together of synth enthusiasts to bring and share their amazing bits of gear. There were towers of synths, tables full of drum machines, weird boxes of squeaks and even some software. One bloke had brought along an actual living and breathing Yamaha CS-80, although it was just for looking. I’d brought along a couple of boxes of modular and was quite surprised to find that I was the only one. It was really interesting talking to these seasoned synth people about the possibilities of modular. There were some performances during the day from proper synth people which was cool, if a bit loud. It was a great solid day – great to meet people and chat about modular – and good sausage rolls. The evening was in the Shaftsbury Theatre across the green from the daytime venue where we were treated to some great soundtrack style music from show organiser Peter James-Stephen and then Mike Metlay with Paul Harriman on some weird harp stick thing. The second half saw Ty Unwin play some amazing pieces and then got the crowd to suggest chords and keys and he made up a piece on the spot. Finishing us off was the unexpected last minute booked of Steve Davis and Gaz Williams, who improvised two amazing pieces of music. It was fascinating to watch. The first one was instantly beautiful and superb, the second one started off quite disconnected and you could feel the energy put into finding their way to some amazing bits of connection. It was a great day, well run, fabulous performances, I hope they do it again.
Shakmat Ballista Blast – I have a video review out on this thing. It’s a well thought-out synth voice that has three engines and a playful interface. You have virtual analogue with saw and pulse waves where the two knobs take on the filter and a third does detuning, subs and so on. Next you have wavetables, and there are plenty and you can load your own. The fitler stays but now you can scan the table on the other knob. Lastly we have FM which is more melodic and fun that you usually find – no idea what the knobs do but it’s all good. An envelope can be routed to different parameters and there’s an expander module with an LFO that does something similar. It’s a solid voice that is going to stay around in my case for a while I think – I’ve given the Monumatic some time off.
https://shakmat.com/
XOAC Kamieniec II – I have a video out on this as well. Kamieniec is a good old fashioned Phaser effect built in the brilliantly solid way XAOC does things. It has a few flavours, lots of nice control but no way to turn it off. You can get an upgrade PCB for it that adds a rack of all-pass filters for a lot more intense phasing – but you have to fit it on the back. It’s a shame you can’t easily swap between the two modes. Sounds frigging awesome though.
https://xaocdevices.com/
Akai MPC Sample – Akai has tried all sorts of ways to recapture the thrill of those early MPCs. They tend to lean towards either being huge chunky workstations or computer tethered controllers, neither of which, in my view, capture the immediacy of those early samplers. With the new MPC Sample they might have cracked it. This is brilliant – it’s compact but chunky enough, simple, sampling and reworking without all the hardware or software complexity. It actually might be fun. You’ve got your 16 pads, a couple of knobs, obvious buttons, a simple sequencer and a crappy speaker – everything you need to whip it out and make beats. It has a ton of library, cool effects, batteries, MIDI, resampling and decent I/O. You could say it’s been reinspired by other portable machines like the Teenage Engineering KO or Boss SP4, but that’s no bad thing.
https://youtu.be/eC2vNChCAJM
https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-sample/
Cre8audio Programm – Not quite out yet but Richard Nicol of Cre8Audio and Pittsburgh Modular has been sort of soft-launching over the last couple of weeks. I have one and I’ll be making a video on it next week. I don’t have a manual yet but what we know is that it’s a drum and melodic sequencer. It has 8 trigger outputs for drums and two sets of CV/Gate/Mod for sequencing modular. There’s another two sequencer channels that are only available over MIDI. You have an 8×4 grid of buttons which act as steps, keyboard and data display. You can live record or step record and there are 6 knobs at the top that control various parameters for each step. I’m sure you can chain things into songs and do all sorts of interesting performance things – I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces.
https://youtu.be/KY7MqtRqmZg
ALM FMco and Quaid Gigaslope – The Gigaslope appears to be something like an enormous 13-stage envelope. Each stage has a time knob and curve control so you can sculpt a journey of modulation across the module. Or you can break it up into different envelopes, LFOs and sequences. It has four channels to play with. There’s a per slope quantizer. It looks epic but also really easy to navigate – I would love to have a go on this thing.
https://busycircuits.com/pages/alm047
https://youtu.be/2edjUeQctDU
Also from ALM is the FMco compact FM voice. It has 2 operators and a simple interface to wind in ratio, wave shape and pitch. Designed to be intentionally musical and even has chords – it reminds of the FM mode on the Ballista Blast. I really like this approach to FM for alternative sounds in modular.
https://youtu.be/OKKZiAIDO8c
Erica Synths Konstrukt-8 – Saw this coming. As Moritz Klein was building more drum modules for the Erica Synths EDU DIY system it seemed likely that it was going to be pulled together into some sort of system. And here we have Konstrukt-8. It features 8 modules – kick, snare, hi-hat, FM Drum, BBD delay, mixer, compressor and the new drum sequencer. It runs 4-channels of percussion, with 4 clacky trigger buttons but also has some nice modulation outputs, clock division and performance controls. The system follows the ethos of teaching circuit design while building the modules so you can expect to do stuff on bread board first before soldering the modules together. The bundle is around 500 quid which is pretty awesome for a modular system.
https://youtu.be/hcJCAo_qtKE
https://www.ericasynths.lv/edu-diy-drum-system-konstrukt-8/
Music Thing Workshop Computer – The heart of the brilliant little Workshop system from Music Thing is the computer. It enables the system to generate and be different things depending on what you’re trying to do. It can be a Turing machine, a MIDI interface, a Reverb effect and many more things available on these little program cards which you can program yourself. RYK has recently released a little bundle of cards that offer a tape sampler, vocoder and pitched delay effect. Anyway, Music Thing has just released the Workshop Computer as a stand-alone module so you can use its wizardry in any system. The Workshop is a fascinating little system that I intend to do a video on very soon.
https://www.musicthing.co.uk/Workshop-Computer/
Klevgrand OneShot2 – It’s a drum sampling virtual instrument that brought some really interesting sounds, realism and feel to the game using while somehow staying easy to use. Version 2 messes that about with a motion engine which is essentially built-in modulation to push parameters in interesting directions. You can use the inbuilt envelope designer, LFOs, map in MIDI controllers or connect to the motion control app on your phone and wang it about the place. It sounds silly but actually OneShot2 is actually quite a revelation. I’ve been so bored with virtual drum kits, they always seem massively over-produced or aimed at some genre that doesn’t excite me – which is why I tend to play in modular percussion – whereas OneShot really could tempt me back into incorporating my laptop into my setup. Great sounds, stackable triggers, fabulous effects and easy to use.
https://klevgrand.com/products/oneshot
https://youtu.be/6kYd_kjW75A
Bitwig Studio 6 – Although it was announced a while ago it’s worth pointing out that Bitwig Studio 6 is now available. I really enjoy Bitwig – it has a great flavour and way of working that, for me at least, beats the fiddly and overly complex Ableton Live any day of the week. New features include clip aliases where if you edit one clip it edits all the alias copies as well. It now has global key signatures and scale quantise, new automation tools including automation clips that can be used to apply the same automation to different clips – and works like aliases. There’s also plenty of other enhancements.
https://www.bitwig.com/
https://youtu.be/owUiclQTKRo
Carbonator – Carbonator Audio got in touch to tell me about their simple saturation plugin. You have five juicy flavours ranging from analog warmth (Cola), tube distortion (Cherry), lo-fi (Grape), harmonic exciting (Lemon & Lime) and filter drive (Orange Cream) and then you only have one knob to turn for more or less of that. Sounds nice and there’s a lot of interesting processing going on under the hood. simple, $20.
https://carbinated-audio.netlify.app/
Groovesizer MYNAH – If the MPC Sample looks a bit intimidating then how about a fisher-price pocket calculator style machine? The Groovesizer MYNAH is a cuddly little 6-voice polyphonic sampler that you build yourself based on the ESP32 microcontroller. It has a 16-step sequencer, 16 samples per song, audio inputs, SD card storage and up to 2 minutes sampling time. It has a built in mic and a load of effects. You can manage everything with a web app. Looks kinda fun!
https://youtu.be/dJ1kH249hQ8
https://groovesizer.com/
Condukt MIDI controller app – I don’t usually cover iOS apps but this looked really interesting. It’s a custom MIDI controller with layouts already prepared for 100s of synths and hardware devices. You can create faders as parameter controllers and then save scenes in order to recall all your tweaks – and transition between them either to time or via a crossfader. It has LFOs so you can send in modulations to any MIDI parameter. It has step-sequencers for running melodies to anything that will listen. You can also create patterns and then shape them, morph them or let it run as a Turing machine. You can stick it all on the screen to access exactly what you need. Great for curating your live performances or just injecting some modulation into your desktop synths. It is 20 quid in the app store with no facility to try it out. You’ve also got to worry about how you’re getting MIDI from your phone or ipad into your synth. It’s kind of like what I was doing on the Microsoft Surface 10 years ago with Lemur or Emulator – but this looks very well implimented. Just wish you could try before you buy.
https://youtu.be/FT9_hDPEJbQ
https://condukt.app/how-to/
Liminal Sound Devices Burg – It’s a synth voice and effects processor and possibly a controller for other things. Burg is a fully analog self-contained modular synth with 18 modules, 55 patch points and 38 knobs. It has a pair of sawtooth oscillators, wavefolder, wasp filter, VCAs, envelope, LFOs, delays, distortion, mixing, light sensors, input amp and 6 touch plates. It’s a little difficult to see what’s going on or how it all comes together but it looks like it would be a lot of fun to explore. You can also get it as a kit.
https://youtu.be/HgsOS1Kp_YQ
https://liminalsound.de/vices/burg.html
Korallum Atelier No.1 Nérée – Do what now? This looks like something you’d pick up in the childrens corner of your doctors waiting room. However, once you’ve wiped the dribble off it’s actually quite a remarkable little music machine. It has quite a groovy digital engine and interface that offers up sounds that you then manipulate via the various touch pads. It has a bunch of internal synth engines and an SD card based sampler engine. The pads give touch and pressure control, glide, arpeggiation and strumming. There are some lovely effects and granular for spaciness, and if you dig deeper you’ll discover a 4-track DAW, 5-track drum sequencer and scales all wrapped up inside a whale.
https://youtu.be/Hcun5DYjU6Y
https://www.korallumatelier.com/
Neutral Labs Luna – Brilliant new machine from Neutral Labs that uses the concept of the Lunetta device to create a fascinating synthesizer. Lunetta devices used circuit bent CMOS chips to generate square waves, counters and logic. Luna brings those ideas together with 5 square wave oscillators, binary counters, shift registers and a shit load of logic gates. You can make thing strigger each other through three LPGs and a load of effects. Everything comers from those 5 oscillators and so the memlody and timing is all linked and interwoven. You can make weird sounds that bleep in odd places and it’s totally bloody absorbing. I’ll have a video soon!
https://neutral-labs.com/luna
Dawesome LOVE 2 – Dawesome make interesting and beautiful things. Love 2 is all of that in glittering shovelfuls. It has 20 effects inside built into a wonderfully colourful and intuitively baffling interface. I’m not sure I understood version 1 but it’s the kind of plugin where that doesn’t matter – you can just drop it in and enjoy playing with the immensity of the sound its producing. The top section granulizes your sound while you add up to 6 effects in the bottom bit – give it a shake and you’re off.
https://www.dawesomemusic.com/plugins/love-2/
https://youtu.be/XbbPDyD1TiA
Random Works Wonky – Give it a clock and it will give you an output in one of three ways…. Twice. You can get a delayed trigger up to a beat behind, you can get a flurry of ratchets or you can get a probability based output. It’s a great way to get some beats from a regular clock pulse. Simple, fun, Wonky.
https://youtu.be/RqBpmwobWzU
https://random-works.co.uk/modules/wonky/
Make Noise GRT – This is the complete opposite of Wonky. It’s the completely impenetrable Gestural Time Extractor from Make Noise. It’s a pulse extractor and channel index translator that derives 8 pulses and a gestural stream from the speed of motion of the input. What? I mean… what? As far as I can make out it’s a clock divider wrapped up in oblique and opaque language. I try to hook into the Make Noise vibe from time to time but honestly I find it too exhausting. I’m sure it’s very clever but I’m just not cool enough to get it.
https://youtu.be/GTxYxNtyewU
https://www.makenoisemusic.com/modules/gte/
Bart Instruments b:ond v2 – New from Bart Instruments is b:ond 2. It features a pair of digitally controlled oscillators like you’d find in old Roland synths. The two DCOs can be used separately or linked together, giving you opportunities for hard/soft sync, FM and complex manoeuvres. You get sine, triangle, saw and pulse outputs with PWM, fine tuning and a very welcome octave switch. There’s also an expander which adds glide, waveform selection, VCA mixing, subs, noise and ring modulation. I hope to have a look at these modules very soon.
https://bartinstruments.com/products/b-ond-v2
BlaknBlu Alpha, Foxtrot and Oscar Mk2s – And lastly out friends at BlaknBlu have seen the light and rejigged their excellent range of modules to have a more practical front-panel layout. I really liked the original Oscar Tria swarm oscillator and Foxtrot Duo filter. It gives you supersaw, fat basslines and swarming pads into a choice of three modelled filters which sound fabulous. It’s all digital but I had no complaints about the grooviness of the sound. The layout was aesthetically lovely but the inputs and outputs were in weird places that made it harder to use than it should be. The new versions are a bit more ordered but make more sense in a patching workflow. There’s also now an FM oscillator and a VCA in a similar style.
https://www.blaknblu.com/
Coming up – reviews on the Transparency, Cre8audio Programm, Bastl Alchemist, Neutral Labs Luna, Parting Pedal, B:ond2, Music Thing Workshop and more. I have DIY builds from Thonk to do and many many others. I’m still not sure about Superbooth yet – if anyone wants to pay for me to go I’ll be all for it!