More MPE Expressions for Arturia Pigments 7 – Sounds and Presets
This week, Marc Barnes delivers volume 2 of his MPE Expressions for Arturia’s Pigments 7, plus we have free sounds for Arturia’s SQ80.
More MPE patches for Pigments from Marc Barnes with MPE Expressions 2, plus a free bank for Arturia’s SQ80 V, an atmospheric bank for U-He’s astonishing Zebra 3 and some industrial sounds for KORG’s multi/poly synth.
Sounds and Presets – More MPE Expressions
MPE Expressions Vol. 2 for Arturia Pigments by Marc Barnes
Back in January of this year, Marc Barnes released his first batch of MPE Expressions sounds for Arturia’s Pigments 7 software synth. Now he’s back with volume 2, and the great sounds just keep on coming! This is great news for people who may have recently invested in Expressive E’s Osmose CE!
Whilst the Osmose Synth‘s built-in Haken Audio Engine was somewhat difficult to program, Expressive E have been actively trying to convince their users that there is a whole new world out there of MPE compatible synths that pair beautifully with their unique keyboard mechanism.
Completely blown away by his Osmose Synth, Marc set about creating patches in synths that he knew well that supported this form of polyphonic expression. And now we have volume 2 of MPE Expressions that delivers 32 expressive and interesting patches.
Each of the 32 presets in MPE Expressions Vol. 2 includes macros, velocity and pressure-based expression with a focus on performance. Marc uses a lot of what Pigments has to offer in order to serve up hugely expressive sounds that cover a wide range of styles.
Marc makes the sounds in MPE Expressions Vol. 2 with his Osmose, but they should also work well with other MPE controllers, such as KORG’s KeyStage and Ableton’s Push 3. And if you don’t have an MPE controller, don’t fret because Marc has mapped the control of certain parameters to the mod wheel!
MPE Expressions for Pigments is available direct from Marc’s website for just £6.99!
SQ-80 Vol.2 for Arturia SQ-80 V by Larry Poulton
The last time we featured the work of Larry Poulton in this column, we caused him a spot of bother! Such was the rush on his web hosting that his provider locked everything down. I was mortified but Larry assured me it was a nice problem to have!
He has since moved his online storage to a much more reliable service, so you shouldn’t encounter any problems with his latest bank, created specifically for Arturia’s SQ80 V, SQ80 Vol. 2. A modest but very interesting bank of sounds for this software recreation of Ensoniq’s SQ-80.
The SQ-80 was the successor to the earlier ESQ-1 and used wavetables in its Cross Wave synthesis method, which used classic synth waveforms as well as samples of other instruments to create its unique and appealing tones.
Larry’s sounds are evolving and organic, some harsh, some less so and described by the man himself as “ethereal, not quite right, pads and keys goodness!” There’s been a recent resurgence in interest around everything that Ensoniq did, including the excellent (and free) SD-1 from Sojus Records!
The best bit about Larry’s sounds is that they’re free! But do please buy him a coffee via the button on his website and make sure you check out his other excellent patches too!
Liquid Depths for U-He Zebra 3 by Ilian
In what must have been one of the longest gestation periods of any software synth, version 3 of U-He’s amazing Zebra synth finally emerged from public beta into a full release last month. It’s a crazy powerful synth that has been described as being “…like Photoshop for synthesis”! A bold claim, indeed.
I had a 1-on-1 demo from the great Howard Scarr at Superbooth a few weeks ago, one of U-He’s most impressive and prolific sound designers. What astounded me was how quickly you could get Zebra 3 doing things with very little work, such are the amazing modulation capabilities and powerful synthesis elements.
Taking immediate advantage of this, sound designer Ilian has created a bank of 50 presets for Zebra 3 entitled ‘Liquid Depths’. Do not expect searing leads and chest-thumping basses here. This bank is all about atmospherics, fluidity and cinematic expression.
Every patch features the use of the four macros to control a variety of parameters such as modulation depth, spatial character, texture and movement, whilst the mod wheel opens up the sound and adds harmonic content, and velocity affects dynamics and expression.
If creating big, evolving, textural music is your thing, and you own Zebra 3, you should have this in your toolkit. You can pick it up from the Anton Anru site for $19.95.
Industrial Reverie for KORG multi/poly by Skendi
Another bank from the Anton Anru stable and yet another bank for KORG’s hugely impressive multi/poly synth, a model that is fast becoming the overwhelming favourite amongst KORG’s Raspberry Pi synthesizers. And with good reason!
Combining some fine digital analogue, alongside digital wavetables and a raft of classic KORG filter models, and some not-so-KORG types, the multi/poly uses virtual voice cards, each containing its own oscillators, filters, envelopes, LFOs and more, giving the multi/poly the ability to employ per-voice variations both big and small.
Created by Skendi, Industrial Reverie caters to the harder sounds, suitable across a wide range of genres, including the obvious ‘Industrial’, but also things like dubstep, jungle, drum and bass, IDM and more. Each patch employs the macros, as well as making good use of the X/Y pad, velocity and the mod wheel.
You will need to ensure that you’re running at least version 1.1.2 of the multi/poly firmware or the latest version of the native plugin. As you’d expect, this bank will work on all models of the multi/poly, including the native plugin. Grab it now for $24.95 at the Anton Anru store.
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