Future Sound Systems finds a naked groove with the Portland percussion synth
The perfect accompaniment to their Brunswick naked synthesizer the Portland percussion synth combines all sorts of noise and resonators to produce a cool synthesizer of drums in a stripped down package.
Portland
I think the idea is that this is a 4-channel drum synthesizer but there’s so much going on that it’s not entirely clear. There’s certainly a kick drum provided by a semi-linear resonator, a snare drum output and some hi-hat dynamic shaping circuits. But otherwise it has two Twin-T resonators, a Ring generator formed from 6 XOR’d oscillators, a Noise generator, two decay envelopes, two VCAs and a four channel mixer with Baxandall tone circuit. Make of that what you will but I imagine you can make interesting percussive sounds however you wish.
The 32 point patch bay gives a lot of potential for external and internal control with trigger inputs, audio outputs and control inputs for the envelopes and VCAs.
It sounds pretty phenomenal:
You are currently viewing a placeholder content from SoundCloud. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
Portland is currently a standalone battery-powered synth but they have a Eurorack adapter and front panel on the way along with a DC power option. It’s available now for £330 and there will be a kit version coming along in May.
More information
This might also interest you
