Ian Boddy Turns His Modular Rig Into a Granular Instrument: Synth Journal
The best of the rest of this week’s synth news.
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Synthesist Ian Boddy teams up with Soniccouture to bring his massive modular rig to your DAW, new modules from Endorphin.es and Hampshire Electronics, a scary device from Error Instruments, and more.
Synth Journal
Soniccouture Polarity Modular With Ian Boddy
If you don’t know Ian Boddy, you’re missing out. A modular musician active since the 1980s, he regularly releases music on his label, DiN. We spoke with him regarding making money with ambient music a while back. Now he’s got a new instrument out made in collaboration with Soniccouture.
Called Polarity Modular, the Kontakt instrument sees Ian Boddy providing 250 custom waveforms from his Roland System 100M, Serge Modular, Buchla Sound Easel, and many more. Part of the Polarity series, it lets you combine Ian Boddy’s sounds with granular synthesis, with a main page with four macros for altering the sound, plus granular and synth editing panels, as well as effects. If you get tired of Ian Boddy’s sounds, you can load in your own samples.
Polarity Modular is a Kontakt instrument. It works in Kontakt 7 or 8, both full and Player versions. It normally costs $149 but is on sale now for $109.
- Soniccouture Polarity Modular product page
GCS Spectral Synthesizer
Here’s something you don’t see every day. Spectral Synthesizer is a plugin from GCS that allows you to turn images into sound. You can drag and drop image files onto the TV screen-like GUI, and the image will turn into an additive spectral timbre that you can then play. It also allows you to draw or paint spectrally-shaped noise onto the screen. If you prefer to work with audio as a starting point, it can also resynthesize sounds. You can then shape the signal as you would in a subtractive synth, add tape warble and pitch drift and modulation.
Spectral Synthesizer is the first plugin from new developer Gulf Coast Synthesis, and a lot of fun. It costs $69 and is available at the GCS website. You can also get a free MIDI effect called Strum that lets you create Omnichord-like strumming patterns.
- GCS Spectral Synthesizer product page
Hampshire Electronics Vulcan
Polyphony continues to encroach into the previously mono-only world of Eurorack with Vulcan, an eight-voice analog polysynth module from Hampshire Electronics.
Use Vulcan in two different ways: as an eight-voice synth with oscillator, sub-oscillator, and filter, or in four-voice mode, which doubles up everything, with each oscillator capable of independent tuning. There are also three LFOs with 12 destinations, and two ADSR envelopes for the VCA and VCF, plus eight CV/Gate inputs for VCF, FM, and VCA. It even offers 99 programmable presets.
Hampshire Electronics’ hand-built 56HP Vulcan is available through the manufacturer for £390.
- Hampshire Electronics Vulcan product page
Error Instruments The Ritual
The new device from Error Instruments is fire. Literally. The Ritual is an experimental machine with a candle at its center. Light the candle and light-sensitive sensors respond to the flickering flame by altering two voices in real time. The first is a crackling texture “like burning wood,” the other, a sub-harmonic bass. Yeah, really.
The Ritual also offers control voltage input, three potentiometers, and compatibility with standalone setups, pedal chains, and Eurorack systems.
The Ritual costs €275, and you can get it at the Error Instruments website. Exorcisms not included.
- Error Instruments The Ritual product page
Endorphin.es Two Of Cups M and Squawk Dirty To Me 1U
Endorphin.es, who you may remember from the recent cool and pink Evil Pet, has announced two new Eurorack modules, both based on previous products.
The first is Two Of Cups M, which adds MIDI to the venerable sample player. If you’re unfamiliar, Two Of Cups gives you two identical sample player voices pulled from the now full-size SD card. Each voice has CV control over pitch, gate, and meta sample scan. There’s also a knob to set decay, sample volume, pitch offset, turn on looping, and select from over 32 samples. You also get MIDI to trigger samples. The 6HP module includes an SD card with a sample library from artists like Overmono and Julia Bondar.
The other new module is less of an upgrade and more of a downgrade – but only in size! Squawk Dirty To Me 1U is a remake of Endorphin.es’s popular stereo filter shrunk down to 1U size. How many filters can you fit in such a small size? The answer is still eight. Let’s count them: 24dB/Oct Transistor Ladder (one!), 12dB/Oct MS-20 filter (two!), 12dB/Oct lowpass gate (three!), 12dB/Oct resonant lowpass gate (four!), 12dB/Oct DJ isolator bipolar variable filter (five!), 12dB/Oct highpass state variable filter (six!), 12dB/Oct bandpass state variable filter (seven!), and comb filter/resonator (eight!). Whew! There’s also an additional highpass filter in series to shelve out boomy low end should you need, plus a stereo image widener and built-in post filter VCA.
Both Two Of Cups M and Squawk Dirty To Me 1U are available from Endorphin.es for the very reasonable sum of €149 each.
More Endorphin.es products are available at Thomann*.
- Endorphin.es homepage
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