Molten Music Monthly – August 2018
Description
Amidst the August Bank Holiday madness I bring you a sand baked and heat stroked Molten Music Monthly.
It turns out that playing with your balls can actually be a musical instrument – Tracktion release version 7 for free and secretly make some cool software instruments – Percussa SSP takes on VSTs – Folktek grow more modules in their garden – Aeolin Meditation chill into complex additives – CYPHER 2 and CRUSHER X embrace MPE – Apogee add their voice to tax concerns – Strange Science Instruments try to tell us why – ModulAIR is a slightly dodgy but fun virtual modular and we find something useful to do with the Surface Dial.
Podcast version:
But first the Surface Go has just been released in the UK and so I’ll be able to answer all those questions about its suitability as a music making device. This is the new entry level successor to the Surface 3 (not the Pro). Obviously it’s massively underpowered, inappropriately sized, with no disk space and a touch interface that few things support – but I’m going to give it a go. People are funny when it comes to computer specs and seem to forget that we were running the same software as we do now on computer 20 years ago and managing to make music. I did the same tests on the Surface 3 a few years ago and actually it did pretty well – you could run a few synths and record stuff – great. Expect to see videos on that in the coming weeks.
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Oddball
Oddball have been bothering me about the release of this thing for months. It’s a rubber ball, you bounce it and it makes beats. That’s it really – bounce – duff, bounce – clap – that sort of thing. Is it genius or is it just another doomed wacko midi controller? It of course has the potential to bring some gravity based accidental beat interaction that could possibly produce unintential and randomised beats. Or just bounce – duff, bounce – clap. Who knows – it’s down to the user and manipulator I guess. I only mention these things because I find them interesting so that must mean something.
Tracktion
I did a massive review of Tracktion 7 when it came out 2 years ago and I really enjoyed it. It’s different, creative with a lot of depth and detail for people who like parameters. They keep asking me to review their newer versions and I keep promising to do it every time a new version appears. But reviewing DAWs is such a major undertaking it’s really hard to fit it in. I will tackle Waveform 9 i promise! Anyway, Tracktion have just released version 7 for free! It’s awesome – it supports VSTs and unlimited tracks and all the stuff missing on most freeware DAWs.
Secondly they released Retromod without really telling anyone. It’s a pretty cool collection of classic sampled synths. It’s got all the Moogs in there, then the Junos and finally the Nord Lead which is completely unexpected. They are wrapped up in easy going GUIs and come with a bunch of effects. It’s an unusually thorough collection taking on the more recent Moogs like the Phatty and Voyager and all those Nords we’ve all forgotten about. Very cool stuff and they have trial versions so you can try them out.
Percussa SSP
This is that uber swish super sonic processing wavetable module thing with the massive screen and posh knobs. It floated on kickstarter a while back and is now out in the wild although i’ve never seen one in action. It started off as a wavetable oscillator but has since developed into being a multi-functional modular computer. The latest addition they’ve added is support for VST plug-ins. Now before we get too excited it only supports Linux VST plug-ins – but actually there’s plenty of those including Tracktion ones – although I dont think sample based ones are going to work in the unit. I dont really understand how it all works but there’s no doubt that this is one clever and gorgeous device that continues to evolve – but i also think it’s fair to say that this sort of OS heavy digital box it’s not everyone’s cup of Eurorack tea.
Folktek
Folktek have consistently amazed and delighted me with their weirdly organic and often experimental modules and synthesizers. They are beautiful to behold, like a forest glade of signal generation and modulation. They appear to be moving from a place of purely artistic noise experimentation into something perhaps more accessible and coherent. A rash of recent releases seems to indicate that they are building up to something. Modules such as Matter II, Gait, Quiet, Root and Synestesia could easily find their way into any rack. Alter 1 and 2 bring in some interesting modulation and effects while instruments such as the Resonant Garden can still offer a synthesizer experience like no other. The sound is often surprising, tending towards movements in noise rather than beautiful tones that you might imagine would match the aesthetic. But if you’ve never come across them before then go and check them out and key an eye out for more developments.
Aeolina Meditation
Now this looked pretty interesting. A sort of additive synthesizer play ground based around the concept of ancient Greek drone and melodic instruments although it doesnt seem very evident in the sound, which is very synthy. It uses 12 harmonic overtones and 4 noise colours to create complex and evolving sounds. A beefy modulation engine keeps everything in motion. It will happily be a melodic monosynth but i think it’s in the drones that Aeolina Meditation really starts to shine. It costs like 35 quid for Mac or Windows from Ocean Swift and is well worth a look.
808 Day
Well 808 Day, the 8th August was all a bit crap this year. Roland sort of adopted the 8th August as 808 day along with the 9th September as 909 day a couple of years ago and has used them to make some pretty big announcements such as the TR-09, the TR-08 and the SH-01A. So 808 day comes along with a certain amount of expectation. And what did we get? Two pairs of trainers. That’s right, the synthesizer giant managed to squeeze out 2 takes on the 808 inspired trainers from Puma. It was rumoured that Behringer might steal the day with some fabulous announcement about their own 808 drum machine but all they managed was a video demo on the same prototype we saw at Superbooth. Roland did release an update to the System-8 synthesizer which included the JX-3P plugout emulation which is cool but we’ve come to expect a little bit more – which i’m sure is our own fault. I wonder if 909 day will bring anything fabulous.
MPE – Cypher 2 and Crusher X
Since the adoption of the MPE (MIDI Polyphony Expression) by the MIDI manufacturers association there hasn’t exactly been a big load of MPE related releases. But this month saw two software synthesizers make the leap into the multi-dimensional world of 5D expressive control.
First up is Cypher 2 from the ROLI owned Fxpansion. It’s an analog modelled sonic sound design adventure play park with huge sounds and a complicated front end. So complicated that they havent put a full screen shot on the webpage in case they scare people away. It has 3 oscillators with a bunch of waveforms, twin filters, 30 effects and a 5 dimensional modulation, sequencing and arpeggiating engine. All the controls are animated and with the TransMod ability to modulate everything with everything the interface looks like it’s crawling with movement. Fxpansion and ROLI have developed this thing together to, they hope, produce something breathtaking for the owners of an MPE controller. It will of course play with regular MIDI too.
Second we have a similarly complex Crusher X. This is a granular instrument from Accsone which has already been a complex and fascinating sound generation tool. Now it goes 5 ways. You can pull in grain density with finger movements, slide into distortion and pull off some sonic acrobatics. It’s a weird and unique instrument that I want to get inside of but haven’t been able to tackle as yet. But if granular weirdness is your thing then this could be immensely interesting.
Strange Science Instruments
A pair of very serious looking modules from Strange Science Instruments. Firstly a very sober stereo mixer and then a stereo filter. They’ve also released videos talking about why and how they produced these modules which is very interesting from the perspective of understanding the process of developing hardware. What I find quite odd is how they sort of believe they’ve invented the concept of stereo. They looked at the mono nature of Eurorack and set out to so
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