4MS was kind enough to send me their impressive Spherical Wavetable Navigator for review. The module is quite powerful and sounds amazing, but I’ll admit I did find it a little confusing to navigate the navigator. You can check out my full review here.
Tag: synthesizer
The Making of Belizean Heat: Part 8 – Caves Branch
I was able to borrow a GoPro camera for my trip to Belize, so I actually have a lot of video footage. Eventually I hope to use that footage to make videos for at least a few of the songs. This song is actually more based on video footage than field recordings, and it spent a lot of time in limbo before I figured out a direction for it. Once I did settle on a direction it was actually completed quite quickly (by my standards). It was one of the last songs finished on the album along with Stowaway, which I talked about in the last making of post. Continue reading “The Making of Belizean Heat: Part 8 – Caves Branch”
Review: Intellijel JellySquasher Analog Compressor & Tone Shaper Eurorack Module
I have to admit that I wasn’t terribly interested in this module when it first came out. I suppose this is partially because I have grown used to getting my compression from software plug-ins rather than hardware. There’s some great analog emulations out there, and software has a level of precision that is hard to beat. At least that’s how I felt until Danjel gave me a demonstration of an Acidlab Miami running through the Springverb into the Jellysquasher. He was able to quickly dial in this gritty, breathing, monstrous, dub techno tone from a simple drum groove and I was blown away. Toms transformed into growling synth swells. After that abrupt about-face of opinion I was eager to get my hands on one. Continue reading “Review: Intellijel JellySquasher Analog Compressor & Tone Shaper Eurorack Module”
Synthesis Essentials: All About Oscillators
Oscillators. The raw sound source that spawns the diverse range of tones and timbres spewed by all synthesizers. They come in different shapes and can be produced by a variety of techniques to make your imagination audible. If you consider the fact that all of the sounds we hear are vibrations in air, oscillators are creating synthetic vibrations that become sound once connected to a speaker. Instead of moving back and forth like a guitar string, the oscillator cycles between positive and negative voltages. Continue reading “Synthesis Essentials: All About Oscillators”
Review: Soulsby Synthesizers Oscitron
The Oscitron from Soulsby Synthesizers is a lot of things. It’s their first Eurorack synthesizer product. It’s an 8-bit digital oscillator with wavetable sampling, selectable audio engine resolution, multiple filter types, scale quantization, portamento, bit reduction and preset memory. Amazingly, they managed to squeeze all this functionality into just 14HP. This is achieved through the clever use of two knobs that also function as buttons. Continue reading “Review: Soulsby Synthesizers Oscitron”