synSpace: Drone Runners - Synth Meets Video Game

Published on Jun 6, 2017 Dan Samuel

Thought this was kind of interesting. It's a synth in a game for Android. The first and sixth video cover the synth.

The following is the description for the first video, synSpace: Drone Runners - Synthesizer Filter Test:

"Once again I didn't notice the camera thought I was in portrait mode, and once again google appears to have magically fixed it, but if it is odd for you, then it is my fault, not Google's

This is a capture of the current state of the Filter and the overall set up of the Synthesizer (that is built into the synSpace game, to facilitate making musical instruments and sound effects for your star map compositions) Or just something to waste time with.

Metaphorically, I am pretending the row of attenuators is my 'eurorack' and each knob is one slot of the rack, and that knob does whatever the most important thing the module in that slot does.

Tap an attenuator to open its module's detail window, which has more buttons, unique to that module. Tap a Contour Generator 'tab' above for details on a contour. So lots more little windows of information...

Unlike a eurorack, however, the connections between modules are a hardwired pipeline, I wave my hands and say that someday my script api will let you rewire the pipeline under scripted control. Then I push the responsibility (and the UI) to you, the starmap developer!

OK, the pipeline is roughly keyBoard Note freq and impact starts all the contour generators at the same time and the FM module adjusts the 'key freq'

the key freq then drives up to 9 oscillators, though recent changes make the individual oscillators more powerful so 9 is overkill which means I can dump some for more modules in the future.

The oscillators have a waveform (sine, triangle, square, saw and -saw), a distortion, and a half step offset option so an individual oscillator can be tuned to 'key freq plus a fifth' for an appealing extra voice in every note.

Oscillators are mixed with their individual attenuators and that output goes into the Filter. The filter can be configured in many ways and its output goes to the AM module and then to the reverb and final AGC and output.

The oscilloscope can be aimed at any number of 'special interesting values' because I store those values in an easily indexed array. My thought is that is half a cross switch to allow a 'virtual cabling' where the cable starts at the input of some module, and then connects to one of these special outputs. which are the outputs of all the modules (plus some). Should be pretty flexible. But that part is vaporware. Today it's the fixed pipeline"