Amb0 Acid - Ambient 0 CPM DS-2 - Song-a-Day 2025 Jam

video upload by ChrisLody

"Full Disclosure: I occasionally take on freelance work at Sonicware and Stylophone on an hourly rate producing synth & sample sound design, beta testing, checking English text, video manuals, promo content etc. This video wasn't paid for directly but as a result of my work with Sonicware and Stylophone it is marked as Paid Promotion

So someone casually asked me if the Ambient 0 could manage acid which I took as a challenge naturally. Yes it can as it turns out. So file this under non-ambient 0 again.

So the Ambient 0 can do a pretty respectable of some acidic. It's not really using many of it features to do this but it is damn good fun. To create this patch I started with the standard patch that loads in an empty pattern in the drone layer which uses a saw wave and turned the release down. I turned the resonance up to max, assigned LFO 1 to cutoff , set it's shape to RMP- and set the trigger to 1 so it works like a 1 shot decaying envelope. I also set the voice mode to Legato and turned the glide up to 30. The it's just a case of programming an acid pattern and getting it to slide by programming overlapping notes. The one shot LFO is a substitute for an envelope but feels a bit different to use. Speed is reversed compared to the way an envelope works and turning the LFO amount up in this case drives the cutoff down and it influences it more but it's still playable. The built in distortion and reverb sounded really nice on this too but I decided to go with the ones built into the Zoom r8 as then they wouldn't change as the patterns were loaded on the Liven.

As well as having worked on the Ambient 0 I've also been lucky enough to have a Stylophone CPM DS-2 in the studio since the end of last year. It's a very cool bit of kit and I was also lucky enough to work for them on their stall at Bristronica last year too showing people how to use them. It's designed as a drone synth but it's Eurorack compatible so will accept CV for pitch so it can be bullied into playing melodic and bass parts too. So it's connected to a Korg SQ1 here and is playing the high melodic layer. I've got both oscillators tracking pitch but Drone 2's output is fed into Drone 1's cutoff input for some filter FM goodness"