Beetlecrab Tempera meets Novation Mininova sounds - sonic chaos!

video upload by hirundo1984

"Alright, there are nearly endless possibilities of exploring various sounds and creating something new. This might be a very interesting combo."

Beetlecrab Tempera - after 3 days of using it

video upload by hirundo1984

"I recently received my unit from Beetlecrab and was super excited about it! At this moment I'm still learning the very basics, trying to figure out what is what, how do things work etc.

There are things that I find pretty straightforward, others are still confusing. Overall, the menu diving isn't bad at all, most of the things are pretty intuitive.

What is new to me (that's my first granular device) is how exactly do these emitters work, I will need to spend some time with the manual. They all behave differently.

Anyway, so that's one of my first attempts to create something on this wonderful device. Hopefully within next week or two I can learn a thing or two and come up with something different."

Modor DR-2 / not an extensive playthrough / all the DRUMS (and synths)!

video upload by BRiES

"I recorded this video really haphazardly so excuse the chaos. I'm sure if you're curious about this magnificent workhorse of a drummachine that you'll find plenty of interesting information in this video.

Thanks to Marcel for lending me this unit!"

The Crow Hill Company Introduces ARCANE STRINGS

video upload by CROW HILL

Press release follows:



EDINBURGH, UK: readily representing its first ‘big’ release in over a year (when the temporarily out-of-circulation GLASS STRINGS was effectively re-released with a totally redesigned GUI and added features as the Edinburgh-based enterprise’s workhorse string library for a new era in more human-sounding music and scores, coinciding with rebranding itself with an aesthetic that truly realised company co-founder and composer Christian Henson’s heartfelt dream of encouraging people to make music and help them on their journey, regardless of whatever point they were at and wherever their journey began), The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of ARCANE STRINGS — taking the sampling rule book and ripping it up, ultimately resulting in a string library featuring amateur players in order to achieve an arcane, primitive, dislocated, microtonal, loose, and sometimes savage sound duly designed for media composers wanting to leave a truly characterful imprint on their next drama score, or, indeed, composers who want to gain extra devilish bite out of their existing string collections — as of August 14…

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Hypercube Quadriphonique

video upload by Valmont

"Hypercube Quadriphonique", October 2024. This installation was part of a larger practical exercise at the ENS Louis Lumière master's degree.
Two meters above ground, inclined at an ominous angle, the cube generated four sets of textures layered into a quadriphonic speaker setup. A master OSC patch controlled all the devices in the exposition room ; on my end for my cube I was running MIDI and CV.
I first built a 16-channels 12-bits controller to get everything in harmony, but ended up simplifying the equation to use 4-states inputs and 4 audio outputs, traveling back and forth through the cube in a massive cable liana. The room environment was cyclically controlled by the master patch, and my cube would reconfigure its instruments to play along with the other creations. All sounds were made on a dozen oscillators, a handful of sample players and some Live processing. There was some random breakbeat chops too lmao I loved it, but I lost the session, so I only got some raw cube recordings, which I edited/mixed into this video. Additional black tiles were made to close off the bottom of the cube (just blank PCBs actually!)
Thanks again to Mains d'Œuvres, Franck for the safety tips, my father who helped me cut & paint the wood, and Neurotypic who lent me half the modules. I don't know anyone else who would just say yes to putting laboratory-grade devices into this... thing, suspended with fishing wire!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
My name is Valmont, I'm 24 from Paris! I compose/produce music, repair instruments and take sound on movie sets :) After a double bachelor in musicology and mechanics in Sorbonne, I ended up doing the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière.
I wrote my thesis on Publison and Early Digital, which ultimately tied together my long-standing fascination in vintage machines, servicing and technical demystification with my personal attraction to these instruments.
I tend to hope for a unified low-level approach to music production guided by DIY values. This Youtube channel is a form of its realization!
Join the gang : / valmont_naudin
Listen to my stuff : https://iconism.io/frame/valmont"

SinTH2 - answers to your questions (subtitles on, please))

video upload by SinTH2

Click CC for subtitles.

Transcript:

0:022 secondsGood morning. Hello everyone. Tom Horn, that is Tomasz Rożek. Greeting you from my

0:077 secondsmodest little studio. As you can see, behind me are two finished instruments. This

0:1313 secondsis the folding panel version, as you already know, the fixed panel version, and the third version, which is behind me, which is still being built. The enclosure, as you can see, is

0:2323 secondsalready finished, but this is the desktop version. I think it's a really nice one. It will be finished in about two weeks. And that's exactly what I wanted to

0:3131 secondstalk to you about, to tell you how things look at the moment, because I'm getting a lot of questions, a lot of emails and messages about when you'll be able to order

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Matrix Vol 2 - Oberheim TEO-5 - Patches 1 to 32 (of 128)

video upload by GEOSynths

"Out Saturday 15th

I'm back with a follow up Bank for the Oberheim TEO-5, Matrix Vol 2. The Bank contains 128 Fresh new Patches, building upon the great and popular Patches contained in Vol 1. I've tried to go beyond what I made with Vol1, which had some classic and known Sounds to some more experimental Patches in Vol 2.

Matrix Vol 2 contains 128 Patches covering Pads & Strings, Bass & Leads, Poly & Arps and whole lot more.

This Video demonstrates Patches 1 to 32 and apologies for the slightly wobbly Camera, I had the Fan on! There will be 3 more Videos and when the 4th is uploaded, they will be available for purchase."

00:00 - 1. Broken Code GEO 01:50 - 2. Mocha GEO 02:53 - 3. Golden GEO 04:22 - 4. Grand GEO 05:33 - 5. Dirty Girl GEO 06:00 - 6. Expresso Lead 06:29 - 7. Arrival GEO 08:01 - 8. Plucky Guy GEO 08:49 - 9. Fundamentals GEO 09:45 - 10. Koto GEO 10:25 - 11. Gatekeeper GEO 11:36 - 12. Phaze Lock GEO 11:56 - 13. Digi Dreams GEO 13:22 - 14. Ring Me! GEO 14:29 - 15. Acoustic Lives GEO 15:34 - 16. Omni Arp GEO 16:39 - 17. Brazen Arp GEO 17:04 - 18. Retrospect GEO 18:21 - 19. Daisy Chain GEO 19:29 - 20. Hard Tines GEO 20:33 - 21. PolyPadz GEO 21:18 - 22. PVC Bass GEO 21:53 - 23. Shades GEO 23:26 - 24. Rare Vintage GEO 24:07 - 25. Membrane GEO 25:19 - 26. Radio Ring GEO 26:16 - 27. Chase Scene GEO 27:15 - 28. Case Zero GEO 28:19 - 29. Marimba GEO 28:48 - 30. Cozy Nights GEO 29:36 - 31. Obey GEO 30:33 - 32. Bandsaws GEO

Michael Whalen's Synth Jam. "SHREDDING! Unapologetically…"

video upload by Michael Whalen

"Here’s some shredness—which, apparently, works best at slower tempos.

I absolutely LOVE this factory sound on the Waldorf Quantum MK II. This :90 romp features some crazy pitch-wheel work, polyphonic aftertouch, and my (patented 😂) hand-over-hand technique.

As ever, the backing track was created entirely by me (no AI BS) and the solo was played LIVE, in one continuous take, for the cameras. No edits. No assembling the 'best bits.' Just playing... Enjoy. M"

GLX BALSAM #2 | Winterdagen

video upload by Winterdagen

"Here's another on on the amazing GLX BALSAM! This dark and moody patch and the note glides somehow remind me of Mica Levi's score for Under the Skin which is a very very good thing :-)

I love that BALSAM has a dedicated bipolar slider to route the mod envelope to the LFO time. In this case it makes the LFO - which is modulating the filter - start very fast and slow down over time. I'm using the 2-pole lowpass filter here, I absolutely love its character. It leaves in a little more high frequencies than a 4-pole filter, making the patch sound nice and buzzy. I've quite heavily detuned the oscillators from each other and I'm again using BALSAM's special power viscosity to make each oscillator glide to the next note at its own rate when using the pitch sliders. This makes the sound feel so alive!

I did use some external fx in this piece, Strymon El Capistan and Nightsky. BALSAM sounds gorgeous completely dry as well, but I love a little space in a piece like this one.

Find out more about BALSAM at: https://glx.ltd/"

See the GLX label below for additional posts.

Walrus Audio Lum Texture Engine

video upload by Duskmos

"Today I'm taking a look at the Lüm from Walrus Audio - a granular texture engine that is part grain engine, part reverb, part tripped out mega multi-headed dotted delay type situation. It's a wild pedal that fills the silence between notes with tons of flair. Hang out while I give it a look with the OP-1 Field. Let me know what you think in the comments!"

Vintage Vocoder w/ Bigfoot Music Sticker on Back

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

This one was spotted and sent in via
M Me.

via this eBay listing

"Superb vintage Vocoder unit.

Unable to find out much information online about this to be honest - there's a 'Bigfoot Music' sticker on the back, but I'm pretty certain that was probably a shop rather than the maker.

I have tested the 'Speech' side and it was all working fine, sounds great!

I couldn't get a sound from the right side (ex.) but I'm no expert on these so maybe it's just a case of flipping the correct switch.

I also haven't tested the rear inputs/(outputs?) as I'm not sure what they're for.

Great chance to own a rare piece of vintage music gear!"

If anyone has any additional information on this one, feel free to leave a comment below. It almost looks DIY.

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Supercritical Redshift 6 | Cinematic performance

video upload by Jay Hosking

"Please support my work on Patreon: / jayhosking
A live synthesizer jam performed with the Redshift 6 at the centre. Percussion added afterward in the box.

Fair warning: both Supercritical and MAS Distribution sent along their respective gear (the Redshift 6, and the Solarfaze/Polyphrase, respectively) for free. Take that as you will. Neither of them explicitly asked me to make a video with the gear, although I'm sure that was the point, right? But in both cases, the gear they sent along was a joy to play, which is why they're here.

I ended up really enjoying the Redshift 6. It's ostensibly analog where it counts—6 DCOs and VCFs—but it's also really clean and precise sounding, giving it a digital sheen. That's somewhat less my thing. However, it has a few things to really give it personality: multi-timbrality, up to a different timbre for each of the six voices; a Character parameter which vastly can change the sound of a voice, its filter and mixing and more; a great built-in effects suite (can only run one at a time); three pairs of stereo outputs to run your timbres separately (as here); easy-to-setup macro knobs for live performing using multiple timbres, all from one page; and a built-in sequencer for getting basic ideas onto the table without outside help. In many respects, it feels like an iteration on some of the ideas from the Elektron Analog Four, another synth I really love, only with enough voices to create a pad, arp, and drone at the same time.

Here, I run one timbre, a constant note, into the Vongon Solarfaze, which adds chorus and then drive/saturation. The second timbre, a single-note sequence, runs to the Vongon Polyphrase, adding delay. Both of these pedals impressed me way more than I had expected; there is something extremely performable about the Polyphrase that makes me want to get it on the table again straight away. And then for the third timbre, the pad, I run it direct out from the Redshift 6, using the synth's built-in reverb. I'm pretty picky on reverb these days and I think it sounds awesome.

With the macro knob opening all filters at once (to varying degrees), this live performance got huge. I had originally intended it to be only the synth, but once I heard the final performance, and how much it reminded me of a soundtrack cue, I knew I had to add orchestral percussion. I built the percussion out of modified samples from the Reason Studios loop library.

Altogether, it created an extremely cinematic performance and I'm very happy with the musical results. I was having such a good time with it that I'm excited to get back to the studio today and explore a little more. Thanks for listening.

https://jayhosking.bandcamp.com"

Unlocking the Sound Design Potential of Chromatic Samplers | Featuring Chase Bliss Chompi

video upload by Sonic Cartography

"This video shows you 10+ ways to push a chromatic sampler and take the sound design of your samples to the next level. It uses the Chase Bliss Chompi sampler for demonstration purposes, but the sound design techniques can be applied to just about any other chromatic sampler or DAW. Table of contents and notes below. You can support me on Patreon, where you’ll also find a bonus video that complements this one and shows you 5 more tricks (link in pinned comment).

Table of Contents:

1:35 - horizontal layering
1:50 - intervalic
2:09 - octave + 5th
2:52 - upgrade
3:20 - the deluxe
4:17 - variations
4:44 - other intervals
5:57 - multitimbral
6:05 - smooth
7:34 - chaotic
8:44 - multidirectional

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Tempera Quirks and Foibles by Benge

video upload by Memetune Studio

"I’ve been exploring granular synthesis since around 1997, when Native Instruments brought out Reaktor, because it was the first system I knew of that had a granular synthesis engine built into it

But even before that I was experimenting with certain samplers that could do a sort of proto-granular thing where you could control the loop start and end end points of a sample independently, and use sliders to scroll through the sample by hand (for example on the Fairlight CMI 2X and also the Akai S612)

But nowadays we have it so easy, as there are a whole slew of desktop granular devices coming out, often based on ARM chips, such as the Tasty Chips GR units, the recent Waldorf synths, the Torso S4, Endorphines Evil Pet, not to mention the Mutable Instruments Clouds and its many derivatives

And then there's this little monster, The Beetlecrab Tempera - a strange and tiny box which takes granular synthesis and does something completely unique with it

It’s got 8 stereo granular samplers at its heart, but the way you interact with them is using the 8x8 touch-points. They are called emitters, and you play them either over midi or using some of the touch-points. You can change and trigger emitters in x - y directions, and it's all extremely complex, and things can get really wild very quickly, so as this is my first patch on it, I decided to keep it simple by using just 2 of the 8 grain samplers

I captured the samples myself using the built in mic (sample 1 is just tapping the box with my fingers, and sample 2 is me humming

It also has comprehensive mixing and FX processors, so here is a little ambient sketch done in real time, using just the Tempera

I’m going to have fun exploring this thing - especially when I integrate it into some of my modular systems, once I have got my head round its many quirks and foibles"

Oberheim SEM 1977 via 360 System Spectre

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this Reverb listing

Pics of the inside below.

"These used to be a somewhat well kept secret, obviously no more. But if you're not familiar with the 360 Systems Spectre, it was a pretty terrible GUITAR synth (slow & choppy tracking) that 360 Systems produced with Oberheim SEMs as the heart of these units.

Sometimes you'll see these listed as being "Converted to full-functioning SEM" but often there's a thing or two that were missed. You have to reconfigure a few jumpers, add a missing coupling capacitor to each envelope generator, add the missing Decay and Sustain controls to the EG on the Amp VCA, replace the input gain resistor for the external input, add shielded wire for the output, change the output impedance resistor and so on. Everything was done to this unit to make it true full-functioning SEM. An original SEM/CPS-1 power supply (recapped) was also installed inside.

I'm also including a 1977 CPS-1 chassis (complete with recapped PSU) with it so if you do find a faceplate, you'll have a complete SEM. My plan was to find or have someone make me an SEM faceplate in the rare black finish. I thought the gray knobs would look killer on the black panel. But tbh, I really liked the portability of the 360 case. Oh well, someone else can enjoy it now. I've used this in my studio for the last 5-6 years. I will miss it but I'm not doing much synth-based music.

-Synth was fully restored 5 years ago with some basic maintenance in the last 2 years

-All electrolytic and tantalum capacitors have been changed

-VCOs & VCF tuned/calibrated

-AC cord was removed from the front and an IEC was added to the rear of the case

-pots and switches were recently cleaned

-Sub OSC ckt. was added (non-invasive, made by Pete's Gear Garage in Sweden, uses 'Guitar' knob in mixer section)

-Each Jack on the bottom row has a function such as Hi & Low outputs, CV & Gate in, Ext. Input, LFO retrig, VCF in and out (for use with modular) and VCF CV.

-I still have the 360 Systems Control board. It was robbed of a few parts but the PSU and the Transpose rotary switch are still on it. If you want it, send me a msg and I'll include it with the sale."

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Oberheim OB-6 Band-Pass Pad + Strymon BigSky Cloud

video upload by Chris Richardson

"The OB-6 keeps surprising me. This patch uses the band-pass filter to create an airy, orchestral-style pad with a very unique character

To finish it off, I'm running the OB-6 through a Strymon BigSky using the Cloud algorithm, adding depth."

XpandrLink, a native Mac/Windows editor and DAW plugin for Xpander/Matrix-12 (beta)

This one came in on the xpantastic Oberheim Matrix-12 and Xpander list. Details from the creator follow:

"I'm Jake, a Matrix-12 & Xpander owner and synth repair tech. For the past few months I've been building something that has gotten a lot of use in my studio: XpandrLink, a from-scratch C++/JUCE editor for these synths built using XplorerEditor's protocol and design as reference, with standalone, AU, and VST3 builds for both macOS and Windows. I've been really enjoying having this tool for my own purposes and wanted to share it with the community if anyone else might also find it useful.

First, the part that matters most to me. Like many of you, I've used XplorerEditor for years. It's a big reason these synths are still practical to own and play, and this project only exists because of the groundwork it laid. I started down this road after reading a note more than a year ago in the XplorerEditor README: the developer had no time to add new features but welcomed forks and PRs, and recommended a long-term JUCE port for a more modern cross-platform foundation.

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Stylophone DS-2 // Misuse is the best use!

video upload by Dexba

"A drone synthesizer, so what? I made a kick drum with it! And used the LFO as a pitch sequencer too!
The truth is, I simply love to challenge the name and intended purpose of an instrument: if they tell me it's for ambient, I'm going techno; if it's the ultimate experimental machine, I'm going to make cheesy pop chords, and so on.
It's liberating, and like a puzzle to solve, that greatly expands my knowledge of the machine in the process: before you can (properly) misuse something, you have to understand its workings really well!
BUT you can only do this if the quality of the instrument provides you with enough latitude, and the DS-2 does that. The oscillators sound good, the filters sound good, the delay sounds great, the reverb is MORE than "more than" enough.
So... the instrument is ready to take you wherever you want to go!
I hope you'll enjoy this video, full demo & review coming next week 🧡"

nonlinear circuits spectrum shaper

video upload by cirtcele

"I'm still learning how to use this thing but here are some excerpts from a patch with Tinkle and FM OP via Product wavefolder both fed into the Spectrum Shaper."

via nonlinear circuits

"36 channel voltage controlled comb filter aka string filter.

This module has some history. In 2018, I was part of a team putting on a show with CellF at the Todays Art festival in Den Haag. I popped down to Rotterdam to visit Dennis (aka Mono-Poly) and his studio of vintage lab gear. Dennis had an incredible patch going centred around a Bruel & Kjaer 36 channel Spectrum Shaper. Listen to his album Testlab to hear how it sounds. I just knew I had to make something like it one day. This type of filter is often called a ‘String filter’, used to emulate stringed instruments tho don’t feel limited by that.

Fast forward to 2026, I read an AES paper by R. Burhans describing his 36 channel comb filter. It reminded me there were some designs in Electronotes, so I looked them up and discovered they were both inspired by and heavily influenced by Burhans, particularly in terms of the comb filter frequencies and spacing. One was a 40 channel version by Ian Fritz using transistor based filters. He had an interesting mod, originally suggested by Lester Ludwig, where each set of 6 filters had a feedback pot. Some screenshots from these articles are at the end of this build guide. The relevant Electronotes issues 107, 115 and 116 can be found online.

The Bernie Hutchins design used 39 regular op amp based filters, along with Ian’s feedback per 6 filters mod and added an inverter so the feedback could be positive or negative (so, centre off). Negative feedback ‘flattens’ the peaks somewhat and smears the sound, positive feedback makes the peaks narrower and higher (if tuned for it, you can make them self-oscillate, see notes). Bernie also added a noise gate on the output, summing 39 channels is always going to be noisy.

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Top 14 Famous Michael Jackson - synthesizer intros and songs

video upload by jami.m

"Synths used in these videos: Yamaha DX7, Yamaha Montage, Yamaha MODX, Prophet 6, Roland JV-80, Roland Jupiter-X

Daw: Cubase 14 pro

Audio interface: Apollo Twin X

00:00 Wanna Be Startin'
Something
00:16 Thriller
00:38 Beat It
00:56 P.Y.T.
01:14 Human Nature
01:59 Bad
02:56 Billie Jean
03:41 Remember the Time
04:02 Thriller version 2
04:59 Another Part of Me
05:28 Smooth Criminal
05:46 Will You Be There
06:16 Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
06:56 Thriller (Zombie dance live loop)"

Physical control surface for MIDISID : demonstration

video upload by MIDI IN

"When I pitched this recently for pre-orders, I talked about the controls but didn't really demonstrate it, so here I'll use it to dial in some interesting sounds and make a tune.

Control Surface product page:
https://lectronz.com/products/midisid..."

Follow-up to this post.

Some pics and additional details via the Control Surface product page.

"I've long wanted to have the controls for the 3 voices of the SID laid out like this, MiniMoog style. MIDISID can do many things, but you're working with a screen and four buttons/knobs. As people have told me, "no-one likes menu diving".

I'm calling this the physical control surface. It gives accessible physical controls for most if not all of the things that you can do using MIDISID.

Note:

This doens't contain the SIDs or drive them directly. It doesn't include the MIDISID It is a separate control panel.

There's nothing here that you can't do on the MIDISID already but it makes it so much easier to design sounds when you have knobs and swithes in easy reach.

There's nothing here that you can't do already with a configurable MIDI controller of your choice. MIDISID has long had a list of CC numbers.

Communication is one-way. So this won't necessarily reflect changes that you make on the MIDISID itself

With all of that said, it gives you easy access to the filter, waveforms, envelope, pulse width modulation and advanced features like ring modulation, waveform sync, portamento, arpeggiation. Designing sounds has never been easier."

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