Developer Alexander Zolotov has released Virtual ANS for iOS – a software simulator of the unique ANS – a photoelectronic microtonal/spectral musical instrument, created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1938 to 1958.
The ANS was used by Stanislav Kreichi, Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edward Artemiev and other Soviet composers. You can hear the sound of the ANS in Andrei Tarkovsky’s movies Solaris, The Mirror and Stalker.
Here’s what Zolotov has to say about Virtual ANS:
The Virtual ANS is a full-featured professional tool which allows you to create unusual, deep, atmospheric sounds. With this app you can draw a complete piece of music, or convert sound to image (sonogram) and then make some complex sonogram modifications.
Actually the potential of the program has not been explored yet, so it (as well as PixiVisor) is more appropriate for people who are searching for something new, not afraid to experiment with sound.
Key Features:
- unique Virtual Analog sound engine;
- unlimited number of pure tone generators;
- powerful sonogram editor – you can draw the spectrum and play it at the same time;
- any sound (from a WAV file or a Microphone/Line-in) can be converted to image (sonogram) and vice versa;
- MIDI Input;
- supported file formats: WAV, PNG, JPEG, GIF, VNS (Virtual ANS 1.x);
- Jack and Audiobus support;
- iTunes File Sharing;
- Wi-Fi Export/Import;
- Virtual ANS is also available for Android, Windows, Linux and OSX;
- more functions in the next Virtual ANS updates…
Virtual ANS is available on iOS, Android, Linux, Mac & Windows.
Here is a demo of Virtual ANS in action:
Virtual ANS is available now in the App Store.
Very nice for emulating spaceship engines, alien dialogue and laser weaponry. I can recommend this one.
Also this is interesting for doing some spectral resynthesis. I love that Zolotov offers the desktop versions as donationware. I got the Mac version and it works great.
Feels very interresting. I look foreward to get my own samples in there. But you really should fix copy and paste support.
Is this worth the $6 to use on an iPhone? Or really more suited for iPad? Anyone???
You should be able to use this pretty ok on a phone. Although personally I feel the ipad is the minimum screen I can use properly.
I’d buy a Wii U for this.
Coil have an entire record of music done on the ANS