monophonic

Free Windows Music Software: Think the world needs another monophonic soft synth?

Alterex does – it’s released X*ONE, a virtual monophonic synthesizer with one oscillator, one modulator, and one 12dB lowpass filter.

According to Alterex, “this basic unit has some tricks up it’s sleeve and is one of the core parts of the X*PAND VSTi, that will be released next year.”

If you give Alterex X*One a try, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Nick Batt at Sonic State gave the Doepfer Dark Energy monophonic analog synthesizer a workout and shares his insight in his review:

I really liked the Dark Energy and was pleasantly surprised by the range of sounds, the VCO waves are decent enough for most things, apart from perhaps true earth shaking bass – I particularly like the Pulse Width Mod and dirty sounds you can make by modulating the VCF with very high frequencies via the patch chords.

But the synth is by no means limited to just this kind of stuff, bell-like FM and other crazy sounds are also just a tweak away. Speaking of which, this really brought home to me how much I have been missing actually tweaking real knobs, the fact that this is so small, means you can have it close to hand for when you just need a tweak fix.

Nick’s review has me taking another look at the Dark Energy.

Have you tried out the Doepfer Dark Energy synthesizer? If so, leave a comment with your thoughts!

The Moogist Talks, and looks at what you can do with 1 note on a monophonic Moog Minimoog Voyager synthesizer.

via timtsang3:

What can you do with a single note/sound? Besides its legendary tone, the Moog Synthesizer is known for its monophonic nature – the ability to produce only 1 note at a time. Therefore, the goal of The Moogist is to “think outside the box” with this certain limitation – whatever it takes – to make beautiful music with this amazing machine/instrument. “Moogist Talks”A short film by Tim Tsang, a.k.a. “The Moogist” August 2009 Moogist plays the “Minimoog Voyager Electric Blue” Picture of Voyager taken by Wowee Posadas

This vintage ad, from around 1976, is for the Korg Sigma synthesizer.

According to a Korg Sigma synth review by Gordon Reid:

When Korg released the Sigma its design and a handful of its facilities put older preset monosynths to shame. It was heavily endorsed by Rick Wakeman (who at one time replaced his Minimoogs with four of them) and also used by Keith Emerson. Yet it never caught on, and within a few years had vanished. And that’s a pity because the range of possibilities contained within its weird architecture was huge.

Nowadays, its resale value can be very low, but who knows… if a bit more fuss had been made of the original rather than focusing on its limitations, there might have been a Mark II, and that could have been a very weird and wonderful synthesiser indeed.

via abertronic

mobilesynth (App Store link) is an open source classic monophonic synthesizer for the iPhone, designed for live performance.

Developers are encouraged to visit the project website and contribute.

If you’ve used mobilesynth, leave a comment with your thoughts! Read more…