software synthesizer

There’s an early review of Berna – the virtual studio app that recreates a 50’s electronic music lab – at Waveformless.

They say there’s a lot to like in Berna:

The flexibility of the matrix and the vast array of unusual sound manipulators will be a breath of fresh air to those burned out on the virtual analog trance machines that seem to get released every week. The limitations present here are faithful to what the original studios were limited to, and sometimes having those kinds of restrictions can lead you down very interesting paths you might not otherwise travel.

For sure, this isn’t the most useful piece of software in the world (to most of us), but it’s really hard to find fault anywhere with the program. The sound quality is great, the tools are weird and fun to play with (it drove my cats NUTS), and you can learn a bit about the history of your craft in the process. If nothing else, it’ll certainly give you an appreciation for how easy modern electronic composers have it.

So if you’d like a break from the norm and feel up to making some crazy 1950’s sci-fi soundtrack fodder, it’s hard to go wrong for a mere 10 Euros. [9/10]

See the full review at Waveformless.

Free Music Software: Artifake Labs have released the RedTron_400, a software version of the Mellotron M400. Read more…

ganK, a new free music synthesizer VST for Windows

Lucas Xie has released ganK the Synthesizer, a free synthesizer instrument for Windows.

ganK the Synthesizer is a free soft synth developed by Lucas. It is presented in both VSTi format and Windows standalone application. ganK is an additive/substractive synth with 3 oscillators , a moog filter, a lfo, effects like an 8-band eq and a delay component.

Have fun.

If you give this a try, leave a comment with your thoughts on ganK!

via rekkerd

Here’s an example of free music software that doesn’t play it safe.

_02.circles is a Windows software synthesizer that features a user interface inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract painting Einige Kreise:

This plugin opens an intuitive access to sound construction, modification, modulation, live performance tweaking, etc. being an interactive painting and thus a form of art by itself.

VST plugins nowadays mostly resemble the look and feel of real instruments so musicians feel comfortable with, but neglecting the power of contemporary user interfaces: mouse, touchpads, multitouch, gestures….

This plugin follows an intuitive approach, e.g. instead of knowing the filter cutoff value has to be modified to “2100 Hz” and the frequency modulation index has to set to “75″ the user is encouraged to play with the elements, e.g. make the blue circle a bit smaller and drag the green circle a little so that it becomes more visible, or even try things like “what will it sound like when I modify this red circle”?

Read more…

Free Music Software: The Venom VB-303 is a pattern-based acid bassline synthesizer for Windows inspired by the Roland TB-303.

Venom VB-303 is actively under development, but is still in beta.

Download links are available at the KVR forum.