Laboratory 0’s BLOT is an experimental software synthesizer that explores modal synthesis as an approach to electronic sound generation.

BLOT is played by shaping matter instead of turning knobs: the geometry of a lump on screen is the patch.

Every piece of the lump is a modal resonator, eight damped oscillators tuned by its size. Smaller pieces ring higher, and sizes settle on just-intonation ratios of the MIDI root. How far apart the modes spread, how bright they are and how long they ring follow the piece’s shape and heat. They are excited by a slow breathing noise, by strikes, by friction as you sweep over the matter, and, when it runs hot, by droplets: short tones above the ringing that rise as they burst.

Pull out a tendril and it becomes a plucked waveguide string, pitched by its length. Press in a dent and it becomes a formant filter, a mouth whose position sets the vowel. Cut a piece and its modes split into two pitches. Pieces that come close ring-modulate each other, and pieces that meet fuse back into one.

Rubbing heats the matter: the modes stretch and each piece’s drive saturates. Pushed harder, a 4× oversampled multiband saturator with a feedback comb tuned to the root takes over from clipping. Memory, an eight-line feedback delay network, holds what the matter has played. MIDI notes move the root and strike every piece. Two engines play the same matter: default stays clean until the matter is rubbed or overloaded, while intense heats and drives it with every cut and strike, and makes hot pieces crackle. “Pause” freezes the matter in place while it keeps sounding.

Availability:

BLOT is available now from Laboratory 0 as a free download.