As I pointed out last month I work with Future Music magazine providing an
"in-magazine" tutorial and article set as well as videos. The videos were going public but the articles / tutorials left only in the magazines themselves. Good for everyone articles are now going public on Music Radar. This month the second bit of work I submitted to the magazine has gone live and it's on Mutable
Instruments - Braids. Here's a few quotes from the article to whet your appetite but click HERE for the full thing. Video is HERE or hit play below too.
"Braids covers analogue
synthesis, modelling the
Yamaha CS-80's impure
sawtooth, the continuous
waveform morphing
found in the RSF Kobol,
Micromoog and modern
Moogs such as the Sub
Phatty and Sub 37, as
well as Roland Alpha
Juno-style saw wave
PWM. There's a
wavefolding voice based on the Serge waveshaper, dual oscillator sync patches and full-sounding detunable multi-oscillator ensembles.
Direct digital synthesis styles include ring modulation, band- limited dual pulse trains, swarms of seven sawtooth waves (JP-8000-style supersaws), tuned delay lines, comb filtering, circuit bent toys and emulations of classic waveforms found in the phase distortion based Casio CZ series and Roland D-50. We've even got vocal synthesis modes that range from granular synthesis to a filter matrix that morphs between nasal cavity filters, glottis filters and tongue filters to produce vocal and vowel sounds. It doesn't stop there either, wavetable modes cover plenty of classic wavetables based on such synths as the Waldorf PPG and a comprehensive set of noise modes with filtering, clocked noise, granular clouds and more!
We spoke to the designer, Olivier, about the origins of Braids. "Around the end of 2011 I started collecting little bits of waveform synthesis code for what was going to be a factory- made version of the Ambika Polysynth. My goal was to cover as many different audio generation processes as possible that could
provide raw material for synthesis... About 20 or 25 of Braids' synthesis models originate from that time. It became obvious that having all these digital sound sources would be great in a modular system – there was nothing like it in the Eurorack format, probably because the few digital module makers at the time were focused on 'deep' modules." "