Look who’s Four! To be honest not that different to 3 and a half. But they finally had a look at that dreary interface and made it a lot less ‘coloured chalk on a blackboard’.
They upped the wobble. There’s a lot more cross modulation and you can do horrible things with FM and the filter so it compares better with ‘real analogue’. ‘Play Mode’ probably works better on stage but would you? They’ve done something with the comb filter which is pretty spicy.
I’m still going to ask the Arturia Santa for Spectral Sampling. I may seem obsessed, but trust me – it’ll kick pig butt.
Now for the history…
Pig One
It seemed to me that Pigments 1 was a gestalt that Arturia had formed from legendary emulations. It offered the SEM and the MOOG and JUPITER and many more all in a melting pot – a reasonable claim but at the time I never quite felt it. In retrospect I think because these elements are each parts of an original story – a SEM filter is not enough in isolation to be the SEM journey. When it came to wavetables the story was Serum, and Pigments did not tell that story more effectively than Serum. So in all Pigments did not tell its own story.
Pig Two
Arturia then released Pigments 2 with sample playback, both straight and granular. There were some odd limitations. Although you can have multi-samples, they must split at six octaves, so for example – C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6. That’s not exactly Kontakt but allows some more unusual modes like playing back 6 different samples randomly. There’s looping, with a modulated start point but only at note on – unlike the Arturia CVI.
Granular and wavetable in combination offer some great results. The wavetable is sharp, the granules are soft, you should have the best of both worlds. But I’m spoiled by Padshop 2, which at the same time that Pigments added granular, moved on to additive resynthesis. It’s like there is an evolutionary chain from virtual analogue, to samples, to granular and finally to additive that every tool goes through, and I couldn’t see why you wouldn’t jump straight to the end of that chain.
Pig Three
Pigments 3 didn’t do that – instead it added a harmonic oscillator type. Additive synthesis is very powerful but extremely difficult to control as requires the adjustment of many harmonic partials at once. Arturia have managed to present a pleasant and interesting way to go about it – it’s not simple like Padshop‘s resynthesis or complicated like Alchemy’s drawing or anyone else – it’s the point where Pigments now presents its own journey.
To which I must say – well done Arturia. Have an extra toilet roll – you have gone from reacting to leading. Tweaking this new sound source feels like grabbing a sound and twisting it in your hands – the absolute goal of additive synthesis. It’s way ahead of the wavetable pack and makes noises that people will now associate with Pigments 3 alone. Not SEM or any old thang from way back.
Adding the Jupiter 8 filter is OK but shrug – just make your own filters, you are better than that old stuff now. Surgeon is great.
