Every now and then a music company decides that synthesists are looking for the Ultimate Kick Ass Motherfunka that does Everything You Could Possibly Imagine or U.K.A.M… let’s just call it Henry. They equip this behemoth with every twiddle, doodad and algorithm you can find in a DSP journal and unleash it on the music community, who, with deluded belief in their ability, snap Henry up, boot it up, and drown in the quicksand.
Very few Henries end up in a piece of music. But I love a learning curve. “Once I get past Chapter 26 I’ll be knocking out that Avant Garde master work, you’ll see!” Reaktor is a legend for that sort of thing.
MeldaProduction are known for a large suite of free effects that you can expand by purchase piece by piece. MSoundFactory is an instrument which incorporates nearly every paid effect that Melda sells, and so you’re actually getting a real bargain. They are particularly into multi-band spectral processing, which means you can alter precise frequency areas with dramatic changes to the harmonic structure. Like putting a comb delay only on 1000-2000Hz.
It goes a bit like this. You have six audio channels flowing down two grids. Place a saw oscillator at the top of the first grid, and a phaser underneath – playing the instrument now makes a phased saw on each note. Important point to understand – the first grid is the individual voice. The second grid is applied to the sum of the voices. Our phaser is currently a feature of every individual note – part of the synthesis. Place a reverb on the second grid and that is a shared effect that covers the entire sound. You would not normally reverb each note, but you could get some interesting effects if you chose to do so.
Yes, it’s a bit Zebra.
While this Henry is pretty good at all the normal synthesis techniques it becomes excellent once you start applying weirdness like pitch shifting and spectral delays as part of the sound design. It’s very deep, quite ugly and not easy to figure out. You may feel yourself happily lost in a research lab.
It’s currently in beta, and odd things happen. Some of the controls are long winded and need deep diving. Documentation is unfinished. You will probably not get much music made with this tool as it stands but if you like to muck around with strange things that make strange noises be sure to get it on one of Melda’s ‘Eternal Madness’ sales.