City of Lost Noises
Poor Massive, such a soulful and gentle instrument but so muscled up that everyone just wants to start fights with it. It reminds me of Ron Perlman’s character in City of Lost Children – “Whale Hunter as Strong as a Horse”. Calling the software Massive was great marketing but leads the audience to ignore it as only good for Duckstep or whatever cheesy marketing term it is this week. Sensible Review explains all the details.
It’s actually more akin to the Blofeld, being a wavetable synthesiser set out in a traditional subtractive format. But the people that would wrap themselves around anything PPG would never think to embrace it, because it’s been saddled with making Wobblebat or Moombits or DropBear or whatever kiddy noise is in this week. The layout is semi modular, the patching is extensive, fluid and easy to do. A session with Massive is all about delicacy. What is the sweetest sound I can make with this? How delicate a use of the wavetables can I make? How can I place modulation to give slight but crucial variation over the sounds? Be amazed at what happens when you treat a big man kindly. A visual guide to the wave tables in Massive.
It illustrates the curious nature of synthesis that the more expansive the ability of a device the more the audience will mentally cordon it off – go here, not there, do not fall off the edge of the map. True, Massive is essentially a virtual analogue, but there are obvious places where it exceeds that definition. In fact the Massive wavetables are now out in the wild in Serum format, so there are sounds out there which defy the original interface narrative.
Massive was probably the point where NI achieved their everything and they have since needed to curtain off the possible. There is very little than cannot be done with it, and there is very little which is done with it. As always the answer is to delete all the presets, and let your own mind explore the map.
Massive X Since this was written there has been a new version released called Massive X. It took me a long time to purchase this thing as part of a Native Instruments collection. It’s taking me even longer to get around to looking at it. I really can’t explain why, except to say that I am not particularly drawn to using it. Some of the presets are quite impressive in that slightly academic laptop grump type of synthesis. You know, the people that use Ableton Live and frown a lot.
It seems to me that there’s a kind of patch that I am not very good at making which is the highlight of Massive X – so until I manage to work that out I really shouldn’t review it one way or the other. I also haven’t ever thought ‘hey Massive X would work really well in this bit of music’. In fact I forget about it for a few years now. It’s a puzzle, it really is.
Last version 6 Sep 2024