
Open source modular synth software lets you create 70s & 80s electronic music - lnguyen
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/free-open-source-modular-synth-software-lets-you-create-70s-80s-electronic-music-without-having-to-pay-thousands-for-a-real-world-synthesizer.html
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pmoriarty
_" Digital audio workstations have become increasingly sophisticated, able to
emulate with "plug-ins" the capabilities of sought-after analog studio gear of
the past. It has taken a bit longer for virtual instruments to meet this same
standard, but they may be nearly there."_

Hardware is much more hands on, with real dials, switches, and other means of
physical interaction which screens and mice don't come close to matching.
Hardware does exist through which musicians can interact with computers, but
it's usually MIDI, which has its own limitations compared to fully analog
gear.

With hardware you generally don't have to worry about software or OS updates,
and the hardware generally continues to "just work" for a long time.

A lot of uncommon analog hardware is very unlikely to ever be modeled in
software, so the way it reacts when manipulated may never actually be matched
in software (even when the potential to do so is in principle there if anyone
ever bothered to create a high quality model of it in software). This extends
to how it sounds as well, for the same reason.

That said, modular synth software like this is still great, and may be the
next best thing to using the real thing. It's also a great way to learn and
get a taste for what's possible before committing money to buying any
hardware.

~~~
cjsuk
Yes. The phrases "menu" and "software update" are what kills all tactile
electronic instruments of various kinds.

This is the same for electronic test equipment as well. There are so many
features crammed in new devices, even if you manage to get enough controls for
the basic cases on the front panel, a lot is still hidden in nested menus
galore and they aren't necessarily sensible or discoverable or even work
properly. This results in semi-religious fighting over which update is the
least shit and people refusing to accept updates because they fear them.

The outcome, at least with electronics, is that you'll find a lot of 30-40
year old equipment nestling next to the state of the art with a sticker on it
"for indication only". This equipment does a lot of the real work while the
new stuff is used for validation and traceable measurements only. Due to rapid
progress in technology, people cling to the last thing they felt any physical
connection with.

This will pass in time as the status quo is accepted for younger generations.
Fly by wire it is.

(I am incidentally a rather large fan of analogue and modular synthesizers and
half built one in the late 1990s with 1970's electronic equipment, some of
which I still own!)

~~~
veli_joza
The UX of digital equipment _really_ sucks. At first I thought it was because
it was a new technology still in infancy, but things haven't improved since
and we are still emulating analog controls. VST interfaces often have static
background image (skin) and 'knobs' you control with your mouse. Actual
hardware usually features rotary encoder or buttons to navigate the menu
system with several layers of depth. This is tedious and hampers creativity.
One positive example is Teenage Engineering OP-1, they seem to know what they
are doing.

I'm currently building digital instruments for android phones and I refuse to
add any UI elements until I figure out something that makes sense. Until then
the interpreted Lua code _is_ the user interface. I would be very interested
in some new UI patterns for touchscreen that take good advantage of
interaction between user actions and visual feedback.

~~~
mathw
It is completely baffling why software synths and routing software etc. feels
the need to make itself look like a patch board and have rotary knobs and
things. Can't we come up with a set of conventions for software-native synth
UIs? Sure the physicality of real knobs and sliders is nice on real hardware,
but on a screen - especially non-touch systems - there's no way it's the best
option.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _but on a screen - especially non-touch systems - there 's no way it's the
> best option_

There is a good option - but the current, dumb UX fad, rejects it
whoreheartedly. That option is _keyboard_. Give everything a keyboard shortcut
and let the user learn them (if at least by providing a visual overlay listing
shortcuts straight on the interface).

If something is a tool - not a shiny cloud SaaS toy intent on getting audience
to drive the hockey-stick graph straight into acquihire - users will learn
keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
FigBug
I always let my users click on a knob to direct enter a value with the
keyboard. But keyboard shortcuts to increase / decrease a value -- that's just
a pain. Mouse drag / mouse wheel is far faster at going between coarse and
fine adjust.

------
freeflight
I wish I would understand even a fraction of the stuff that's going on with
software synths.

Every couple of years I get this fancy idea of "I'd really like to create some
sounds/music", which usually ends up with me aimlessly manipulating digital
knobs and switches on some massive UI, creating weird sounds with no real
structure and changing all the default settings. The other option being
something like FruityLoops, but doing anything in there kinda feels like
making "Lego music" due to just slapping together samples.

The closest I ever got to creating something like "music" was actually through
a game, FRACT OSC, which I think is still really cool. But I guess for most
professionals the toolset in there is just very basic and it also suffers from
the same "Lego music" feel of just slapping together samples.

Then there's stuff like SoundStage VR, which looks quite amazing to tinker
around in, but due to a lack of VR setup, it's not something I had a chance to
play around with yet. But the basic idea of making music in VR really appeals
to me, it's just so cyberpunk and feels like it could be way more
approachable, at least compared to something like software synths with their
intimidating UI.

~~~
rainbowmverse
A lot of synths are painfully unintuitive because they try (and fail) to
replicate hardware synth interfaces. Try Helm (free and open source) or Serum
(not free) and you might have more luck.

Here's a rough crash course from someone who also struggled to get started:

1: You start out with a wave (sine, saw, pulse, etc). No synth starts out with
a pure form of these waves. They all add a little color. Most synths have 2-5
oscillators (they produce the waves), often with each having different
controls.

2: The filter constrains the sound. So, for example, if you wanted to make a
bassy instrument, you'd filter out most of the high frequencies. The Attack,
Sustain, Delay, and Release settings affect length and volume over time. This
is what you use to turn waves into plucks, kicks, claps, strings, and anything
else you can think of.

3: Most synths have at least 2 LFOs, or low frequency oscillators. You can
connect these to different controls across the synth and change the timbre in
weird, sometimes unpredictable and amazing ways. With Helm in particular, you
click the little helmet by the LFO and drag the little bars on the different
controls to change how much the LFO affects it. You'll see a little green bar
pop out and move with the LFO. Serum has a separate tab with LFOs and routing
to synth controls.

~~~
privong
For the benefit of others, I wanted to note that what you're describing is
subtractive synthesis where you shape sounds by subtracting (filtering)
components from the initial waveform. Additive synthesis is also a technique,
where you add many sine waves together (this is difficult/expensive to do in
hardware and so doesn't seem to be widely used). There is also Frequency
Modulation synthesis where a simple waveform is modulated using another wave
at a close frequency. FM synthesizers were popular in the 80s, such as the
Yamaha DX7.

~~~
soundwave106
In my opinion, though, subtractive synthesis is the easiest to "get".

Starting with a relatively simple subtractive software synth that uses
primitive "analog" waveforms -- like, say, Tal-Uno-62 ([https://tal-
software.com/products/tal-u-no-62](https://tal-software.com/products/tal-u-
no-62)) -- is probably the best way to play around with learning synthesis.
It's a lot harder to create a "bad" sound in a simple subtractive synth, and
in something like Tal-Uno-62, there aren't a whole lot of possibly confusing
menu options and buttons.

Samples and wavetable synthesis are also relatively easy to get a "good" sound
of quickly. Most are structured, architecture wise like a subtractive
synthesizer, you just replace the primitive waveform with either a sample, or
a bank of digital waveforms.

FM and additive (and spectral and granular) are neat techniques, but IMHO way
more finicky to program. (They are also techniques where the software
interface is _quite_ welcome! Programming a DX sound in the (free and open
source) Dexed VST is quite a bit easier to do than it is on a Yamaha DX7's
two-line LCD screen and buttons.)

For the parent poster: I understand that quite a few professionals,
particularly in loop / beat oriented music genres (such as hip hop / trap,
EDM, and reggaeton) use FL Studio quite a bit! The nice thing about FL Studio
is that it has a nice intuitive layout for beat-making. It's what I'd
personally recommend for someone just wanting to mess with synthesizer beats.
(My personal favorite is Reaper but I don't tend to write beat oriented stuff.
:) )

~~~
privong
> In my opinion, though, subtractive synthesis is the easiest to "get".

Interesting, for me additive is the most intuitive. I find it easier to
visualize sums of sine waves than subtracting harmonics from a more complex
waveform (such as a sawtooth), particularly when considering the use of notch
or bandpass filters. But that may have a lot to do with my education, which
featured a heavy dose of Fourier Transforms and associated techniques.

~~~
soundwave106
I think the biggest "issue" with additive is that it can be complex to program
at its most low-level implementation. I'm thinking of stuff like the K5000
where you could not only set the initial volume of a partial, but every
partial had an envelope to control volume. Extremely powerful, but on more
complex patches that's a lot of envelopes to think about.

On the other hand, "simple" additive with relatively few partials is actually
pretty easy too. (The Hammond B3 and other tonewheel organs are essentially
additive synthesizers.) A lot of software (your Alchemys and Razors) is built
on a simplified version of additive too, or uses additive techniques to
perform "resynthesis", or has other tools that "simplify" some of the additive
editing.

------
timc3
Stupid title. It would also let you create 2018 Electronic Music.

Been using VCV rack for a bit and its fairly awesome (Usually over MIDI
sequenced via BitWig).

~~~
TheRealPomax
That seems an odd complaint? Any music made this year is 2018 music, but what
people might not know is that you can faithfully reproduce the sounds of
analog synths that largely defined vast swathes of the music landscape of the
70s and 80s.

(If you've been active in digital music for a while it's easy to forget how
little the general public knows about stuff like this, and a title that goes
"did you know you can do X with Y?" is better than a dry factual title)

~~~
tb303
i'm with timc3 on this one. at this point every dude with a beard and a
modular suitcase has a standing gig in the park making gurgly noises for
people, and every gamer who watched deadmau5's twitch has a bunch of mutable
instruments modules. it's folk music for the 2010s. and the music of the 70s
wasn't, for the most part (yes we can point to the exceptions but that misses
the point), bleeps and bloops, it was keith wakeman in leather pants. by the
80s these were collecting dust (so that we could buy them for cheap in the
90s!)

------
Mizza
I've been making modules for VCV Rack and it's super fun and pretty easy!

You can check them out here:
[https://github.com/Miserlou/RJModules](https://github.com/Miserlou/RJModules)

------
fractallyte
So, the comparison on YouTube is between the VCV Rack and Mutable Instruments
Elements, Rings, and Clouds. Mutable's offerings are presented in the Eurorack
format, so they have much more 'immediacy' (physical knobs, etc.). But -
they're all 'virtual' instruments! We're essentially just reading a comparison
between two developers's DSP code.

There were no digital modulars in the 70s and 80s, and certainly nothing like
the granular synthesis or physical modelling available today. A more
meaningful comparison in that context would've been against something like a
Roland System 100M or Moog Modular: instruments with real _analog_
electronics.

~~~
rvense
> We're essentially just reading a comparison between two developers's DSP
> code.

It's the same code. The Mutable Instruments modules are all open source.

~~~
mmjaa
Not just the same code, but in many cases, the same developers! So there is a
vested interest in making things match as closely as possible - it sells
hardware, after all!

------
nasredin
>Once you’ve created an account and installed it, you can start adding dozens
of plug-ins, including various synthesizers, gates, reverbs, compressors,
sequencers, keyboards, etc.

Sigh.

~~~
rvense
It doesn't require making an account. You can download the main application
and a lot of plug-ins (and sources for them) without logging in anywhere.

~~~
mmjaa
Yeah, you can easily avoid having to make an account, if you just download and
compile the plugins yourself. The account just makes it easier for those of us
who don't want to fuss with all the compiling and copying-into-the-right-place
of the plugins.

I do both - I have all the sources for all the public modules I can find (and
there are usually about two more added, on average, every day by the
community... WOW!) and I build VCV Rack from sources every week or so, just to
see the development pace (and what a pace it is!), but I also just go through
the web page, use an account, install the free plugins through the Plugin
Manager feature, and so on.

It helps to compare the two while developing my own plugins.

And I have to say that this app is amazing! I've rekindled my love for modular
synthesis (been into synths since the 70's) because of this app, and its all
I'm taking to my bands jam sessions these days -replacing a suite of
digital/DSP synths that I was previously relying on.

~~~
vortico
Bingo! VCV Rack is built for musicians, not software developers, many who do
not know how to unzip a downloaded plugin. This is perfectly fine, because
musicians can do many things that I can't. So to make it possible to use for
the masses, an account system is best, where it takes two buttons to add and
install a plugin. The minority who don't like giving their email address in
exchange for this generously-made software can still look at the manifest JSON
files to get the binary download link, or compile it themselves.

------
kilon
Well software has been able to recreate analog sound sine 1997 when I started
working seriously with computer mudic. The problem back then was that in order
to make a faithful emulation that would need quite a lot of processing power.
But back then I had a 200 mhz Pentium , nowdays I have a 3.4 Quad Core. Modern
soft synths sound quality wise can dance around analogy synths , in depth ,
quality and versatility. Not to exclude the fact that software updates can
practically fundamental change the synthesizer or offer amazing new features.
The edge for vintage analogue synths was the fact that they offer more hand on
control but with the wealth of midi controls that come with a wide array of
presets support many software synths its still not much of a good reason to
pick a hardware synth. Hence why software has practically monopolised audio
synthesis lately. Thor in Reason can easily compete with my Alesis Andromeda
A6 , the most powerful non modular analogue to ever exist. When it comes to
modular synths, software reign supreme, while hardware users have to battle
with the terror of the spaghetti monster. Nowdays going down the hardware
synth lane is purely a personal taste choice.

~~~
romaniv
_> The edge for vintage analogue synths was the fact that they offer more hand
on control but with the wealth of midi controls that come with a wide array of
presets support many software synths its still not much of a good reason to
pick a hardware synth._

There are at least two fundamentally flawed assumptions behind your post.

1\. Electronic music isn't just about endless options and capabilities.
Endless options give you endless search space to navigate.

2\. The idea that generic computers are always better than dedicated hardware
is rather archaic, because with modern technology you can integrate powerful
computers _into_ dedicated hardware very cheaply.

There is a huge difference between using a fully integrated, though-out
hardware synthesizer versus using a MIDI controller mapped to some plugin in a
DAW. There is a reason thousands of musicians still buy analog gear, VA synths
and fully digital FX pedals.

------
djaychela
Previous discussion on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15766543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15766543)

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mhd
Anyone got a good "full stack" setup for something like this (from midi
controller to synth/sequencer/daw software)? I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the
modularity and combinations of virtual synthesizers. I'm okay with a "toy
setup" as long as it's possible to build upon (i.e. preferrably not something
entirely different from what you'd use after you pass the acolyte threshold).

~~~
mmjaa
Hi - there are tons of great VCV patches available here:

[https://patchstorage.com/platform/vcv-
rack](https://patchstorage.com/platform/vcv-rack)

A couple in there might qualify for your "full stack" requirement - or are at
least pretty close.

I'd be happy to hear you found something - for my needs I've got a 'full
stack' consisting of a 4-voice poly VCO/VCA/VCF standard, a little sequencer,
and a drum synth - but its not really in a condition where I could share it
since I built some of the modules with special configuration from sources...
however, if I've wanted to sit down and create a stack from the standard
modules for a while, so .. lets see who gets there first! :)

------
dsego
How does this compare to something like Pure Data?

~~~
Nabi
Pure Data is visual programming language, you could essentially build native /
vst / mobile apps with it and go more low level eventually. VCV rack is more
Eurorack hardware simulator so to speak, musical instrument. Good for reality
check before going hardware but you don't create apps with it.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
PD does more stuff. The dataflow model takes some getting used to and tends to
linger in the background even if you get down to the libpd level.

VCV/Eurorack is a simplified rather dated synthesis model for people who don't
want to go that low. It's ideal for people who just want to noodle around
plugging and unplugging things and turning knobs.

I've been sketching ideas for a next-gen synthesis language which is more
powerful than PD/sc, keeps some elements of modular thinking, but adds some
useful creative extensions.

If I'm really lucky I'll find the time to do something with the ideas in the
new few years.

~~~
_mhr_
I'd love to chat. Please email me; my address is in my profile.

------
rekado
I have been quite content with alsa-modular-synth. It supports loading LADSPA
plugins as modules, and with JACK integration it can be connected to other LV2
plugins or effects.

------
ungzd
Looks like they use GUI widgets from Blender, despite Blender GUI is
considered non-reusable for other apps. Or maybe they only took look from it.

~~~
vortico
A surprising few have pointed that out! [https://bitbucket.org/duangle/oui-
blendish/src](https://bitbucket.org/duangle/oui-blendish/src)

------
nimmen
Strangely xodular or automatonism don't get much coverage, I guess that "nice"
UI did skyrocket vcv rack

~~~
crunchyave
VCV Rack directly conforms to the visual patterns and usage patterns of
Eurorack hardware, so I'd guess that is the main reason that it's so popular
relative to those other options. PD is also a bit harder to get going with out
of the box, even with packages like Automatonism, impressive though they are.

Reaktor 6 had a similar thing happen, lots of people who hadn't used it before
were brought into that ecosystem by their "blocks", which also kinda emulate
Eurorack.

------
EamonnMR
Can this be hooked into a DAW like Reason?

~~~
edraferi
From the VCV Rack FAQ [0]:

 _When will VST /AU support be added?_

 _VST /AU support will be added with the “VCV Bridge” module in Rack v0.6.0,
scheduled for release in late January 2018._

 _Rack itself won’t be a VST /AU plugin because of the major limitations of
these formats, but instead you’ll be able to connect Rack to your main DAW by
adding the lightweight VST/AU Bridge plugin to as many DAW channels/tracks as
you like, which will each connect an equal number of Bridge modules in Rack.
This cross-application method allows you to break the mindset of mixing
linearly in your DAW and instead use nonlinear methods like cross-modulation
between tracks, enveloping audio to control filters and sidechain compressors,
etc. The Bridge protocol will be fault tolerant and will not matter which
order you open the DAWs._

[0] [https://vcvrack.com/manual/FAQ.html](https://vcvrack.com/manual/FAQ.html)

------
Kuraj
Is there any way I can simulate a MIDI keyboard, since I don't have an actual
device?

