[3.0] [XRNS/I] Big Bloomer - 12 voice monophonic synth instrument

Another RingMod synth with a much improved structure and 12 voices. It’s very nice for making big synth sounds with a “spread” controller that spreads the pitches of 10 voices. You can also synthesize quite realistic sounding cymbals and other percussive sounds with it.

8 macro controllers: Oscillator, Portamento, Spread, Attack, Hold, Decay/Release, Secondary pitch and “Leslie”.

It also has a tuned filter turned off on FX Chain 15, turn it on and turn it into subtractive synthesizer (i think?). Perfect for eery sounds like the X-files theme(see dblue’s tuned devices: [2.7] More Tuned Devices! ).

dblue did all the hard work on the tuned devices, i just made them into convenient doofers. :)

Here’s a short demonstration made of only 2 instances of this synth. Not a single sample is used(samples in instrument are just DC signals for the envelope generator):

Download .xrns containing the instrument here: https://archive.org/download/BigBloomer/Big%20Bloomer.xrns

Demo song sounds great, downloading…

Thanks, i’m quite happy with the sound myself.

There is one thing i couldn’t work my way around, the thing is that if the envelope generator has sudden changes to it(as in retriggered before the attack and decay has faded) you will often hear a small click. It’s not that bad, but it can be annoying.
I’m trying to find a solution for this, but for now it’s something we’ll have to live with.

super wicked!

I would also explore the possibilities of phrases for even more complex results, by assigning the lowest octaves to phrases (one phrase per octave)

I have already made an example with phrases and a few other hacks as well, will upload it later. ;)

Crazy stuff - at certain settings, this instrument sounds exactly like a cymbal.
That’s an insanely complex sound to model - wouldn’t have known where to start.

PS: This really hints at why we should have macro presets. Wink Wink.

I just had to try to reproduce this, indeed it sounds like a cymbal. Hmmm, gives me an idea for a nativly generated drumkit instrument, that would be cool! :drummer:
What do you mean complex? You just throw a lot of differently pitched squares on top of each other and let the freaks do the rest. :lol:

Wow. The Bellows achieves the practically impossible task of making a decent cymbal sound possible with subtractive synthesis, ascending him to synthesis godhood.

Sound on Sound interview, one day in the future, goes like this…

“So, Mr. Bellows, how did you achieve this long considered impossible task of synthesizing a cymbal with subtractive synthesis?”

“You just throw a lot of differently pitched squares on top of each other and let the freaks do the rest.”

“OK. Interesting technique. Care to explain in more detail?”

“lol!”

Haha, luck has definately nothing to do with it. :lol:

This is really additive synthesis though, isn’t it? Subtractive is what it becomes when you turn on the tuned filter, or have i got it all wrong?

Here’s a silly tune i made with a lot of big bloomers and a few native dsp. I wanted to investigate its capabilities of creting percussive sounds and i must say i’m quite happy with how some of them turned out, i especially like the hihat very much. There’s a lot more to investigate before i’ll release a complete synthesized drumkit though.

Very cool stuff TheBellows! Thanks for sharing… I got some pretty nice percussive noises out of your instrument.

Great stuff. Would love to see the xrns of the “silly tune”!

Thanks guys! I’m really happy with this instrument and i use it all the time these days.
I found out a trick that often removes some of the clicks, it’s as simple as using the glide command, i just put 0GFF on every note and the clicks vanish. ;)
The pitch commands obviously doesn’t change the pitch of course, but the tremolo commands works nicely. :)

This was just me experimenting with the sounds and i didn’t care about structures and stuff, so it’s messy and this is not how i suggest you should make your music.
Anyhow here it is: https://archive.org/download/BigBloomer/bbsession3.xrns
It’s not the exact point of render, as i didn’t save it.

just was fiddling around with that. It has great potential. Thanks.