I was ust wondering if there are any audio mulch users here and what you think of it. I am thinking of trying it out, but after watching many tutorials I still cant quite figure out what its actual benifits/ uses are. Does it have things that renoise doesnt?
I used to use it years ago just so I could send my mic and guitar through any combination of vst effects I could think of, but renoise had that covered soon after with line in.
I’ve used it years ago. Basically, AM is great for sound design, with solid features for multi-track recording.
First thing that come to mind is the metasurface - you can create “presets” inside a 2D space and move seamlessly between them. What’s amazing about this is that it can cover everything in your patch, so you can literally move hundreds of faders simultaneously
Mulch is great. The Metasurface is actually pretty powerful, and it is great for sound design and realtime manipulation, although you can do step programming with Mulch as well, if you dig into it. One cool thing to do is to record loose Mulch jams and chop them up and sequence the parts in Renoise.
Ok Thanks for the replies folks. I am an inch from downloading the demo to try it out, however I know this will be time consuming… I just want to clarify 3 main things :
How exactly does recording and song construction take place when there is, as the developers boast “no sequencer”…? I mean I like to record guitar and percussion sounds like shakers and stuff. Is there a way to record these and put them into the song in an intuative manner?
Is there way to play drums by hand on a midi controller like you would with a drum kit in ableton or reason where you can basically throw in samples and apply different effects to each sample and drum something out by hand?
Are there good groove/ swing functions and templates…
If you can answer me these questions 3 you might just have another AM user on your hands. (although I am sort of tossing around between logic or audio mulch… My main interest is in creating organic sounding experimental music like flying lotus, burial, four tet, caribou, pantha du prince, teebs, boards of canada etc etc…_
I’ve used audiomulch off and on for about 10 years. It’s a very different beast than most DAWs.
What it isn’t:
If you want detailed midi note editing, you’ll be disappointed. At best, you can run geist in it and use the sequencer there.
if you want to do destructive audio track editing (split, timing fixes, tuning corrections), mulch isn’t what you want
if you want to program your parts in detail, it’s probably not the program for you. Even with automation, there tends to be a degree of non-determinism that is inherent to some of the native modules (and which also arises when you start having complex signal paths). If you want a tightly engineered pop anthem, you probably wouldn’t do the whole thing in audiomulch (although audiomulch is definitely useful for pop music - see http://www.audiomulch.com/discography.htm )
What it does well:
In most DAWs you work with 1 or 2 effects at a time. In mulch, the idea is that you work with all your effects simultaneously in a single view (you can hide the ones where the parameters aren’t meant to change). Grouping controls from multiple effects is likewise very easy. No switching back and forth between different dialog boxes/windows/view modes - the sliders on the screen are the interface of an instrument. It works well if you’re in a “dub” mindset - the signal chain and all the controls of the effects work as a single instrument. The “metasurface” extends this metaphor further by letting you couple parameters easily.
the audio signal is modular and can be tangled up in ways that would be a pita to do in a mix/send/bus sort of framework. This means I often find myself feeding bits of signal from one chain of effects to another. Again this sort of tangled-up-coupling between signals makes the signal chain act much more like a single instrument.
Most environments are complex enough that the interface suggests a certain workflow (this isn’t necessarily bad, especially if the workflow suggested suits you). With audiomulch, because the interface is so simple (critics some might say feature-less), it feels like a blank canvas where you invent new workflows. The first time you work with it, it might seem like “this is it? how am i supposed to make music without all my features?” it’s like working with a blank piece of paper… after a while, you start to think of creative ways of inventing your own workflows. For example:
if you arrange the filerecorders and set up automation in a certain way you can make it behave like an old-school tape multitrack (you won’t be able to move/nudge/split/edit the audio ala reaper though).
If you set up delays and map send gains you can do kaossilator-style live looping+overdubbing.
You can set up a bank of comb filters, and “play” it like a harp by exciting it with granulated white noise going through a flanger.
How exactly does recording and song construction take place when there is, as the developers boast “no sequencer”…? I mean I like to record guitar and percussion sounds like shakers and stuff. Is there a way to record these and put them into the song in an intuative manner?
yeah, mulch tends to work well for people who can play instruments. You can get 4-track (or n-track) esque functionality by clever use of filerecorder contraptions. Just don’t expect to be able to do editing of the track as you would in reaper (see above comments).
Is there way to play drums by hand on a midi controller like you would with a drum kit in ableton or reason where you can basically throw in samples and apply different effects to each sample and drum something out by hand?
If I understand you correctly, you would need a VST that can take multiple channels and generate the sounds and has multiple outputs. If you have a VST that has that, the rest of the routing (sending each output to a different chain of effects) is easy to do in audiomulch. The native drum contraption is a pretty basic step sequencer (albeit with multiple time signatures) and there’s not a native sampler that takes midi data (other than gain adjustment). On the other hand, the VST market has quite a few appropriate candidates (perhaps microtonic or geist).
Are there good groove/ swing functions and templates…
No, there’s no midi note editing. As mentioned a mpc/groovebox-esque plugins like geist complement AM well if you really need some of this functionality. But if you’re looking for a piano roll or note entry, mulch is not the right program. You’ll tend to think of your song much more in the “audio” domain than in the “note data” domain.
I struck audiomulch from my list and got Sensomusic Hollyhock 2. Mulch just wasn’t going anywhere (especially 64bit) fast enough for me. Hollyhock is pretty much what I had hoped Mulch would be in 2015. It’s harder to learn and less intuitive to set up but also much more powerful, with the exception of the lack of a metasurface, but you get so much more instead.
It’s a shame because Mulch has so much going for it, but everybody else has made such great improvements, it no longer has an edge IMO. Even Max is pretty much baby proofed now so if you have no clue and just want complex routing, VST hosting and ‘scene preset’ management, you can do that without encountering any of the deep stuff.
