Synplant a new kind of software synthesizer

[jue]

Hello

please have a look here:

http://www.soniccharge.com/synplant

Synplant is a software synthesizer with a genetic approach to sound creation.

It works well in Numerology tested the last days with several instances of it
without any problem.

best

jue

[adamj]

SynPlant is a good one. Been using it in Numerology a lot.

Sonic Charge's other plugin, µTonic, works fine in Numerology too. It's a completely synthesized drum sequencer (no samples). It doesn't have a ton of features, but it focuses on a few key things and does them very well. I like it.

[steff3]

wondering what is new about synplant - plant growing stuff surely not - at least since Sommerer and Laurent's plant growing installation that one Ars Electronica ....

It is a nice approach though and the plugin sounds great - but at it relies in old-baken stuff like midi-keyboard instead of implementing a real gesture-articulation thing - which was the first thing that came to my mind when tracking the ball around in the plant-eye. Playing it with midi-keyboard just feels lame and boring compared to play it with the mouse - which cannot be really used in composition though ...

I emailed them about such a gesture-articulation playmode but never heard from them ....

best

[jue]

hello,

using synplant in Numerology is real fun for me.
every note has a little differend sound and when adding a ModulationSeq to modulate the rotation of the plant its like a endless roundrobin to me.
It adds some life to this kind of synthetic sounds.

The word new was used to say that its new released and nothing more.

After reading/seeing this °An electro-mechanical sequencer and the circle machine° a thread here in Musicians & Composers the question for me is:
Whats really new today, or do we just use new tools to make the same?

best
jue

[adamj]

it relies in old-baken stuff like midi-keyboard instead of implementing a real gesture-articulation thing

That sounds interesting but I'm not quite sure I know what you mean. Can you give an example of what sort of gesture-articulation thing you are looking for?

I think this synth is very fun and easy to use. It's basically glorified randomization: I can just mess around with it for a couple minutes and get a cool new sound without relying on presets or getting stuck tweaking 100 knobs for an hour.

It's a great synth to use with Numerology because you can sequence the modulation (including individual branches), rotation, atonality, etc with Numerology's CV sequencing to get a wide variety of sounds (it "adds some life" like Jue said). Another fun thing is you can send a CC message to trigger planting a new seed - if used with modulation sequencing this allows for continuously "evolving" sounds that keep changing randomly without ever really repeating.

Don't get me wrong, there's much better options out there if you want to do some careful sound design or tweak tons of synth params and modulations. SynPlant is probably not for everyone, but it now fills an important niche in my software library. It helps me get ideas when I am stuck.

[steff3]

what I mean ... you know structure? they have an easy implementation - yoou can record controller movement and use it as an envelope.

For Synplant I would like to record 'mouse motion paths'/mouse movements in the plant-area and map different of such paths to keys ... this way you could still use velocity or controllers for further changes and dynamic variations ...

currently you have the modwheel to grow the plants - but when I tried it I could never get the same great results with keyboard and modwheel like when I was using the mouse dragging around in the plant eye ....

hope that explains a bit what I would find interesting ...

best