Acoustalog DEMO

I have always been fascinated by old music technology. From the first analog waveforms of the synth pioneers, to the polished coldness of the digital age, to the little-orchestra-in-a-keyboard that producers would flock to for inspiration from companies long disbanded.

Thing is, it’s tough-as-all-get-out trying to find all these iconic sounds without practically knocking your savings account right into the middle of next week. Would that one could find a swell bundle of old synth leads and epic soundscapes without reaching for one’s credit card.

Well, buddy, may I be the first to introduce you to: ACOUSTALOG

Acoustalog is a rompler synth made by yours truly using a collection of budget vintage/obscure synthesizers and keyboards, and secondhand eclectic folk instruments of all shapes and sizes! Built from absolute scratch as an homage to the classic synths and modules of old, Acoustalog intends to bring brand new sounds of yesterday to the composers and producers of today!

So far I’ve just got seven presets done using DecentSampler (Thanks again, David Hilowitz!), but I have big plans for more in this series! I’ll briefly show what I’ve done and what I’ve used:

B1 INCINERATOR – I used a Donner B1, which is a budget alternative of the famous Roland TB-303 used in techno music throughout the nineties. It’s got a very nice crunch to it.

K CANDY CHIME – This one was a homebrew sound created with one of my favorite synths: a Kawai MS710. At first glance, it seems like a toy, but it is naught but an elaborate ruse; this little fellow has features for creating and modifying custom presets: mixing and matching wavetables, changing the ADSR, the whole shebang. With a sound as cool and crisp as a December morning, this is a frequent go-to for me.

KENYAN RAIN – The humble kalimba. A simple but effective musical instrument cherished by many. I took a kalimba which was gifted to me by a missionary to Africa, connected a contact microphone to it, and recorded an octave for one part and an improvised random glissando sort of movement for the other. It’s BEAUTIFUL with reverb.

PRO1 SPACE BING – Yes, the preset needs a new name. One that’s much less tacky. Anyway, this bell was made with a very noteworthy member of classic synthesizer history: the Pro-One. Sequential put together the original, but Behringer’s tribute to it was much smaller and more affordable, so I acquired the latter, messed with the knobs and buttons, and found this sound! It’s very late 70s, and I absolutely love that.

VKEYS BLEEDING LEAD – Named for the effect it has on one’s ears. Not the most pleasant of tones, this, but useful in its own way. I used Korg’s Volca Keys for this one. Don’t let the Volcas’ size fool you; those things are powerhouses.

VSS GRIDLINE SUNSET – Hey, the Yamaha VSS-30’s back! It’s a fun little retro sampler and can add a Super-Nintendo-esque bitcrushed shine to any sound you could sample in it. For this one, I went back to the Donner B1 and recorded a simple waveform – layering it with an octave using the VSS’s layering feature.

50 PIZZAS – The Roland D-50 (which was NOT USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS SOUND, lawyers may rest assured) is an icon of the 1980s which is near impossible to find for cheap…but let’s be honest, we’re only really after three or four presets in the entire thing. So why not make them ourselves? This is a recreation of the “Pizzagogo” preset (as recognized in the opening of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” …and 78% of the rest of her discography) made with a Kalimba, a Ukrainian harp, and an analog synth sampled into the VSS-30 — all of which were layered with more custom sounds from the MS710, which were themselves subsequently edited in Vital…*whew* That’s a lot of extra steps. It ain’t exactly the same, but darn if I didn’t try and get close! I think it sounds better with chorus on it.

Hope you enjoy this little demo of my upcoming collection! Stay tuned for the full thing!

God bless! 👋😄