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Saturnias
Saturnias’s Reviews
Crisp, gritty, soulful - absolutely brilliant!
I finally set some time apart to play with this Decent Sampler recreation of the EMI Opus, and so far I have been very impressed. I was not aware of the existence of this synthesizer beforehand, and so cannot judge the "authenticity" of the recording with respect to the original analog. However, I have little doubt that a lot of care and effort went into the creation of this instrument, as it has a very characteristic sound.
One of the first things to notice is the user interface. As far as DS interfaces go, it both looks very nice and provides you with a ton of control. In fact, it is really quite impressive what the author was able to do with just pre-recorded samples and within the limits of the Decent Sampler engine.
As far as the instrument itself, you get to play with a synthesized piano and a string organ, which can be layered to taste. If desired, the lower end of the keyboard can be split off as a separate bass instrument. You can play with the composition knobs on these three instruments to shape it to your liking, and already these come with a great clear, but somewhat gritty sound. The term "aesthetically flawed" comes to mind. I particularly enjoy the string organ, which would be right at home in an old, cozy sci-fi movie soundtrack.
But then you can further modify the sound with tremolo, vibrato, phaser, ring modulation, which all add distort and "grittify" the sound in their own ways. Finally, there is a filter with ADSR and wah knobs. You can select between LPF, BPF and HPF by choosing the respective patch. And you can always add delay, reverb, etc. as post-effects in your DAW (which sounds great with this synth!).
In summary, this is one of the more impressive instruments I have come across on this website, both in terms of sound quality and the level of control. A great vintage-sounding polysynth with tons of character and pleasant imperfections. Many thanks to the author for making it!
Equal parts eerie and cozy
I do believe that I can most aptly describe this magnificent creation as equal parts eerie and cozy. This instrument just begs for m7 and maj7 chords, which drench the listener in uneasy bliss. There's so much character here.
As a sample instrument, it is very well designed I think. It sounds fantastic, and very consistently so across the whole keyboard. The nine register mixing controls make this a deep well of organ timbres, and you get to tweak the sound so it sounds exactly right. I did find that the background noise got quite noticeable on the Coby patch when stacking many notes, but it fits the overall vibe of this instrument so well that it sounds like it was intentional anyway (maybe it was!).
But the magic truly began for me when I started using modulators/automation from my DAW on the different organs registers and lay down chords whose timbre just keeps on evolving. This instrument is incredibly well-suited for that, thanks to the way the GUI was organized. I've barely scratched the surface, because I suspect that there is a whole menagerie of effects that would also work well with this instrument (clippers, phasers, moving resonant filters, bitcrushers, Cryostasis' spectral inertia modulator, maybe even a parallel-processed vocoder?).
And all that magic in a neat, 80 MB package. Truly a gift that keeps on giving. Thank you very much, sir Shaffer. Hats off.
Well, this is just lovely!
Having used the nice cajon library by PMEDig for some music projects in the past, I was excited to see Jon's Cajons pop up on Pianobook. And after playing around with it for a bit, I am well impressed!
This is a very solid and usable instrument. What I like most is the quality and attention to detail. From the sheer number of samples included, to the cheerful UI that can be understood at a glance, to the filters and controls for mic balance, to the cute little slappy hands...
Just excellent stuff Jon, thank you! You've made a lovely instrument here, and I think I'll be reaching for it quite often...
A bit tricky to use, but very cool!
I love the story and the idea behind this. This really has a unique sound. It sounds like the instrument of choice for a voyage through the smouldering plains of Muspelheim.
From the technical side of things, to me this sounds like a well-sampled instrument. As for controls, there are various articulations that can be blended together, there is ADSR, LPF, reverb, and delay. The delay is a little bit fast for my taste, but hey, I can just use a post-effect for that.
From a musician's perspective, I find this a bit of a tricky instrument. Using it often or busily can get overbearing very quickly, and unless you're going for that sort of thing, I tend to be a bit more tactical where I use it. I use the plucks and the picks samples as one-offs in folk arrangements where volume picks up a lot or fades out suddenly, to great effect I might add! Slow, hulking bass lines work well too, but it's tricky for it to be subtle. Composers of the more cinematic persuasion will likely enjoy using it this way too.
The bowed samples I find harder to use, the higher harmonics of that sound are truly gnarly. They sound great, I just haven't found a place for them yet. Probably would work well together with a few effects in a dark ambient project.
To summarize: a nicely sampled virtual instrument based on a very unique real instrument. It has a feisty character that forces you to think about where best to put it to use. Comes highly recommended, as far as I'm concerned, well done!
Sometimes less is more
Another nice instrument from Audiofond, and as with the previous ones, it has a lot of character. This would work well for adding a touch of retro electronic sound to a piece. You get six different channels, each with a sinusoidal layer and a noise layer. To shape the sounds, there are some pitching and filtering knobs for each channel, and a two-knob global filter.
Compared to fully featured modern synths, this can feel a little bit restricted. But I enjoy working within restrictions, and found that this synth forces me to think more carefully about what to do with what you have. And for a sampled instrument with less than 500kB of samples on board, there is a surprising number of thuds, hisses, bleeps and wooshes you can make.
Overall, I have enjoyed playing around with the "Марш", and will probably reach for it more often in the future. Thanks Audiofond!