2008
I assume this isn't the only music industry blog you read, and thus I assume that you already know about Synplant's existence. What I find intriguing is that I am sadly in the minority as far as people that understood right away what it was. I'll grant two things that are almost certainly true: first, I suppose it isn't readily obvious outside of a context, and second, I make user interfaces for a living, for all intents and purposes, so it would theoretically stand to reason that I would be able to figure out an interface better than someone that didn't do that very thing. (Actually, that latter statement is demonstrably untrue, so we can let it slide for now.)
The reason I bring this up is that I was lately pondering a similar thing. Not what Magnus did exactly, but a different mousetrap to essentially catch the same mouse. And the response to his product makes me a little nervous. I mean, if a synth doesn't look like this, is it doomed to failure? One could make the argument that after 1970, the Minimoog topology was the most logical way to lay out a synth, or maybe the most accepted. But that doesn't immediately obviate all other methods of programming, does it?
One could also make the argument that there are way more D-50s in the world than there are Minimoogs, but I counter with the following: nobody that didn't have an editor/librarian or hardware programmer has ever done more than touch up the factory sounds in a D-50. The JD-800 is, for all intents and purposes, a D-50 with a hardware programmer, and look how much fun that isn't.
Now, all that nonsense aside, I've spent a couple hours with the Synplant, and it really comes down to the same problem all products of this sort have. Ultimately, you can diddle around for hours, but you can't just think up a sound and program it. Anyone that spends two hours with a Minimoog can make a bass sound, a lead, a brass fart, pretty much anything the Mini is capable of, within a minute or two, which is the beauty of the box in the first place. But with this, I'll be god damned if I'm gonna say "I need a resonant bass register pad" and whip it up. There is a fair amount of luck involved in getting a sound that is usable, in my opinion, which is interesting, since the synth engine itself is perfectly capable of doing the sound I thought of.
So, it really comes down to the interface, as always. So tell me: could you tell what this did the second you saw it? Or did you think it was a device for making generative music like Wire To The Ear did? Or can you not tell what the fuck is going on at all? And maybe a sub-question: is it useful at all to have what is for all intents and purposes an unprogrammable synth with a sophisticated randomizer?
(And yes, I know individual sounds can be gussied up with the "DNA" thing, but that is just a pretty face on a big slab of D-50-style programming.)
I didn't assume anything about the instrument other than it would be capable of creating random sounds. When I first used it, the tutorial patch showed me all I should know in just a few minutes so that was helpful.
posted November 10, 2008 by loops
Couldn't Synplant just be considered a plugin with an automatic preset generator? The missing link plugin between the preset users and the deep manipulators.
posted November 10, 2008 by oniwe
If you've got a killer song written with piano and a simple vocal, you could fart over it and it'd still be a killer tune, so you're looking to make the best of that tune and enhance it with the kind of sounds you want.
If you're synth-inclined, dialling up a perfect patch on a useable interface you're familiar with or tweaking a preset you know is close to the sound you're after is the quickest way.
But is that because it is the quickest and best way, or is it because as CR states - the Minimoog has etched it's workflow onto our brain and that's how we do things.
If you're a highly experimental electronic music producer and have time to fuck around with planting seeds, letting them grow and sitting around waiting for an age to maybe find something useable then this interface would be great.
But look at Automaton. If you make a killer tune, then program some fantastic beats, but want to imprint a signature sound or effect on that beat, something like Automaton can give you exactly what you want, but then you can allow it to elaborate and basically produce some useable results quickly that are random, yet contribute.
So a good mix of conventional/unconventional would work for me, as long as the process doesn't take you too far off the beaten track, and don't blame it for shitty results if you don't have an overall goal or outcome in mind.
posted November 10, 2008 by mutilatedlip
I'm genuinely intrigued how you guessed it's true function so quickly from just looking at it's gui CR.
wq.
posted November 10, 2008 by wquoyle
-CR
posted November 10, 2008 by Chris Randall
It certainly seems capable of making some interesting sounds..I agree it the kind of instrument that inspires musical ideas rather than being the 'voice' of them...
I think he needs to rethink the 'DNA' editor...some of that stuff is just shit you need to get at quickly to fashion a sound to your needs...a list is the last thing tired eyes need to cope with.
posted November 10, 2008 by quantize
First off, I WAS able to understand what it was as soon as I saw it and read the first bit of the CDM post. I even understood his Kai's Power Tools references. But I'm a computer geek and have at some point designed UIs for a living.
Here's what I'm expecting to happen when I try Synplant. First, I'll load up the demo and play with it. I'll tweak sliders, squish plant leaves or whatever, and I'll stumble across a sound that's really cool.
Then I'll think "This sound would be perfect for a track if it just had a slightly shorter decay". And I'll search for an ADSR envelope or a Decay knob and I won't find it, and then I'll go back to some other synth that doesn't look like a plant.
I'd love something like this if I could use the random seed/plant/DNA features to seek inspiration, and then click on an "Advanced" tab and have access to real, sensible parameters.
Having said that, I'm going to give it a try anyway because the sounds in their demo are very nice. Maybe I'm wrong.
I would love to see AD's version of a mousetrap to catch the same mouse. I can imagine something abstract yet intuitive - for example, Automaton. Random, inspirational, yet ultimately controllable.
posted November 10, 2008 by Michael Moncur
cdm recently signaled a tendency in electronic music composition and performance to combine generated stuff and pre-planned stuff. something like synplant fits in perfectly. it's not a bread and butter synth, but could be a nice addition to your quiver.
i liked the gui the moment i saw it, but synplant really came to life for me when i learned about the genome editor. not that i would use it a lot, but it's good to know that you can probably change a 90% perfect sound into a perfect sound. it looks as if sonic charge have found a good balance between generated and planned, but the jury is still out on that one.
i kinda like that the list is not as inviting as some of us would like. it fits in the concept and it forces you to rethink your ways. i think some would still like a bunch of clearly laid out knobs with a small randomize button in the corner. but that's not the nature of this beast. to me, it's a synth that uses the power of a computer as a number-cruncher to generate sounds in an idiomatic way (only possible with computer), instead of using it to generate as closely as possible the sounds of the past.
as an aside, i hope that one day vst will allow for direct communication between plugins, in which you can target all parameters. that way you could use a control version of synplant and apply it to any softsynth possible. results would of course depend a lot on your mappings.
to conclude, i think it's courageous that sonic charge have come up with this after a hit like microtonic.
posted November 10, 2008 by minz
posted November 10, 2008 by hulapallo
![link [psycle.free.fr]](http://psycle.free.fr/hp/synplant.png){kind=link}
i think its more a trip of discovering sounds, following where the branches grow.. i had a bit of fun playing around with the demo and recorded a strange loop just playing around with the mouse on the gui and that loop triggered a bit of a song idea..
so my opinion- fun and useful in an exploratory way in the short term
long term..?
(I'll see if i'm hooked in 3 weeks when the demo's finished)