Took a lot longer than planned, but it's finished:

Prism Sticks for Chromaphone
140 colourful noises, divided into: Bells & Chimes, Keys, Pads, Percussive Atmospheres, Percussive Hits, Plucks & Strings, Soundscapes & FX, Synthetic, Wind.

Demos, Patch List and Patch Notes all available.

Price is GBP £12 (approx. USD $19, EUR €15). Pay by Paypal, emailed to you asap. Enjoy!
Last edited by coincidental on Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:06 pm; edited 4 times in total

Hi there,
Your demos on Soundcloud sound great, congratulations! I just ordered this and paid with PayPal. Really looking forward to it.
Cheers from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ben/Borealis

Thanks for the kind words. They made my day!

Morning!

I've had this sound bank for a couple of days now and I have to say it is absolutely outstanding. I tend to like sounds that have a distinct character and that lend themselves to more adventurous and unconventional music, I do not like "bread and butter" patches. These sounds appeal to that side of me, but what is especially useful is that they are very playable. They do not take over and tell their own story like some one note patches can. You can play very melodically with them but they have such interesting texture and character that you can also create very unusual soundscapes. Five stars from this user! And they are an absolute bargain at less than $20 USD.

Thanks so much for the seal of approval.

I do aim very much for playability above almost all else - I try bear in mind that these are almost individual instruments, rather than "just patches". In some cases they follow the outline of traditional instruments (Harpsichord, Harp, Kora, Bassoon, Mbira...), in other cases they are new "impossible hybrid" instruments or just interesting and evocative noises. But the aim is always to have something you can get your fingers stuck into and conjure your own performance out of.

I'm sure that as Chromaphone matures there will be updates that permit more per-patch MIDI control, which will expand the expressiveness even further. It's a fascinating instrument!

For those who don't frequent the Marketplace, there's a quick sale to celebrate my birthday going on:

Happy Hour patchbank for Lounge Lizard EP-3 (100 patches): £5
Prism Sticks patchbank for Chromaphone (125 patches): £9

It ends today at midnight GMT.
EDIT: Now finished - many thanks to those who bought and for the kind wishes.
Last edited by coincidental on Sat Aug 18, 2012 4:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

Congrats on the release coincidental, great to see more sounds coming for this special instrument!

Thanks a lot - it's certainly a lot of fun, and I wouldn't rule out doing another patchbank for it before the year's out (particularly if there's an update with more features) - lots of odd and beautiful sounds hidden in tucked-away corners...

Happy birthday

That's an interesting thought, that all the sounds we create already exist and we just have to find those tucked-away corners to harvest them.

Well, particularly with physical modelling, that's often exactly how I think about it.

I imagine all the possible sounds as a vast rubbery plain, with the good/interesting/beautiful/useful sounds (judging this is where taste/experience/influences are important) as deep dips in the plain. You can't see them from a distance, but if you keep your ears open and your antennae twitching (you do have antennae, don't you?) you can feel the slope, the draw, of a nearby dip, and follow it like a marble circling round a funnel. You get the gist I hope - or am I talking nonsense?

Of course, there are also times when you have a more definite aim in mind, and employ the 'standard methods' to make the journey from A to B, but exploring is fun too, and I feel that physical modelling synths like Chromaphone enable this sort of exploration more than some traditional subtractive synths.

I'd be genuinely interested to know what others think, though!

And thank you very much

You most definitely are not talking nonsense, that is a fascinating approach to describing what it is that sound designers do. I would only add (and I do not consider myself a sound designer, at least in these circles) that one shouldn't undervalue the unique talent and discernment it takes to harvest the quality of fruit that you and Simon and others have brought to market. (I will stop before I flog the farming metaphor to death.)

I've always seen and described my own sound design and composition as a process of exploration in sound space.

Well that's far more succinct!