Sawmill, oscillator layering instrument (Kontakt)

[Zombie Queen]

I have built a new machine. It's one with an idea. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe not bad, but it has one. The idea is to have a stack of oscillators where you can detune any parameter, including effects, envelope or modulators for each oscillator individually. Well, you could just load a bunch of copies of some synth... but then switching through UI-s would be a bit of a mess. So anyway, here's how it sounds:

(oscilloscope comes from excellent rs-met toolchain)

Few more bits about it:
http://waveforms.fairlyconfusing.net/20 ... wmill.html

This is built in Kontakt and using raw sampled oscillators, mostly generated with tiny Eurorack modular (thanks to KVR Call to Arms). Yet I thought it qualifies more as an instrument than a sample library, which is why I picked instruments forum.
Any thoughts? Pointless exercise, or something worthwhile? (and it took a long long while to assemble)

[nordickvr]

This machine looks pretty damn interesting!
So Sawmill could e.g. (among other many many things) have different glide speed for each oscillators?
The sound at the beginning of the video called walkthrought is really cool btw.
Anyway, congrats, there’s some heavy scripting overthere.
And yes, it definitely has an idea.

[Zombie Queen]

Well, glide is one of few exceptions and it simply applies to all. I have been hesitating on this for a while... The main reason for giving up multiple glide speeds was that it doesn't sound too interesting. I have been playing with changing glide speed for different layers in other instruments and this is nothing to write home about. Mostly it just all goes out of tune for a moment blurring actual glide. I had to script glide for Sawmill because it converts single notes to note packets when you play, so the built-in glide function wouldn't work. I took the opportunity to add adjustable glide curve (result is variable glide speed - accelerating/decelerating), which I think is quite cool. But it spawned a bunch of controllers, now supporting different glide curves for each oscillator would make UI even more cluttered. As the results would be questionable in terms of usability, I decided to drop it.
The other exception is convolution, I was afraid it would be a tad too heavy on CPU to have seven. So there are two and instead you can adjust send levels for different oscillators.
Then there are two parts which just work differently. Arpeggiator - it actually has eight arp patterns, so you can make each osc play different arp, but it's more flexible, you can patch single arp to multiple oscillators. It's similar with step sequencer.

[jancivil]

Impressive.

[hermbot]

I think it's a pretty neat concept and it looks like you've put a lot of time into.

[starflakeprj]

Not only pretty damn interesting, also pretty damn amazing! This really shows the power and potential of Kontakt, great work! Fantastic work with the GUI design as well, this will be an instant purchase for me.

[Zombie Queen]

Thank you. Yes, it took some time, recording the oscillators alone took about a day per waveform. I probably have taken it too far from reasonable, but it was enjoyable ride.

And here are two bits about the modulator:

[Zombie Queen]

And quick flick on building a delay network...


Which made me wonder, how uncommon it is to have release triggers on a synth?

[Halonmusic]

Nice!

[Zombie Queen]

Thanks. I have been asked for a demo version, so there is a demo now. The limitation for this is a bit of unusual idea, it has the key range cut down to 10 semitones, makes it quite impractical to use in a track, but gives you the idea of what it works like. Kontakt situation does not give much options in this field anyway.