Modulation monsters?

[eLawnMust]

For years now there's been way too much 'modulation' in tunes to where you are listening to a string of soundFX rather than any sorta music... Peeps don't even comprehend what musical tact is anymore... Same with movies as the mindless minions think it's a great movie if it has tons of crappy CGI, forget the story...

Recently came across this video, well so much for 'evolution' as there appears to be a peak in 70's & 80's then starting in 90's the 4/4 'kickdrum' masturbation enters the scene & never goes away with music between groups starting to sound quite similar so any group could play any other group's music for sure... Then @ 2009 oh shit... instead of any musical tact we now start to hear 'MODULATION' instead...

Folks, changing velocities, tempos, note slides, pitch bends, glisses, triplets, nuance & especially the recognition of the SPACE between notes being as important as the notes themselves is essential... There is more of course, then you need little in the way of 'modulation'...

[Matt67]

It's funny. Someone asks for a good beer, and the response “Alcohol is bad for you” comes right away.

[billinder33]

PhasePlant obviously. It's closest synth you'll find short of a full-blown modular synth.

[himalaya]

Back in the day FXpansion's Cypher ruled supreme in this context. Literally every slider and knob on the GUI could be modulated, but more importantly, it could be done in a very intuitive way, at least for me.

What was even more bonkers was their Fusor mothership space-station app that could load up to 3 FXpansion synths and inter-modulate between them, while Fusor's exclusive mod page could add even more modulation options. This was a whole 'modulation' world onto itself. I miss it a lot.

[zvenx]

Back in the day FXpansion's Cypher ruled supreme in this context. Literally every slider and knob on the GUI could be modulated, but more importantly, it could be done in a very intuitive way, at least for me.

What was even more bonkers was their Fusor mothership space-station app that could load up to 3 FXpansion synths and inter-modulate between them, while Fusor's exclusive mod page could add even more modulation options. This was a whole 'modulation' world onto itself. I miss it a lot.

Lol, there is any irony here.. You may recall I hated TransMod, found it very un-intuitive... but now
more synths (Dawesome, and Gforce's MAP for instance) seem to follow somewhat along the same path, I have now finally "seen"/ come to appreciate, the ingeniousness in that approach.
rsp

[himalaya]

Yeah, I remember you disliking it. ha! I love that system to this day. Glad you've seen the light!

[zvenx]

I surely have
rsp

[Teksonik]

Certainly Oscillation is more important than Modulation?

I've said it many times before that we're living in the time of "Modulation Madness". Where what goes into a patch is more important than what comes out of the speakers.

I saw one guy brag about using over 30 modulation source/destinations in a patch that ended up sounding as simple as a Minimoog. Complexity for its own sake.

Of course some modulation is necessary but I don't judge a patch by how many Mods it uses but how few it needs to be a great sound.

But to answer the OP's question, Zebra 3 is a synth built on modulation. Designed not so much to be complex but to lean more towards scientific than artistic. Should fit the OP's needs perfectly.

[liquidsound]

Reason Rack. Why not.

[whassup]

Vital.

[sunthief01]

Second the nods to Icarus, Bazille + Zebra 3. I personally really like the sound of Bazille and think patching it is fun, especially with the GearPorn skin that comes with it.

For pure audio rate interactions IMO Reaktor (Blocks) is still the king. Setting up crazy FM/am routings and then playing with the oversampling ratios is so interesting.

Opsix is great as well.

Tal-Mod and Hive are interesting to me as well but I dont own them yet

[Korg Supporter]

For pure audio rate interactions IMO Reaktor (Blocks) is still the king. Setting up crazy FM/am routings and then playing with the oversampling ratios is so interesting.

You mean the NI Blocks or the set from ToyBox Audio?

[zerocrossing]

Strong songwriting and excessive production gimmicks seem to be mutually exclusive.

This is why I write on an acoustic guitar, at least when I’m writing a traditional song. Nothing to hide behind. However, when I’m producing something, the gloves come off, and the sky’s the limit. Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. All written on an acoustic guitar.

[zerocrossing]

For pure audio rate interactions IMO Reaktor (Blocks) is still the king. Setting up crazy FM/am routings and then playing with the oversampling ratios is so interesting.

You mean the NI Blocks or the set from ToyBox Audio?

Both are very good. I highly recommend the Toybox add-on packs, if you own Reaktor.

[IvyBirds]

Any synth that has good Host Automation can be turned into a Modulation Monster, just host the plugin inside of Voltage Modular by Cherry Audio which is then hosted inside of your DAW

Then you have virtually unlimited modulation options as you can point all the modulation options that would exist as voltages in a Eurorack system

Works really well for a synth like Omnisphere that already has an extensive modulation system where host automation and MIDI CCs are some of the sources

You can also set up an LFO in Voltage Modular that will then modulate a parameter of another modulator either inside of VM or inside the plugin

And since it's a virtual Eurorack system you have access to tools like mults, attenuators, random value generators, S&H, and a bunch of other cool stuff