Deep waves

One of the hardest problems in designing something is deciding where the 'sweet spot' is - just enough facilities to provide lots of possibilities, but not too much because that wastes money. Some current Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) provide lots of dedicated plug-ins for a variety of synthesis techniques, whilst others go for more novel approaches.

Abelton Live is one of the latter, with only a few dedicated virtual synthesis plug-ins. But by combining the simple sampler playback (via the brilliantly named 'Simpler') with the built-in MIDI and audio effects processing, and the general purpose 'Rack' that lets you build up your own special-purpose 'super-plug-in', you can do some amazing things.

This was highlighted for me with two recent purchases. I bought 'Lumen' for my Apple iPhone 3G, and 'Vector' from Puremagnetik.com for my Ableton Live 7 rig. Lumen is a puzzle game where you solve the problem of passing a beam of correctly coloured light through a series of checkpoints, using just a single light source, some coloured filters, and some mirrors. Rather like the Honda 'Cog' advert, both are variations on what is known as a Heath Robinson machine in the UK, or a Rube Goldberg machine in the USA, and they go by other names elsewhere. The machines build complex operations from simple parts, although practicality is not always high on the agenda.

The 'Vector' instrument rack produces sounds reminiscent of one of my favourite pieces of hardware: a Korg Wavestation. The Wavestation uses two distinctly different but related types of synthesis technique: vector synthesis and wave-sequencing.

• Vector synthesis was first introduced in the Sequential (Circuits) Prophet VS, and enabled a dynamic mix of up to four separate ROM sample-playback sounds either using a joystick controller, or stored as a 2D controller timeline.
  
  
• Wave-sequencing takes ROM-playback of samples, and allows the samples to be cross-faded together in a time sequence. This provides sounds with varying timbre, or a rhythmic character.

The 'Vector' instrument rack does not use a dedicated synthesiser, instead it uses the Simpler sample replay instruments, and puts them into time-sequences by using a series of built-in 'Note Length' MIDI processors to produce the timed note triggers, and it uses the ability to map parameters deep inside an instrument rack to be controlled from a simple top-level set of controllers. Having spent many a happy hour creating wave sequences, I was intrigued to discover that the process is very similar in the original hardware and this modern virtual form.

In fact, the virtual form might even be faster for making sequences, and it has the added bonus that the wave sequencing is not fixed, and can be edited with all of the MIDI and audio processing, plus all the instrument rack features like zones, velocity switching etc., plus the samples are no longer locked in a Korg ROM!

Being able to make and edit a synthesis technique by bolting together simple processors and instruments is a wonderful thing! For me, it is more satifying than solving a puzzle like the thousands inside Lumen... but it takes rather more time, and so far, isn't as portable!