OhmSound is a complete FM synthesizer, designed to take extensive advantage of the Ohm64 layout and programmability.
Or, better said, plug in your Ohm64, open up OhmSound, and have a hell of a lot of fun.
I made this synth not so much as to create the best sounding, most awesome synthesizer ever, but to provide a detailed example of what you can do with the Ohm64. Since the source Max/MSP patches are all available and fairly well documented, it provides an excellent narrative for making your own instruments.
Making this instrument also gave me an opportunity to find some potential “best practices” when designing for the Ohm64, as well as test and refine the Editor code and test that further. Testing-by-making is much more fun than testing-with-tests. I had spent an enormous amount of time doing that in the run-up to releasing the Ohm64, and it was high time to get my hands dirty.
Some of the interactions I wanted to explore are:
- Context sensitivity, selectable by mouse or Ohm
- Reprogramming the Ohm on the fly
- Visual feedback with the LEDs
- Instrument playing and melody
- Radical, immediate, hands-on sound design
On its own, this synth might be fairly boring, but by fully considering a good layout and reasonable parameters that work with the hardware, sonic joy is induced!
That’s not to say there aren’t some interesting things happening under the DSP hood. This synth combines aspects of FM synthesis, waveshaping, and subtractive synthesis to realize a vast potential of sounds.
I encourage you to take it for a spin and see how you might want to use something like this. No, it’s not a VST plug-in. No, it doesn’t do ReWire. No, it doesn’t record. No, you can’t send MIDI to it from any source (only the Ohm64).
You’ll have to learn or dig out a couple of tricks to get this integrated into your existing music creation workflow: things like SoundFlower, AudioJack, or bringing the source into Max/MSP and adding some of those things yourself. But first…just play around. Productivity can come later.
Feedback is welcome (best done in our Forums). And if there’s enough interest, I’ll add some features.
The next step I have planned in Ohm64sw will be…steps. As in “Step Sequencer.” Complete with cool blinking lights.
Until then, try this out, and let me know how it goes:
OhmSound v0.02:
Max/MSP source – http://lividserver.com/dl/ohm/OhmSoundSource.zip
Mac – http://lividserver.com/dl/ohm/OhmSound_v002-OSX.zip
Win – http://lividserver.com/dl/ohm/OhmSound_v002-XP.zip
It’s important to know that OhmSound will re-program your Ohm64, but changes aren’t saved and will not be present if you power down the Ohm64. If you have a special setup, go ahead and save it to user settings before you start playing with OhmSound.
(Special thanks to Manuel Poletti’s excellent “X.FM” example in the Max 5 distribution which provided the foundation for the DSP.)
Filed under:
news by Peter
