Audulus is great for drum synthesis! I’ve been using Audulus for this since I got it and I built or edited some modules for drum synthesis that I now want to share with you.
I polished and documented them, so I can upload them here as a drum synthesis framework/collection.
(Personally I like to use splines for envelopes whenever I can but the framework/collection also includes a drum-envelope if you prefer that.)
Here a list of the modules included in this framework:
Envelopes
– Spline envelope
– Drum envelope
Oscillators
– Drum oscillator
– Tunable dum oscillator
– FM drum oscillator
– Tunable FM dum oscillator
– Noise
– PM percussion noise
– Click
Effects
– Rude 1 pole low pass filter
– Spline distortion
– Slow down
– EQs (just edited standard biquad EQs and filters from the library)
I also what to share some percussion patches I made with this framework.
Here the patch collection: percussion framework patch collection .audulus (2.3 MB)
(There are some comments in most of the patches)
(This patch collection will be updated with more patches)
Uploading all patches individually probably wasn‘t the best idea. I wouldn‘t want to download so manny patches to find out if I like something or not. So I putt all patches into one.
I also made something new. I tried to make something close to the kick in the linn drum.
It‘s not 100% there but I still like the result so here it is linnish kick.audulus (475.6 KB)
I also added it to this to the Patch collection.
Thanks!
I tried to make them as compact as possible while still being intuitive.
The svgs @stschoen shared here did help a lot with that.
Also thank you @futureaztec and @stschoen for speaking so highly about the patches you’ve used.
It took a while until I got myself to clean up and document all these modules. So it is great to see that some of this stuff is useful to you and that it was worth putting in the work
Very interesting to see how you use the basic oscillator tools to make the specific modules. Obviously toms and hand drums could be found. It almost bridges a gap between programming and sound design. I like the idea of making some unique drum sounds from your oscillator tools and then sampling it into the digitakt.
I’m planning to share some more percussion-patches that I have lying around.
However, before I start cleaning up these patches, I whant to check if there is any interest in the patches that do have some comments/documentation inside, but no controls broken out.
If not I‘ll stop making/uploading them, because that will save me some time. (Besides, I don’t really enjoy documenting that much )
I didn’t fully realize that the reason you included those was to graphically explain how the higher order tools/modules were used to build the final ones. Usually an Audulus user has to dig through the math/logic in order to understand the techniques. Your approach, on the other hand, remains at the virtual level so that all of the patching would work for all modular synthesis in general.
Personally, I find this very valuable not only in terms of understanding but also for ease of customization. It just might be that breakthroughs in synthesis will continue for years and Audulus will progress along with a firm foot in its past iterations. As a digital synthesizer platform it benefits from this type of transparent, even magnified, routing. One could take just one of your modules and integrate it into a physical modular system (via an ES-8, for instance) without any need to covert further.
Once again it makes me think about having a machine with a giant board (elektron maybe) that one could utilize the various raw chips of (or through-hole configurations), intervening into the core layout of a physical synthesizer — we see this with some products already but not to the degree that would be possible with the pre-established community here.
This approach, again, tips the value more toward the music producer/artist with less obfuscation in terms of computer programming vernacular. I, for one, like it.
The reason I included the patches with comments was that I like to do drum synthesizing in a subpatch without any exposed controls. Whenever I want to change something about the sound I’ll just do the adjustment directly in the subpatch. However, this approach only works because I created the patches and therefore know exactly which part of the patch is responsible for which part of the sound.
My Idea behind the commented patches was to enable someone other then me to use my approach. (thats why they don‘t have any controls broken out)
However, I‘ve come to think that my approach isn‘t really that practical and after seeing your Just Peng! patch, I think that having controls broken out is always a better idea, because you can modulate them for mixing, songwriting or to create some interesting sounds.
But as you wrote, the comments are still useful if you want to change/extend one of the modules. So I’ll keep commenting the patches.
However, maybe it makes more sense to place the comments directly in the modules with broken out controls?
While I clearly misunderstood why you packaged the comments within the plain face modules, it took me until now to remember that the information was in there. The information is key, because some of the way your modules work with each other are not easy to read off of the control layouts alone. A programmer could figure it out, but for the general user a set of instructions is crucial. Obviously the broken out controls make for opportunities of variation.
Audulus is just so far ahead of what processing power is available for a reasonable price. I mean it is conceivable that one could have a whole set of “tracks” all hanging together to mix between them. 10 patches on the screen, fading all the elements here and there. At the same time, I can’t really do what I want with just one track. So, continuously looking for ways to economize the processing in the modules is as important as having feature-rich options.
In order to get productions as dense as an Ableton project, I think that using generative techniques to modulate parameters opens up an even more powerful field than automating in a DAW. Perhaps the discipline of doing more with less is a valuable approach as we move toward Audulus 4. I hope the work @taylor is doing will allow not only things like samplers, granular and midi out, but also to be able to have these things happening in patches that would otherwise be too heavy to add anything else to.
I made some changes and additions to the patch collection:
removed the sub-patches with no controls broken out and moved the comments/documentation from those sub-patches into the modules with broken out controls.
)