What’s going on people!
We’ve both been trying to commit to streaming a little bit better than recently (it’s its own grind though, yankow?) so we’ve started a new theme to our weekly production live streams on Twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1447970481
Starting with James taking a look at the TAL Noisemaker freeware synth yesterday, we will be looking into a heavily discounted, free or new VST and giving you the low down on what it’s all about.
So without further ado let’s crack on with the TAL Noisemaker Subtractive Virtual Analog Synthesizer.
An improved version of the TAL Elek7ro the TAL Noisemaker has a completely new synth engine and GUI to boot. NoiseMaker includes two main oscillators, a sub-oscillator, multiple filter types, two LFOs, an envelope editor, and a modest but functional bank of FX.
I’m pretty used to the oscillator level pots being on the oscillator panels themselves, so it took a moment poking around to see they’re on the global settings here but other than that the GUI is nicely laid out. You’ve got separate panels for OSC 1 & 2, LFO 1 & 2, Master, Filter, and Amp. There’s a bank of FX below with 2 Chorus FX, a Bit-crusher (although it has a very……..un bit-crushed sound so maybe crusher just refers to some sort of distortion), Reverb, Delay, and modulators for Velocity, Pitch, and Calibration.
A nice center point to this synth is the Envelope Editor Panel, which allows visual editing of the below parameters:
• Filter cutoff
• Osc 1 pitch
• Osc 2 pitch
• Osc 1 and Osc 2 pitch
• FM
• Ring modulation
• Track volume
Naturally, I was messing around with crazy FM shapes, trying to make ear-bleeding noises (you can always listen to our ear-bleeding noises by visiting our artist page ) but I’m sure you could do nice things with it in addition. Cycle speed is adjustable by the dropdown on the right-hand side with x1 corresponding to an 8 beat cycle and x16 to a ¼ beat cycle (with incremental stages in between those). The controls within the envelope editor are similar to Vital and Serum so should be comfortable for most soft synth users. Be aware the smallest of changes have quite a large effect (this is running theme through this synth actually) so keep to minor alterations as you morph your sound.
Take a look at the video on Twitch if you want to hear some of the sounds I got out of this bad boy, it’s a really comprehensive piece of freeware from a well-established company and well worth a look. It doesn’t quite have the customizable versatility as synths like Vital, Serum, and Phaseplant but with a bit of post-processing, it’ll hold its own as a key part of your toolkits.
You can grab it here for free!
Words by James Clarke (Stonx and Stonx Music Co-Founder)
