Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Exploring The Depths of Viking Synth - Modulation 'Tricks' ?
I don't keep it a secret that Viking Synth is one of my favourite iOS synths. My other favourite is Lorentz. To my ears and tastes, these are the best sounding synths on the platform and the closest to my personal musical voice.
In the never ending quest to get closer and closer with my tools, I read the manuals for both in depth today (have long since consumed all YouTube reference for them). I've used Viking quite a lot in practice and the manual has certainly opened a great many new possibilities to me.
In particular, I found the Viking Synth manual to be very interesting and deep:
http://blamsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/VikingUserManual101.pdf
In particular, the second on Modulation (p13-17) was very carefully noted and provided a few insightful 'tricks' as an afterthought:
One common trick is to use filter envelope (Filt Env) shaping with the filter envelope (Filt Env)
as the source and the filter (Filt) as the destination. This technique can greatly increase the
filter cutoff movement.Another trick is to use velocity to control the filter cutoff. For this you can use Constant as the
Source, filter cutoff (Filt) as the Destination, and Velocity as the Shaping. In general, when you
want to use the shaping as an effect you may want to choose Constant as the Source.
This app, while accessible, is clearly deep on a level that is be rare to achieve in practice. Set me wondering whether anyone else has discovered any such 'tricks' of their own, or are simply aware of any potential for deeper application in their own personal experience and repository of knowledge!
I'll check back in with my own new discoveries, once I've made them!
Oscar
Comments
Thanks for the manual link and your observations. Much to learn
@OscarSouth - While it sounds like the manual is better than typical for the Viking, that's a pretty standard feature of any subtractive synth. If you have a more complex envelope you can do even more interesting things with filters for long pads. But modulation is key to interesting sounds on a subtractive (and indeed FM) synth.
Slightly more advanced (as in not all implement this) are hard/soft synch, and wave shaping (which is one of the things you find in west coast synthesis). There's also Pulse Width Modulation (where an LFO controls the pulsewidth of a pulse/square wave). And mixing oscillators can be fun also. Or you can filter noise with a narrow bandpass filter. Or you can link velocity to the Q of a filter for some really interesting and weird effects.
Syntorial is an excellent (but expensive) resource for getting to grips with this stuff. As of course are the superb Secrets of Synthesis series from Sound on Sound (which is free).
Of course, and very good points. Bear in mind that I'm not comparing Viking to any other synths; mainly focusing on the merits of this particular workflow.
For reference, my approach is very live performance centric, and almost nothing is sequenced. I like Viking specifically because it's very performance intuitive. Many deeper synths are more focussed on sound design. I would say (in my personal experience) that the 'Moog Voyager' workflow is a perfect middle ground between depth of scope and depth of accessibility.
There are definitely many more complicated, innovative and deep synths, but on stage that depth is lost to the demands of 'the moment'. I find that Viking (& Lorentz) offer the optimum level of depth, where possibility and performativity overlap (i.e. I can realistically achieve 60% potential of a relatively deep thing rather than 15% of a somewhat deeper thing).
I think what I'm trying to say is that it's the 'Fender Strat' of iOS synths for me. I don't need a 30 string fretless quad necked custom. I just need a vessel for my personal expression. This is what I see (hear?) in these synths.
I've kind of gone on a philosophical tangent anyway. I can certainly visualise ways to implement a lot of the ideas you mentioned in Viking. I will have a play! Thanks!
@OscarSouth Good insight and thanks for the manual....
Oh, how I wish there was a Fender Strat of hardware synths (pricewise)
There's got to be at least one good all rounder available for around £1000!! Even if it's not a 'classic', surely there's something?
I don't think there's a good all rounder synth for any money. The closest in your terms would probably be something like a Moog Voyager, though of course those are monophonic... But if you're a reasonably skilled keyboard player who groks subtractive synthesis - Moogs are awesome.
Gotcha. Yeah there's a reason that the Moog approach is a classic. One of the reasons I never really got into all the VSTs on the desktop is that they're so complicated (with interfaces that typically make me want to destroy my eyes). It's not that I couldn't understand them, it's just that I don't want to.
Thor is a great powerful synthesizer and I can implement almost any patch I can think of in it. If ont he other hand I want to improvize something Thor's interface kills it for me. Too many steps, clicks and .
Another very different synthesizer that I think is very playable are the Granular synthesis apps from ApeSoft. Which from what I've heard of your stuff might interest you. Find some interesting ethnic waveforms and then mangle them.
Something I've wanted for a while is a very playable FM synth (I suspect I'll just end up building it). FM synthesis really doesn't need to be that hard. If you read this: http://www.dubbhism.org/search/label/tao of fm - you immediately see the possibilities for a player. But almost every FM synthesizer out there focuses on the math of it, rather than the sound of it.
Bringing it all together nicely - Have you tried the FM synthesis in Viking? The third oscillator can be fed into the first as an FM source. It's an aspect of it that I haven't yet explored (but plan to). Might not be the most advanced FM (I'm sure it's not) but certainly an interesting possibility.
I'm definitely going to read that article too, cheers! FM is the last 'common' synthesis method for me to get my head around and definitely something I want to get deeper into.
I appreciate your time.
I also look forward to hear what you think and do with the preset for Lorenzt.
I've not had a chance to play with them yet (not been on my music equipment yet) but I've saved the bank to my PC to copy over.
What I like about Lorentz is that while it has a l great deal of depth, it's also very immediate and not wrapped in the 'enigma' that some synths are, when it comes to presets and sound creation. I'm looking forward to exploring your presets and learning how you got different kinds of character out of it. Thanks for taking the time to create them!
You guys should try Phasemaker, if you haven't already. Quite musical to my ears and not too difficult to put patches together once you get in it. Mersenne is also quite easy, though more on the percussive side of FM.
Thanks for the manual link!
And +1 for Phasemaker making FM programming pleasant/musical.