alan's Recent Posts

I just came across this on YouTube. Prepare to get excited by Sumu's possibilities. I just scratched the surface of this video, but based on my brief listen (I'm planning on listening in its entirity later) there's loads of potential here. https://youtu.be/DC-6txYlCcA

Speaking for myself (but I suspect lots of others too), hearing what this baby can do will go a long way to pacify me.

Lars, I just listened to your video. Those patches are fantastic!

I came across these wonderful videos that show just what Aalto and Kaivo are capable of. I know that Randy knows about this, because some of the comments are his. Super impressive (your synths and the videos).
https://youtu.be/gjsuDB4wpjQ
https://youtu.be/S7nttFs--qg
https://youtu.be/Odi-R8R6HSY
https://youtu.be/ZpF4Bmb0g98

I was totally joking about not sleeping (a month or so? I don't want Randy to kill himself). Thought it was obvious.

What Howl said. We're so enthusiastic because your synths are so special and unique. No 'me too' synths. Maybe if you just gave up sleeping for a month or so...

It has a wonderfully rich, organic sound.

Or even just a short video letting us hear it. After Christmas of course. :)

Thanks Howl. I don't read German and have never even seen that magazine. I think that I can wait until tomorrow for info. :) !!

I'd be happy just to see a video of it as a work in progress and hear its capabilities, for the moment at least. I'm so anxious to hear it.

Danke schön Randy.

Thanks for the info Brassee. I hope that this happens sooner or later. All of Randy's synths are so unique. Putting them in a Grid like environment could be amazing. Creative people always have ideas. They don't always happen. I hope that this one does.

I'm looking forward to the resynthesis in Sumu. I love tweaking sounds. As I said in the past, I'm not particularly a fan of FM, but I trust that Randy will have an interesting take on it.

I'd be very curious to read about the Grid environment too, even if, as it sounds to me at least, that won't be happening for a while.

I'd love to read this article. I've never heard of this magazine. The idea of putting Madrona's synths in a modular environment sounds intriguing.
And Randy made the cover!
https://www.synmag.de/1251/synmag-88-das-synthesizer-magazin-polyend-tracker-madrona-labs-special-noise-engineering-module-und-mehr/

PAID upgrades??!! Seriously, I agree with everything zachy9 said. I'm happy to support anything you're doing, especially since your VSTs are so unique. I wrote this somewhere a long time ago, but sometimes I'll read raves about a synth, and when I listen to the sounds, they're things I've heard a thousand times before. I'm happy that you're following your own path instead of doing yet another recreation of a classic (i.e. old) synth or variations on things that are already out there.

I'm a bit embarrassed to ask (but I will anyway :) ), knowing that you're hard at work on Sumu, but is there any timetable for additional resonators? I love physical modeling and creating sounds like prepared guitar, prepared piano, etc.

Thanks. It's always nice to have things to look forward to.

In case you're not on the Madrona Labs mailing list, Randy says that things are going well with Sumu and there will be news in January. Now there's a great Christmas gift!

Hi Randy.

I was reading a thread in KVR about Sumu, and someone mentioned that you're working on a modular instrument. Is this true?

I always stay tuned. I hope that it happens down the road. Thanks for replying.

Great! Thanks. I love taking non-electronic instrument timbres and tweaking them, to get sounds that some instrumentalists get from using what they call extended techniques. Unusual but also organic.

I don't know how specific you want to get, but a while back you described Sumu as being additive meets FM. Since it'll be additive, will Sumu be capable of resynthesis?

Thanks Randy. Looking forward to the upcoming smaller release. I'm sure that it'll be interesting.

Time for THAT question again. Any news on how Sumu is coming along? I won't even ask about a sound sample. ;)

In case some of you aren't on Madrona Labs email list, I found this exciting tidbit in my mailbox today-
"With the plugin updates completed, I'm now working full-time on the next software instrument, Sumu. It's going to be the last plugin in the patcher-in-the-middle format that Madrona Labs introduced with Aalto way back in 2010. Granular synthesis, as implemented in Kaivo, lets you decompose a sound into vertical segments (grains) each capturing an instant of the whole sound. A sines plus noise decomposition, used in Sumu, is a complementary tool that does very much the opposite, tracking individual sine wave partials of a sound horizontally through time in what's called spectral analysis.

Working with spectral data in a patchable environment has long been limited to the users of more general-purpose tools like Kyma and Max/MSP. With Sumu I'm designing a fixed set of modules that work in harmony together to make spectral sculpting a breeze."

I was just about to ask if you'd consider posting some sound samples while we (im)patiently wait for more details, but you beat me to it.

I have to admit that I'm not particularly a fan of FM, but your synths so far are so unique that I'm keeping an open mind, and am looking forward to what you come up with combining it with additive.