Author: Matthew

Arrival

There’s another new toy over on the software page.

Screenshot showing Auxotroph playing through Osculatrix in AUM on iPad.

Auxotroph is another AUv3 plugin, but this time a generator rather than an effect. That means it makes sounds all by itself — via FM synthesis in this case. It’s a simple pattern sequencer based on regular divisions of the bar, with motion and stochasticity to spice things up. Unlike the effect apps, it can run standalone, though (like nearly everything) it sounds better with some effects.

Mac version available for download now, iOS will be on the App Store once it’s been through the review dance.

Temporal Engineering

Frankly still reeling from Meryl Tankard’s genius Pina Bausch restaging, Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78. Like a blow to the head, but in a good way.

The gimmick of surviving dancers performing alongside archive footage of themselves — and their non-surviving colleagues — from nearly 50 years ago sounds simplistic, perhaps even trite. Hackneyed. Yawn. Seen it all before, right?

Wrong.

Bloody hell. It is so good. Great source material projected across time to become something even better, breathtaking and heartbreaking and ephemeral and astonishing.

Maybe I’ll be more measured when the concussion wears off, but don’t count on it.

Novelty

While we’re at it:

Screenshot of new audio effect app Osculatrix running inside AUM on iPhone.

WT had a “coming soon” page for Osculatrix from probably 2016 until last week. That app was going to be a synth module. There was a mostly working version, but I just didn’t like the sounds it made, so it never seemed worth finishing.

This isn’t that, though it reuses the assets — that knob was undoubtedly the best thing about the original. It’s another perverse AUv3 effect, basically a multiband tremolo with some other stuff layered in. I do like the sounds this makes, at least some of them. Mac version available right now at the software page. iOS links to come when the bureaucracy allows.

Resurrection

I mean, if you’re going to have a tireless and uncomplaining grunt programmer to take on the scutwork, you might as well apply it to tasks so fiddly and tedious you’ve been putting them off for the best part of a decade.

Screenshot showing Nebulizer, Muckraker and Frobulator running on multiple lanes in AUM.

Moribund no more. My decrepit audio effects apps Frobulator, Muckraker and Nebulizer have been dragged kicking and screaming into the AUv3 age. Mac versions are available now for direct download. iOS will be available once I’ve slogged through the App Store submissions rigmarole. Alas Claude can’t yet take on that tedious scutwork.