Here are this weekend’s deals from 4Pockets, ending September 29th.
- Oscidia – $14.99 to $7.99
- FontStack – $14.99 to $8.99
- Euclidean – $14.99 to $8.99
Oscidia
Oscidia is an AUv3 plugin for iOS which can be loaded into your favourite DAW allowing you to use it as a sound source for any MIDI source. Its wide range of features and oscillator types allow it to produce a vast variety of sounds. In particular, the inclusion of Wavetable greatly expands the traditional wave types and brings a wealth of modulation options. Oscidia has 3 oscillators per voice, and each oscillator can be a different wavetable – all working and morphing together to create some incredibly amazing sounds.
Oscidia includes SINE, SAW, SQUARE, TRIANGLE, SUPERSAW, SUPERSQUARE, WAVETABLE and ADDITIVE wave types. You can import and export compatible wavetables using drag and drop directly to the Wavetable manager. Wavetables support morphing and warping (phase distortion), all controlled by the Mod Matrix routing. The SINE and TRIANGLE wave types both support several wave folding modes which allow dramatic real-time morphing too.
Oscidia supports 5 filter types which support 12/24dB modes and morphable LP/BP/HP filter modes which can be automated from the Mod Matrix or via the Sequencer. The sequencer itself is very unique and allows up to 3 simultaneous ARPs to play at the same time. Each ARP can directly control the 3 oscillator levels independently per step, as well as the pitch, filter morph, cutoff frequency, probability, gate, note repeat and ties. This allows for complex rhythms to be created that are not tied to pitch.
FontStack
FontStack is a ‘fontastic’ AUv3 plugin for iOS which can be loaded into your favourite DAW allowing you to utilise all those wonderful and nostalgic SF2 SoundFonts you’ve collected over the years.
The SoundFont standard was created back in the early 90s and made famous by the SoundBlaster series of sound cards. With the introduction of the Amiga, it spawned a host of musical creation tools called Trackers, which allowed the Amiga to load these SoundFonts and create sophisticated musical scores of 4 or 8 tracks. These days we don’t use this standard so much, but there is a wealth of free SF2 files available on the internet just waiting to be loaded into FontStack.
A SoundFont comprises a file with an .sf2 file extension. This file contains a set of samples, instruments, and presets. FontStack enables you to load one or more SoundFonts into its 4 layers, and use them in lots of creative ways.
You can stack layers to create a rich combination of multiple tones, or assign each layer its own key range on the keyboard to create virtual splits, or a mixture of the two. Each layer can also be assigned its own MIDI channel for true OMNI mode.
One great feature of FontStack is its ability to cache all your SoundFonts and the instruments they contain. This allows quick searching for specific instrument types without the need to physically search SoundFonts to find them.
Another great feature is the ability to optionally link to a remote folder containing a global set of SoundFonts, so that they can be shared between apps. Both internal and external SoundFonts and their instruments will be cached, and searching is just as easy as it is using internal SoundFonts.
Euclidean
Euclidean Sequencer is an alternative incarnation of the classic step sequencer that has become very popular in the modular realm. It is based on Euclidean rhythms developed by computer scientist Godfried Toussaint in 2004. Euclidean rhythms have their roots in Greek mathematician Euclid’s algorithm, which involves using the greatest common divisor of two numbers to place hits in a sequence as evenly as possible across a set timing divisions.
In practice this is actually simpler than you might think, and Euclidean Sequencer is a great way to auto generate complex musical sequences with no prior knowledge of how it actually works.
Euclidean Sequencer is an AUv3 plugin that can be loaded inside any popular host application that has flexible MIDI routing.
You can define up to 4 Euclidean rhythm parts, each part is referred to as a band. The bands are labelled A-D and colour coded RED, ORANGE, GREEN and CYAN. Together these 4 bands create a pattern, and you can create up to 16 separate patterns per song patch.
Since each band can specify its own note sequence and output MIDI channel, you can create some quite sophisticated rhythms patterns, driving 4 separate instruments at once. Even better you can seamlessly switch patterns to create even longer evolving sequences. Patterns follow a specified key, scale, or defined chord.
You can even use MIDI input to automatically make note sequences conform to the currently playing chords.
Euclidean Sequencer now supports 4 different modes, traditional Euclidean, PolyRhythm, PolyMeter and PolyTempo. We have many great ways to automatically generate complex rhythms making it an invaluable tool for experimental music creation.
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