Why Look Backwards?

A message from our designer: Why do analogue synthesizer vendors keep looking backwards when the present has given us so many new opportunities?

I have been playing synths for 45 years, and most of the analogue modules I see today (the endless ADSRS, VCOs with three waveshapes, practically indistinguishable ladder filters) were old hat even then. When FM, sampling, digital and the VC* chips arrived, analogue design stopped. But the revival of analogue has not, in the main, taken up where it left off around 1979, it has regressed back to the early 1970s. (And as for the digital modules: look at the build-threads for complex digital SMT designs where DIYers cannot get the module going… For most of us “SMT Nein Danke!”)

Now I love retro. I love that we can get rivivals of US and even some European and Japanese designs, and love that Australian companies such as CGS/Elby were at the epicenter of providing DIYers with old and new designs over the decades. But I love exploring new sounds and expression even more.

And how much more is now possible even with fairly simple analog circuits? Because we have 40 years of ignored music physics research, sitting there waiting to be transformed into analogue module! The very research that has enabled the digital physical modeling advances can blow our concepts of the limits of analogue sounds…

At Fricko, I troll through the research and whenever I think “that is something we really cannot do in existing analog modules but there is a straightforward way” I take it as a design challenge to make new 100% analogue designs and modules to explore these fantastic gaps and opportunities…

I am not talking about doing imitative physical modeling with analogue modules as much as discovering some simple analog way to broadly implement some key insight of the research in a way that fits in with the analogue approach (rather than replacing it, as often DSP based monster modules that don’t play well with other modules can disappoint us.)

Some research insights are easy to design and implement (constant-breadth pulses for example) and some are still eluding me (for example, the recent “brassification” discovery that some brass instruments produce shock waves one pulse travels faster than the previous one and so the pulses arrive at the ear out of order: it can be simulated to an extent by VC allpass filters…seen any of these lately?… but not entirely!)

Its real:

• The Blip! module is based on the academic theory of “Pulse Forming Method” of double reed and the phase cancellation of double pickup string instruments, for example;

• the Clean module was inspired by reading research measuring the timings of various violin bowing techiques;

• the Shell module came out of reading research into the variations of the spectra of real instruments.

• And the new Splice combiner module came out of reading research that showed that different physics operates for different parts of the same note as well as different notes in an instrument.. This completely contradicts how current modules are designed and what functions needs to be readily available for sounds with maximum colour, playability and emotional impact.

Note: We have several new modules in late testing that will provide even more synergy to patching with the existing product range of waveshaping, articulation and unobtainium: watch out for Splice, Duck, Tame, and Sharpen.

Rick Jelliffe: Fricko designer