Space Organ
A granular synthesis exploration of organesque sounds.
ByMan Makes Noise
The story
Disclaimer Space Organ has no samples from an actual organ in it.
This instrument came about with me playing around with granular synthesis. Happened to create things that sounded like an old organ, so I took those sounds and sampled them in triads to create a single organesque instrument. There are four granular synthesized layers created from acoustic sources: a pvc bansuri, a small grand piano, a metal plate and djembe skin played with a tension mallet. They are breathy and otherworldly, hence I started calling this the “Space Organ”
Then I decided to add some retroesque synth sounds to fill up the sound. These I created my own vintage vibe synth sounds with various synths. I created four layers of synth, each sampled in triads.
It was going to be named something different, but a friend challenged me to make a series of “Space” instruments so the name stuck. Not much more to it.
All samples are 24 bit 96khz.
Interface
Reviews
A simple UI hides a masterful instrument
When you load it up and hit a note, sure, it sounds great, but is that it? No. Not in the slightest.
The true nature of this lovely instrument comes when you start balancing the 8 layers together. The layers are well recorded and sound nice by themselves but like so many things the combination is worth more than the sum of its parts. Each layer has volume and pan controls and then on the right are overall controls for filters, rotation (a left/right pan) delay and built-in reverb.
There are infinite combinations of the layers and I quickly got some epic results by cranking up the rotation and reverb.
Taking it further you could automate the balancing of the layers with DAW controller tracks, that would bring in some further movement and you could potentially even end up with something that would be at home coming from Lunacy Audio's CUBE, which is really amazing for a free sample pack.
Wonderful job, thanks for sharing.
A different, awesome organ!
This is a fantastic take of an instrument that sounds like an organ by combining 8 different, and someone could say "irrelevant" layers of sounds, that end up working out perfectly together - and by themselves as well!
All the sounds are nicely sampled and put into a very familiar and beautifully designed GUI. There are 8 knobs on the left that help the user blend all layers in any way, along with a pan slider for each. On the right side there are some very handy effects to slightly modify the overall sound.
I'd very much like to have the option to modify the global Attack and Release for such an instrument, though to be honest the default envelope is great as it is. All in all it is a great quality-made organ that I can surely recommend!
Not Your Usual Organ
This is a really unique library that sounds similar to an Organ without having any actual Organ samples. The sound is made up of eight different layers: four organic ones and four synth layers. These sounds might not sound too impressive on their own, but when you blend them all together you are getting a really rich and full sounding instrument. It does sound a bit like an Organ but it is also different in a very cool way.
The GUI looks nice and is very easy to use. Besides volume and pan controls for each of the layers you are also getting four useful effects and a high pass and low pass filter. Initially the mod wheel doesn't seem to be tied to anything, but it is very easy to connect it to one of the parameters by simply right clicking in the GUI and choosing "Learn Midi Automation". I immediately tried using this library with some Valhalla Supermassive and I think it sounds awesome and makes it even more spacey. Overall a really cool and unusual library and I recommend checking it out!