Archive for December, 2023

Free Rhodes V-Pan Virtual Instrument, But For A Limited Time Only


A new free Rhodes plugin for you to download… but it’s not an electric piano. V-Pan pays homage to the iconic vibrato stereo panning effect and is free until the end of January.

It has become a bit of a tradition for developers to give us free music software during the festive season, but this year software industry are truly pampering us.

We’ve already mentioned about UVI’s free Noctua Cinematic Soundscape synthesizer, Native Instruments’ free Glaze plugin, and also Cherry Audio’s free SEM synth module. That’s your synths and vocals sorted for Christmas, then, so how about some classic stereo vibrato courtesy of Rhodes?

It’s been quite a year for the revamped Rhodes. The company is on a mission to deliver all sorts of classic electric piano goodness and announced its top-end MK8 a while back. But 2023 has seen it make significant ‘in-rhodes’, with a software version of the MK8 landing back in January.

This new V-Pan limited-time freebie is essentially the Vari-Pan section from Rhodes’ V-RACK multi-effects plug-in, and also emulates the Vari-Pan effect found on the hardware Rhodes MK8.

You can adjust V-Pan’s rate to create varied synth and ring mod effects. There’s a Depth control for added drama, and Waveform Slew and Smooth controls to customise the panning waveshape. A BPM Sync option keeps everything in check, so you can go wild with rhythmic effects.

V-Pan will cost $39.95/£29.95/€34.95 after 31 January, but until then you can grab it for free from the Rhodes website.

 

Manecolabs introduces Pikoloops Eurorack Module


Manecolabs has introduced Pikoloops, a new Eurorack module, based on the Pikocore loop mangler from InfiniteDigits.

Pikoloops adds 5V compatible clock in and out, quarter note trigger output and Eurorack compatible output level.

Features:

  • A lo-fi music mangler based on the Raspberry Pi Pico
  • Holds 8 minutes of 8-bit 33 kHz monophonic samples.
  • Tempo-synced with a selectable BPM between 60 and 300, with samples mangled by beat-synced effects (stutter, retrig, gate, tunneling).
  • Real-time effects, including a resonant filter, timestretching, volume, and wavefolding.
  • 128-step sequencer with recording/playback
  • Saved and loaded via EEPROM for instant patch recall.
  • Able to load custom firmware, new samples, all through USB-C.
  • Sync-compatible with Eurorack devices.

Pikoloops is available for $219.

 

The World’s ‘Smallest and Worst’ MIDI Synthesizer Now Supports USB-C

This video, via mitxela, demonstrates the “smallest and worst MIDI synthesizer’ – which now supports USB-C.

It’s an open source project, so you can get the details and the source code at Github.