Developer Giorgio Sancristoforo has introduced Creature From the ID, a new virtual instrument for MacOS, inspired by the work of Louis and Bebe Barron and their score for the classic science fiction film, Forbidden Planet.
Creature From the ID is designed to emulate the Barron’s self-generating cybernetic electronic circuits, using the techniques available in the 1950s.
What Sancristoforo say about it:
“Creature from the ID is an act of love that honors the Barron’s legacy, a new tool for teachers and students of electronic music who want to explore one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of electronic music. The circuits of this instrument seem to have a life of their own. The sound is warm and analog and the modulations create unpredictable and fascinating alien sounds.
I leave it to you to judge whether I have succeeded in capturing the spirit of those sounds, those years, and that vision of an unlimited and magnificent future that the Barrons so eloquently conveyed through their music. And just to be clear on this, no AI or samples were used in the making of this software.”
Forbidden Planet, released in 1956, was the first major motion picture soundtrack to feature an all-electronic soundtrack. Here’s a NPR documentary on the Barron’s score:
Full Bucket Music has introduced Six-Traq, a free virtual instrument, based on the Sequential Circuits Six-Trak synthesizer from 1984.
The developer says that Six-Traq offers a close emulation of the original, but expands on it with up to 96-voice polyphony, micro-tuning and other modern features.
Features:
Close simulation of the original hardware
Extended Poly/Multi modes, up to 96 voices polyphony
Oscillator with three waveforms, additional white noise generator
Classic self-resonating four-pole lowpass filter
Individual envelopes for oscillator, filter and amplifier
Onboard sequencer and arpeggiator
SysEx import/export
Supports MTS-ESP by ODDSound dynamic micro-tuning
Resizable user interface (not “N” version!)
MIDI Learn – all parameters can be controlled by MIDI CC
In this video, Cynthia Millar offers an introduction to the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument that has earned a place in the orchestral repertoire.
The Ondes Martenot was created by French inventor Maurice Martenot in 1928. It’s a monophonic instrument and offers a range of expressive control that’s just now beginning to become common on synthesizers. It offers continuous control over volume and pitch, allowing it to be played very expressively.
The instrument’s capabilities so impressed composers of the early 20th century that it’s featured more than 100 classical works, and was later featured in dozens of film and television soundtracks.
Millar also demonstrates how diffuseurs that are commonly used with the Ondes Martenot. Diffuseurs are designed not to be traditional loudspeakers, but to be resonators that impart their own acoustic properties to the instrument’s sound.
