Take equal parts mostly-DIY Eurorack creations, generative and chance-based tools and signal-moshing goodies, the app craft of beloved developer Bram Bos, and the vision of Swedish YouTuber original Jakob Haq. Now you’ve got the jacked-up patch hack Jakub haQ attaQ app pack jackpot Bram Bos boss drop of Solderbox on lock!
Jakob Haq’s history in YouTube action goes back not just to the beginning of this synth YouTube phenom, but fairly close to the start of the entire iOS music tech scene. The surprise: while you can drop this on your iOS device as an AUv3, the inspiration is purely hardware. This thing has the simplicity and approachable focus of Bram Bos, but with the runaway imagination of Jakob’s DIY hardware rig.
And cleverly, they’ve also normalized a bunch of the patch points. This could easily have been a very clever all-modular rig, but instead, you get a semi-modular toybox – meaning you don’t have to connect a bunch of patch cords just to get started.
It’s beautiful, compact, playful, and portable. I can’t wait to load this up inside Logic on an iPad and take it on the road – thank you, AUv3. And lucky enough, it looks like I’ve got about 30 hours ahead of train rides and airplane flights in the next week. I see Solderbox (and Apple Sculpture) in my future.
You can watch this walkthrough:
But Bram has also made a lovely PDF poster that is suitable for loading up in iBooks, and it’s a great way to browse the functionality:
https://ruismaker.com/manuals/solderbox_poster.pdf
The basic routing – VCO – shaper – lowpass filter – VCA. (You get sort of a west/east coast combo there). But then it gets interesting. There’s a wavesurgeon that couples two rectifiers with attenuverters for slicing and re-splicing waveforms into edgy beauties (above). There are multiple waveshapers. You get a noise and random module (crackle, check, brown noise, check), which you can use as audio or control signal. There’s a generative melody generator called the pulsequencer with quantizer submodule (below) – meaning you don’t have to quantize if you want something less tonal. There a unique, lofi entropy which combines bitcrushing and “cheap digital delay.” (My favorite kind of digital delay.)
It’s really getting into the generative stuff where you can go crazy – perfect for something running on an iPhone or iPad. Check out the drone and looping modes. To make this sound more like hardware, the app also features what the developers have termed an “instability engine” – “which mimics the subtle behavior of analog fluctuations in electronic circuits, leaky signals, crosstalk between components and other unpredictable elements.”
The instability engine mimics the subtle behavior of analog
fluctuations in electronic circuits, leaky signals, crosstalk between components and other unpredictable elements.
Now, wait, this was all an AUv3, right? Yes – meaning in addition to generating interesting sounds, you can drop this in an effect slot and create some mayhem. That makes this a fascinating pairing with other iOS apps, and could mean you could take an uninspired, overly antiseptic track, drop it on your iPad or iPhone, and try mangling it with Solderbox for the grimy, lofi, mangled remix.
I love what Bram has done with the UI, too – it’s clean but with just enough depth to make it easier to look at, and the color coding helps focus, too.
It’s the mangled, patchable chaos machine we didn’t know we needed. One of those “wish I had thought of this myself” moments! (eesh and I’m even behind writing up some other things – too much goodness here at the end of the year!)
Enjoy!
https://ruismaker.com/#solderbox