If you’re looking to give yourself sonic inspiration in a new shape, a musical marketplace has some deals for you now.
Resy is a recently-launched curated shop for “indie” instruments, both hardware and software. It’s worth mentioning them now because they have a lovely deal through end of day tomorrow Monday the 23rd, and also because these two tools are unique and quirky stories themselves. And Resy has the clever idea of making twee music videos showing off the instruments, rather than the usual dry promos.
First up, there’s einKLANG, the morphing software instrument that’s all about the triangle.
Yes, in place of endless screenfuls of identical knobs, einKLANG uses mathematical models to morph between tone “colors,” all laid out on a central morphing triangle. It’s good, mystical, Masonic, musical fun — mathemagical. And it works, because the stuff they’ve done with the synth sounds awfully good. (You also get controls for loudness, modulation, and timbre, in case that triangle business alone doesn’t satisfy.)
einKLANG has had a different path than most soft synths, successfully crowd-funded on IndieGogo and since developed gradually with additional features and tweaks; it debuts on this service with special color-coded packs of additional sounds.
The plug-in runs on OS X and Windows.
Grab the deal here – US$49 including one of the new tone packs:
EISENBERG AUDIO EINKLANG SYNTH +1 TONE PACK
I have to admit, I missed this synth, so perhaps Resy is already onto something. They’re helping even those of us in the know take note of independent releases that would otherwise have fallen through the cracks.
That’s the software side.
On the hardware side, Resy also has the wacky Beep Poet 2, a lo-fi, noisy synth in a can.
There’s some similarity, actually. The Beep Poet 2 also uses a deceptively simplified interface to yield a broader range of sound results.
Of course, the actual results are very different (apart from having a physical can with audio jack instead of a plug-in). The Beep Poet outputs bleepy, semi-chaotic digital results – oscillator 1 outputs audio frequency, but oscillator 2 handles LFO and audio frequencies, with a passive filter and pitch modulation on the remaining two knobs. The scheme reminds me of projects like the Loud Objects synths and Bleep Labs instruments.
It’s great seeing the can as a housing. I might have to repurpose the recycling idea myself.
Handmade, runs on 9V: