Buchla Ziggy: the complex oscillator gets a friendly standalone synth

It’s been decades in coming: what if you took the best parts of the classic Buchla complex oscillator with its, well, ziggy waveshapes, and built a friendly compact synth around it? It’s all that modular fun, but in a package that lets you tweak right away without connecting a single patch cord.

West Coast dreaming: improvising with GForce MAP

GForce’s MAP was up against some tough competition in October, but don’t sleep on this one. Or, alternatively, do let its dulcet West Coast sounds lull you to sleep.

Peter Kirn - October 31, 2025

GForce just made a West Coast, MPE-playable synth playground

GForce’s MAP is all new — it’s not a recreation or a collaboration with other brands. But this synth has been to history class, studying modular designs by Serge Tcherepnin, Random*Source, and Buchla USA. Put that in a very modern interface, add MPE expression, and you get what feels like Massive X or Serum from an alternate universe where they’re all about West Coast synthesis.

Peter Kirn - October 28, 2025

3x new firmware for Noise Engineering’s Alia oscillator – and Cursus is back

Peter Kirn - January 22, 2024

Multiphonics CV-2 goes waveshaping: what’s in the AAS modular’s 2.1 update

Peter Kirn - August 4, 2023

Intellijel goes fully-patchable all-in-one synth with “performance-oriented” Cascadia

Peter Kirn - April 15, 2023

West Coast chops continue to grow on macOS-iOS modular Audulus

Peter Kirn - January 13, 2023

Audulus 4, iOS and Mac modular, gets major update and Buchla-style complex oscillator

Peter Kirn - December 28, 2022

Compusynth is like a love child of a west coast modular and the Altair 8800 computer

Peter Kirn - December 5, 2022