Synth presets and sound banks on this website are the result of my passion for electronic sound and music. Editing patches is as exciting as making music for me. Ending up with a sound that inspires a musical idea is even more fulfilling. Perhaps this is the best test for a patch, if it inspires a melody, a riff or a chord sequence, I keep it, if not, it is binned or modified.
Then again, what I may consider as beautiful, you may consider as noisy or harsh. Whichever it is, I hope that these sounds will inspire your musical creativity.
Let these presets be just a starting point for a further modification to make each sound your own.
* * *
My main area of interest, when it comes to sound design is Physical Modelling synthesis. This method of sound creation allows for very ‘organic’ and ‘alive’ sounds with great performance expression possibilities.
I caught the ‘PM’ bug many years ago while playing a Yamaha VL1 synth in my local keyboard shop. The sounds were truly new and exciting to play and I just couldn’t let go of the pitch modulation wheel, as it brought modelled acoustic artefacts to the sound that I hadn’t heard before. You will find examples of my acoustic modelling sounds in my Tassman and String Studio sound banks.
I’m also a fan of FM synthesis. This is how I learned patch design in the mid ‘90s, on a Yamaha SY77. I have released a collection of sounds for the SY77 which you can read about and hear demos here.
Having listed Acoustic Modelling and FM as my particular favourites, it would be a disservice not to mention that I’m also in love with analogue subtractive synthesis, which even today totally fascinates me. I can thank Tangerine Dream, early JMJ and Vangelis, K. Shulze and many others for this.
My sound design is also based on my active involvement in music making which commenced commercially in 1996 with a release of an electronic music album. Now days I run my own music label with two commercial releases as well as do music for the media. No links to these will be provided as I wish to remain anonymous.
;-
I have worked for various developers like Ableton, FXPansion, Camel Audio, supplying complete commercial sound banks and audio demos. However, I also like to give back to the music community and work with freeware developers providing free presets. This has resulted in a fruitful collaboration with Ian Webster from Krakli, who produces truly excellent and inspiring freeware synths. Krakli’s hybrid Stringz2 and Richman2 provide a very beautiful sound that with careful editing will prompt the question “is this a real acoustic instrument”?
Raphael S. aka ‘himalaya’.
Updated 03/10/2010