The Becktone 3000 gets a face, and more modules

My Max/Msp-made interface for the Becktone 3000

I get obsessed with things pretty quickly, and I'm prone to just as quickly changing my obsession to a new one. That's what has happened recently, going from everything fishing all the time to everything music all the time. By no means have I given up fishing; but due to the colder weather, my lack of desire to freeze my *** off waiting for fish to bite, and my rekindled love for music and music technology, I have fully switched over to music-making mode.

I've been working on my virtual modular synthesizer, the Becktone 3000. A little bit each day; I spend about 3 hours in transit to and from work every day, and that time works really well as synth building time. On one train ride I'll build a ring modulator; on another I'll add another oscillator. It's has many of the features of physically building my own synth, but I can do it on the go!

The Becktone 3000 is really coming along. It is a fully working synthesizer, and I've been using it in the songs I'm working on. So far it's in 3 or 4 tracks on the holiday album. The other day I figured out how to make a ring modulator. To be honest, I don't understand the math of what's happening- something about one signal multiplying with another. All I know is it sounds pretty awesome! It sounds like this:

Ring mod by chrisbeckstrom

I've been researching vintage analog synthesizers to figure out what modules I should build for my own synth. Basically, each module does a particular thing to the sound. An oscillator module makes a pitch; a reverb module adds reverb to the sound; a ring modular makes the sound sound robotic and sci-fi, and so on. One module I've never quite understood is the sample and hold module. Again, not entirely sure what is happening exactly, but I certainly know the sound. If the sample and hold module can mess with the pitch, you get the classic computer working sound:

Sample and hold by chrisbeckstrom

Creating sounds like this in an instrument I created myself, from scratch, is pretty much just as rewarding as landing a big bass on a lure I made myself! It's just as tasty as eating delicious beans made from scratch. Really, it's all the same. I don't know where this obsession with doing things myself came from. I certainly don't apply it to everything- I don't fix my own car, and I'm basically incapable of repairing my bike; but hey, this is a start.

Every few days I'll open up Max/Msp again, to try and wrap my brain around it. Max is that really difficult and confusing program I mentioned a while back; it's basically like Plogue Bidule but more powerful and harder to use. Yesterday I jumped in again. I decided to try making an interface for my synth in Max. This way I could move knobs in Max, which would send MIDI messages to Plogue, which would change my synth sound. And I could make it look however I want!

After a while, I figured out how to generate MIDI CC messages in Max, and send them to Plogue. The way things are set up are kind of like back end and front end- Plogue is the back end, the thing that makes the sound, but it's horrible to look at. Max is the front end; it doesn't make any sound itself, but it controls the thing that does, and it looks great. The benefit of doing things this way is I have complete control over everything, and can change any part that doesn't work for me.

When moved by my mouse, each one of those knobs sends a message to Plogue saying "Hey Plogue, change this! Move this!" What's even cooler is since I'm being consistent with which MIDI CC's control which parameters in my synth, I can control this interface with my iPhone. That means when I move the "Oscillator 1 wave type" knob on my phone, the "Oscillator 1 wave type" knob in my Max interface moves, which in turn sends a message to Plogue saying "Hey Plogue, change the Oscillator 1 wave type."

It all sounds very complicated, and, well, it is. I apologize for the technical nature of these posts, but I'm pretty sure some people reading this will be into it. Those of you who aren't into it, but have made it this far for some reason, don't worry! Pretty soon I'll be posting more recipes, and come Springtime there will be plenty of fishing posts.

The "guts" or "back end"  of the synth right now (version 74)

Introducing the Becktone 3000

Well I've gone and done it now, I've given a name to my homemade virtual modular synthesizer. For now at least I'm calling it the Becktone 3000. It's a pretty cool musical instrument, if I do say so myself. Here are some of it's (current) key features:

• 1 oscillator monophonic synthesizer, with a choice of 13 (yes, 13!) waveforms
• 1 multimode filter with adjustable cutoff and resonance
• LFO that can modulate pitch (fine and octave), cutoff frequency, and even oscillator waveform
• LFO has a choice of 6 different waveforms
• Built in tuning note (A 440) for pretending you need to tune software oscillators
• Built-from-scratch mono to stereo single tap delay unit
• Basic (Plogue Bidule factory) step sequencer
• ...and best of all, a super awesome multi-touch interface from which to control it!

The oscillator module (the oscillator is the thing
that actually makes the sound)

The filter module - cutoff and resonance can be controlled with one finger in the XY pad on the right

The guts of the synth

I've been working on building this at the same time I'm finishing a film score and working on my upcoming holiday album. This afternoon I was working on "Little Drummer Boy," and found a lot of ways to get the Becktone in the mix. Even with just one oscillator, I've been able to get some pretty nice and fat (and raw) sounds out of this thing. Using the built-in delay in combination with other reverb or delay, it sounds pretty retro.

Here's what it sounds like:

The Becktone 3000 - some sounds by chrisbeckstrom

It's still rough and raw, but I'm pretty happy with it. It was pretty satisfying to record it onto a track, making musical use out of this thing I've spent hours working on. I could just as easily open up any number of other virtual synthesizers, but this one is mine.


If there are any other Plogue Bidulers out there, or if anybody is interested in taking a look at my synth, you can download the whole thing from here. (It's a very small file, ~20kb). It's messy, and I'm sure there are things I could do differently, but there it is. I'll be improving it very soon!

Making touch controllers and homemade synthesizers

Look at all those faders! This is the Arturia CS-80v software synthesizer

Well, I haven't been fishing lately. As I mentioned last week, my fishing obsession has been put on hold to make way for my obsession with music. I've been busy doing a lot of musical things: I'm working on a short film for director Mary Horan, putting the finishing touches on the score to her great film "Storywoods." I've also been pretty obsessed with some geeky tech stuff too...

I'm sure this has never come up in my fishing posts, but I'm obsessed with synthesizers. Maybe when you think of that word, you think of giant machines with knobs and wires, with a pale skinny dude manipulating the controls; or maybe you think of Yanni, or Vangelis, or Tangerine Dream, or Wendy Carlos; maybe you think of techno. I do actually like all of those things, but to me I just like the idea of making new sounds, whether you do that by plugging in some cables, or typing some code, or blowing into a saxophone. Synthesizers are just another way to make sounds! I'm particularly interested in the old school analog synthesizers. I have this great software synthesizer, the Arturia CS-80v. It's great, but it's interface is tiny and it has so many faders! Check out this awesome video about the original and software version:

I've been playing with this amazing software called TouchOSC, which lets you design your own interfaces on iOS (and Android) devices. (The iOS app is $4.99, but the editor is free.) These virtual buttons, knobs, and faders can send MIDI messages to computers over a wireless network. Effectively, this means any kind of MIDI based stuff on your computer can be controlled with futuristic-looking controls on your iPad! It looks like Tron.

As you can see by the picture of the CS-80v, it's very complicated. The worst part about the program is you can't zoom! It's basically impossible to manipulate the controls in any musical way with your mouse... This has prevented me from playing with this synth very much.

Enter TouchOSC! I made a custom interface for the CS-80v, which lets me control - with my fingers - basically every single knob and fader on the screen. My iPad interface looks like this:

Doesn't that look nicer? And I can move everything with my fingers, up to 10 faders at once

Each one of those faders sends a MIDI control message to my computer, which in turns relays that to the software, which interprets the messages as "turn this fader X amount." It's pretty cool!

I spent a few hours knob-twisting using my iPad, and it's a completely different experience than clicking and dragging on faders. And by different, I mean much much more awesome! And of course it makes me feel like I'm in the future.

Not just satisfied playing with existing synthesizers, for a long time I've wanted to get a modular analog synthesizer. Those are the big monsters that are made up of many modules, connected with cables; they can be connected in any way imaginable, and make an infinite variety of sounds. They also cost a LOT of money, which of course I don't have much of. How can I satisfy my urge to build a synthesizer from scratch? Build a synthesizer inside my computer, of course!

If you're into music on computers, you may have heard of Max/Msp, which is a graphical programming environment (software). Basically, that means you can create music-making stuff on the computer, and connect them together with virtual cables. Trying to satisfy my urge to make a synthesizer, I jumped into Max the other day in an attempt to begin my custom instrument.

After four hours of reading tutorials, fiddling with numbers, tweaking the virtual cables, I wasn't even able to make a sound. Max/Msp is incredibly complicated, and the learning curve is incredibly steep. Maybe it's just me, but it isn't very intuitive. I'd like to think I'm pretty tech-savy, and I couldn't even make a sound. Defeated, I wondered if building my own virtual modular synthesizer was beyond my abilities...

Like the cavalry riding in with trumpets blaring, I remembered another graphical programming environment I've used before called Plogue Bidule. This program is used by a wide range of musicians in a wide range of applications, but most of my experience with it has been using it to host virtual software instruments to facilitate film scoring. It excels at that, but if you delve a little deeper, Bidule is capable of much more. Every little module you'd need to make a virtual musical instrument sits inside Bidule, waiting for you to connect it to something else. It's also much easier to use than Max.

An early version of my virtual modular synthesizer
1 oscillator, 1 LFO modulating pitch, 1 LP filter,
and a made-from-scratch mono delay unit

I opened up Bidule, and within 60 seconds I had a sound. Success! This was where I would build my synthesizer. I wasn't sure exactly how to do everything I'd need to do, but I jumped in, google-searching every few minutes to get answers. After a while, I had created my very first made-from-scratch virtual software synthesizer. When I pressed a note on my keyboard, I was rewarded with the loud and obnoxious sound of a low square wave.

This was just the beginning. It wasn't too difficult to build this very simple instrument; what if I added more modules, more cables, more sounds... I could create something huge, and awesome, and unique, and my own. I looked at the clock, and it was way past time to go to sleep.

I tore myself away from my computer, turned off the lights, and headed to bed. In my head I started to imagine all the new modules I could make, the new ways I could connect them, and the new sounds I could create. I thought of TouchOSC, and the awesome looking controls I could design to manipulate my homemade synthesizer.  This was going to be great!