Robbie

50 sounds, taken at random.

Fifty of the five hundred and sixty-five, picked by a shuffle rather than by us, so this is a fair sample and not a best-of. Nothing here was recorded. Every clip is the same engine your host would run, with one preset loaded and nothing touched afterwards, and the phrase is played with velocity, aftertouch and the mod wheel moving, because that is where these sounds keep what they are for.

What you play depends on what the sound is for: a bass gets a bass line low down, a lead gets a line, a pad gets chords that change under your hands. Every clip is brought to the same listening level, -18 LUFS, so they compare on laptop speakers as well as in a studio. Nothing else is done to them, except that a few short plucks and hits, whose peaks would clip first, get up to six decibels of peak limiting and sit just under it.

  1. Dream Bell SpaceBlurred, reversed-sounding bell with a swelling front, hold wide chords and let them wash into each other.Bells
  2. FM ChimeClassic digital chime with a glassy metal edge, play sparse two-note intervals up high and let them decay.Bells
  3. EuphoniumWarm tenor tuba voice with a rounded bite, played as one legato line between C2 and C4; aftertouch brings in the vibrato.Brass
  4. Sforzando SectionViolent accent that jumps forward then falls back to a quiet held note, hit chords hard for the effect.Brass
  5. Synth BrassThe wide eighties poly-brass stack, play big four-note chords mid-keyboard with the wheel opening the cutoff.Brass
  6. Trombone SectionSlide trombone with a slow portamento between notes, best played legato as a single line in the tenor range.Brass
  7. Kick Reso SlapA squelchy resonant kick that whistles as it falls, play it at C1 and ride the wheel for pitch bombs.Drums
  8. Perc Blip SlapAn FM tick with a short quarter-note echo, sprinkle it above G4 between the beats.Drums
  9. Machine RoomIndustrial motor hum with a notched growl, hold one low note for an ambient bed.FX
  10. Reverse Swell CavernA backwards-sounding rise that cuts off abruptly, time the release to the downbeat.FX
  11. Riser CavernPitch and filter climb together over four seconds, trigger it one bar before the drop.FX
  12. SubmarineA sonar ping with a very long tail, one short tap every few seconds.FX
  13. WindFiltered noise howling through a narrow moving band, no pitch information at all.FX
  14. FM BellKeys
  15. Mallet KeysHard wooden mallet with a sharp knock and a short body, for single-note ostinatos in the middle register; the wheel mixes in the octave partial.Keys
  16. Music Box Keys ChorusTiny plinking box with a quick metal decay, for simple melodies two octaves above middle C; there is no vibrato here, and the wheel opens the echo tone.Keys
  17. Toy KeysCheap plastic keyboard with a nasal square and no bottom at all, funniest on childlike melodies high up; the wheel squeezes the pulse even narrower.Keys
  18. Wurly KeysReedy and slightly dirty, the harder you play the more it growls, so comp with a firm right hand; the wheel pushes it further into breakup.Keys
  19. Flute Lead StereoAiry sine with a puff of noise at the start, play slow melodies in the top two octaves, the wheel brings vibrato in from nothing.Lead
  20. Legato SineHeld sine at a fixed level like an organ stop, play tied lines so the glide never retriggers and bring movement in with the wheel.Lead
  21. PWM Lead StereoBreathing pulse width movement from a slow LFO with a light chorus behind it, hold long notes and let it wander.Lead
  22. Square LeadHollow square with a fixed tone and no glide, play it detached like a stab, the wheel thins the pulse toward a reedy buzz.Lead
  23. Trance LeadFestival lead with four detuned voices and a dotted sixteenth delay, play offbeat single notes and sweep the filter on the wheel.Lead
  24. Mono BrassSynth brass with an envelope swell on the filter, phrase it with breath-like legato.Mono
  25. Combo Organ RotaryGritty sixties band organ pushed into the drive, bash quavers and let the aftertouch bite.Organ
  26. Aurora WideDrifting curtains of light that pan and reshape themselves, written for two held notes an octave apart; the wheel bends the waveform between states.Pad
  27. Noise WashAlmost pitchless filtered noise that swells like surf, held as a single low note under everything else; the wheel steers the band up the spectrum.Pad
  28. Warm Saw Pad WideWide analogue saw bed for held triads around C3 to C4; the wheel opens the filter as the chord sits.Pad
  29. Bright PluckGlassy saw pluck that cuts through a busy mix, best played as fast single-note lines up high while the wheel adds drive.Pluck
  30. KalimbaThumb-piano ping with a hollow wooden body, played as sparse single notes in the top two octaves.Pluck
  31. Sync PluckHard-synced tearing pluck with a vocal formant edge, play short intervals mid-keyboard and sweep the wheel across the shape.Pluck
  32. Bass Machine MotionPunchy drum-machine-style bass with ring mod grit and a quarter-dotted wobble.Sequence
  33. Glitch Steps MotionStuttering broken-up texture with random panning on sixty-fourth triplets, best on short percussive keys.Sequence
  34. Half-Time Steps MotionSlow, heavy stepped pad movement on a two-bar cycle for half-time sections.Sequence
  35. Square Runner MotionFast hollow square line with a quarter-triplet gate, play scalar runs across two octaves.Sequence
  36. Cathedral DustAir and nothing else. Play it high and sparse; the ribbon sweeps the window it breathes through.Signature
  37. GreenhouseA pad whose second oscillator is halfway to noise. The wheel takes it the rest of the way.Signature
  38. Long DivisionA sequence that never repeats the same bar twice: the steps are on LFO 1, the filter on LFO 2's own clock.Signature
  39. NightwatchSlow triplets that never land on the beat. Hold it and it plays itself.Signature
  40. Red LineEverything driven: the filter, the pulse width, the envelope. The one in the bank that is deliberately too much.Signature
  41. Arp MainTriangle and octave sine through a plucked, key-tracked filter with a dotted echo, for sixteenth arpeggios; the wheel is the long breath of the track.Slow Light
  42. Deep DroneSaw, a saw an octave up and the sub, swelling in over eight seconds, one low note held for minutes; the wheel lifts the filter.Slow Light
  43. Evolving PadA pad whose filter wanders on its own, a fifth above in the pulse, for low chords; the wheel morphs the waveform, as the track does.Slow Light
  44. VibesSine bars with the motor running, for soft chords in the middle two octaves; the wheel roughens the bars.Slow Light
  45. MarcatoAccented short-bow chords with a firm attack bite, play it in strong rhythmic hits.Strings
  46. Saw StringsThe classic wide sawtooth string pad, best played as slow four-note chords with the mod wheel opening the filter.Strings
  47. Wire Strings EnsembleThin metallic high-passed scrape with ring modulation, effective as a texture rather than a chord pad.Strings
  48. Glass PadA sine frequency-modulated by another nineteen semitones up: a glassy strike that fades to a held shimmer.Voltage
  49. Offbeat PluckA narrow pulse, short and a little resonant, on every eighth-note offbeat: the chord tones between the kicks.Voltage
  50. Saw LeadTwo detuned saws, open to 4 kHz with a short glide, doubling the theme an octave up in the drop so it cuts through the wall.Voltage
How these were made

A headless renderer loads one factory preset into the real engine, plays the phrase at 110 BPM with a play head running so a synced LFO locks rather than drifts, and writes what comes out. Velocity changes from note to note, the mod wheel rises across the phrase and the pressure swells inside the last chord, so a preset that hides something behind any of the three has to show it here. One gain is applied to every one of the fifty clips, the same for all of them, so the balance between these sounds is the balance the instrument made rather than one we chose afterwards.

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