Tuning The World: Flowstate Concept

Tuning The World: Flowstate Concept

By Soniccouture  |  14.02.2025

Back in 2021 while we were updating Geosonics we stumbled across a video by Ayako Okamura in which she used filter resonance to “tune” field recordings to precise pitches. It was a nice trick, and seemed a fun way to introduce pitch to non-pitched sound.

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At the time this technique found its way into many Geosonics 2 presets. There are even key commands in Geosonics to fix the filter pitch quickly at various octaves.

From that it was a short conceptual jump to creating a bank of filters, and tuning these to a collection of frequencies. This would impose a more complex “formant” onto the ambience. It seemed logical to tune these a bit like a drawbar organ, set at the first few overtones from the fundamental up, and then mix them as you like.

But by choosing different overtone sets, you could create quite different formants, so it wasn’t long before we started editing the frequencies themselves. Eventually the idea of morphing between them came along which resulted in a quite radical, surreal effect. Flowstate as a concept started taking shape.

Flowstate GUI

It’s very simple to drag your own ambience into Flowstate and have the formants “pitch” it, turn it into a pad or a backdrop drone or whatever, but we wanted to demonstrate the full scope of this technique, so have provided a wealth of presets of different types. Even within each Snapshot there are five distinct STATES, which you can switch between.

There’s lots of room to experiment, tune your own world.

Flowstate is available now

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Glass + Push + Soniccouture

Glass + Push + Soniccouture

By Soniccouture  |  24.01.2025

We wanted to share this nice performance of Phillip Glass’s Madeira River by Daniel Leibovic. Featuring lots of Soniccouture sounds..

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Daniel used the following instrument libraries:
1) Soniccouture Vibraphone, Marimba, Pan Drums, Celeste, Tubular Bells, Glass Armonica, and Gamelan
2) Ableton Live stock synths.

Composed by Philip Glass Arranged by Peter Martin and Third Coast Percussion Production and performance by Daniel Leibovic

Give him a follow!

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Gearspace Review Tonal Drums

Gearspace Review Tonal Drums

By Soniccouture  |  18.12.2024

“Soniccouture is second to none when it comes to sampling, and this time they have delivered something quite special with a virtual drum kit that not only sounds great, but is actually properly tuned.”

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Diogo Borges from Gearspace Pro has put together a nice video review of our latest release, Tonal Drums. After a short tour of the instrument functions, he plays with some preset kits and changes their tunings.

It’s always interesting for us to see how people interact with our instruments, and so it proves here:

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“Perfect straight out of the box.” SOS Balinese Flutes Review

“Perfect straight out of the box.” SOS Balinese Flutes Review

By Soniccouture  |  19.09.2024

Sound On Sound have written a glowing piece about Balinese Flutes & Balinese Gamelan together. In a 5-Star review Dave Stewart wrote:

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“I love the pure, unaffected, breathy tone of these wooden flutes. Whether you’re recreating the heady, high‑pitched swirling suling parts of a real‑life gamelan performance, adding a folksy ethnic flute to a fantasy film score or emulating a classical piccolo/concert flute/alto flute/bass flute quartet, their positive attack and ultra‑lifelike lilting legatos do a great job.

A comprehensive set of controls enable you to vary breath pressure, legato time, vibrato depth, rate and start time and subtle performance‑related tuning artefacts, but none of that is necessary: these expressive, adaptable and wonderfully playable Balinese flutes sound perfect straight out of the box.”

Full Review Here

Balinese Flutes webpage

Balinese Gamelan II webpage

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AC-DR 1.5 Update: BLOCKS + Claps

AC-DR 1.5 Update: BLOCKS + Claps

By Soniccouture  |  19.08.2024

We have added some great NEW STUFF to AC-DR Acoustic Drum Machine.
Firstly, a Hand-clap module with new sample data, as that was an unintentional omission from the initial release. This features the echo chamber samples which makes the clap very versatile sonically.

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Secondly, a whole new sequencer: Blocks. This is another new take on step-sequencers, with totally flexible speed and length. Half-time, Three-times, Any-time. Layer triplets against dots, or any combination you can think of. It’s a bit like a combination of Beat-shifter and Poly Beats.

James explains Blocks in this video:

The update is totally FREE to all AC-DR users – simply update in Native Access.

N.B. You will need to reload AC-DR in any existing DAW songs or templates.

AC-DR ACOUSTIC DRUM MACHINE

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