The Extempore analogue synth

Before we start, make sure you’ve read at least the quickstart guide and you can set up & evaluate Extempore code on your machine.

Introduction

The analogue synth is part of the Extempore “sharedsystem”, an easy-to-set-up signal chain with three configurable analogue synth instruments (including the ability to load & store presets). The name is inspired by the Make Noise Shared System series of modular synths. That synth is Eurorack-based, so in principle it could have any/all sorts of different components, but Make Noise chose a standard set of modules so that people can share tips/patches/ideas directly because they’re using the same configurable set of modules. In the same way, the Extempore sharedsystem is an “curated” take on Extempore’s audio/music making workflow. Obviously if it’s not to your taste then you’ve still got the full power of Extempore under the hood; but if you just want to fire it up and get people dancing then the Extempore sharedsystem is a good way forward, and it’s what we’ll cover in this guide 😁

Loading the sharedsystem

First, let’s load up the Extempore sharedsystem with:

(sys:load "examples/sharedsystem/audiosetup.xtm")

Depending on your machine it might take a little while, but hang tight—you’ll get there in the end. When you see something like this then you’re ready to go.

Compiled:  active_notes >>> [i32,i8*]*
Compiled:  dsp_load >>> [void]*
Compiled:  main_reverb >>> [void,i64,float]*
Compiled:  main_gain >>> [float,float]*
sharedsystem audio setup complete

You’ve just loaded

  • three analogue synths (syn1, syn2 and syn3)
  • a synth drum kit (kit)
  • a sampler (samp1) which is initially loaded with piano samples

Don’t worry about how to use them just yet, you’ll see how in a minute.

Loading the examples/sharedsystem/audiosetup.xtm library will also load up the Extempore pattern language stuff, which is covered in more detail in this guide. These two things are conceptually independent—you certainly don’t have to understand the sharedsystem’s analogue synths in depth if you just want to make bangin’ loops with the pattern language (or vice versa).

However, even if you’re mostly interested in the sharedsystem it’s still handy to understand a bit about the pattern language for making noise with your synths & samplers. That’s the approach we’ll take in this guide—we won’t necessarily explain the pattern language stuff, but you can always jump over to the pattern language docs to go deeper.

The interface for configuring the synths and the samplers is a bit different, so we’ll look a them individually. Like all things in music-making, different folks want to explore different things, so if you don’t care about synths at all then you can skip straight to the sampler part (or vice versa).

Finally, as mentioned earlier this guide will use the pattern language to play some loops on your samplers & synths (so that you can actually hear them make noise). So if you’re curious about how that works then check out that guide as well.

Configuring & playing the synth

The “analogue” synth is the real workhorse of the sharedsystem audio signal chain. It’s an xtlang implementation of a flexible, modular analogue synth.

As you’ve probably figured out, it’s not actually an analogue synth, it’s purely software, and purely digital—you can see (and modify) the source code for the whole thing in the libs/core/instruments/analogue.xtm file. But it’s conceptually the same as an analogue modular synth, with multiple oscillators, filters, LFOS, etc. Furthermore, the oscillators are designed to faithfully replicate the oscillators of an analogue synth; the saw wave has messy “corners”, there’s slop in the oscillator frequency, and lots of other things like that. So that’s why it’s called analogue.

Since you’ve already loaded the sharedsystem, you’ve already got three analogue synth instruments (syn1, syn2 and syn3) connected and ready to play notes on.

Each analogue synth has:

  • 4x oscillators, each of which can be one of several different types (PARAM_SINE, PARAM_SAW, PARAM_PULSE, PARAM_TRI, PARAM_WHITE, PARAM_PINK), and has individual controls for gain, tuning, etc.

  • amplitude & filter envelopes (regular ADSR)

  • delay/reverb/flange effects

  • four LFOs (low-frequency oscillators) for parameter modulation

Some things are better explained with sample code, so the next phase of this guide is in the example file examples/sharedsystem/analogue_synth_basics.xtm. Open that file up in your text editor, play around, and see what noises you can make 😊

FAQ

Why aren’t there more presets?

This comes up a bit—it’s discussed in the pattern language FAQ.

Are there any more example files which are helpful for learning about instruments in Extempore?

Yep, you could have a look at examples/core/synth.xtm. In addition, all of the covers in examples/sharedsystem/covers/ use the synth, although in most cases they just load a preset (as you’ve already seen in examples/sharedsystem/audio_synth_basics.xtm). Finally, the instruments themselves are defined in the .xtm files in the libs/core/instruments/ folder.

It feels like the analogue synth can do lots of stuff that isn’t well documented.

Well, that’s not a question. But it is a fair statement at the moment—fleshing out the analogue synth docs is high on the priority list.

If you don’t mind doing a bit of code spelunking, then here are the best places to see the full range of configuration options for the analogue synth:

  • the “api” is documented in libs/core/instruments/instrument_params.xtm

  • the analogue instrument itself is in libs/core/instruments/analogue.xtm, and while it’s pretty dense in the actual implementation part there’s a useful function down the bottom of the file (analogue_reset) which shows more examples of setting the various analogue synth parameters

You mentioned a synth drum kit earlier—where’s that at?

The synth drum kit is currently under development—it currently only supports kick, snare and HH. However, you can try it out by looking at the examples/sharedsystem/drum_synth_basics.xtm example file, or even look at the implementation of the drum synth in libs/core/instruments/dlogue.xtm.


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