Lord of the Springs is a VSTi for Windows (64/32) featuring 88 voices in form of active spring systems, which a key hit stimulates as well as modwheel scrubbing.
Lord of the Springs V2 overview on YOUTUBE
As one might imagine, springs will generally create rather metallic sounds, which makes it ideal for complex glockenspiel sounds, xylophones, marimbas and so on, but the freedom granted by the features allows for a much greater variety of sounds from soft, dreamy pads to harsh percussion and other percussive sounds.
Beware, though, because it truly is procedural sound creation, potentially creating spikes when you line up the spring frequencies. I advice the use of a limiter to avoid possible heart-attacks or damage to equipment.
It also features a unique pitchbend implementation that allows only held down keys to be pitched, while sustained keys (via sustain pedal) won’t be affected by it. Once a key is released, a pitch relax value controls how quickly it will return to the original pitch of the key. Once the bend key is struck again without any pitch bending, it will be tuned back to normal instantly.
Tip:
- set it high to create whole new performance styles for quick runs.
- set it medium for almost chorus like effects when pitching toward a clean key.
- set it low to keep the pitch bend after releasing the key.
The probably most outlandish feature is the BODY or ONE SPRING TO RULE THEM ALL, which is kind of why I ended up calling it Lord of the Springs. This one spring sits underneath all springs and stimulates all of them by what ever sound they produce. It creates an almost plate reverb like effect, which can be modified in a variety of ways, including its own tuning, decay, diffusion and- what I call- “sharpness”. On top of that it has its own phaser effect with a tremolo that can go stereo and can have its rate synced not just to BPM but to actual song position for a perfect lineup with a beat, if so desired. Subtle use of the phaser can create compelling room impressions as well, which is the original reason for why I implemented it to begin with. The BODY also features a blendable SOLO mode, again increasing the amount of sound creation possibilities somewhat substantially, though, mostly in the realm of special effects.
The entire GUI design is completely procedural without the use of any images, which allows the small file size, but also allows me to go crazy with weird ideas on the fly. If only I had more time to reduce the chaos, but…
I sincerely hope you will enjoy using it, while I had to rush to get it done in time for the challenge. Once voting is over and my hopes and dreams won’t be smashed to pieces (haha), I will happily resume developing further versions. Come to think of it, even with shattered dreams I will continue, because it’s tremendous fun for me.
Best of luck to everyone,
Taron.
License
This virtual instrument is free of charge. KVR is permitted to do with it as they please, of course. All other restrictions of commercial and copyrighted software apply.
Copyright 2016 by Timur “Taron” Baysal (www.taron.de)
http://www.taron.de
