With Pathways, Dillon Bastan shows a sample-based spectral Synthesizer for Ableton Max For Live with which you can manipulate samples using spectrogram drawings.
Dillon Bastan has released exciting free Max For Live Devices for the past few months. Among other things, the Swarmalators, a very crazy drone synth, I can highly recommend. He also offers commercial devices like Iota, a unique granular M4L device, and created devices for the latest Ableton Live 11 Suite.
Today he showed Pathways another special Synthesizer for Max For Live. A little spoiler: all who love iZotope’s Iris 2 will love this idea.
Dillon Bastan Pathways
Pathways is a sample-based spectral Synthesizer for Max For Live. When you check the interface, memories of the iZotope Iris 2 Synthesizer come to mind. Also here you draw in a spectrogram similar to Iris 2. Instead of just highlighting the filtering section, you can draw paths that the playback engine runs through, and that can be several. From simple lines, drawings to text, you can let your desire for drawing run free. The position of a playhead on the spectrogram (orange lines) corresponds to the filtering and position of the sample that is being played by that voice
The basic idea of this instrument relies on manipulating the playback in a very creative way. Every path drawing has independent settings what makes it a very versatile sound design tool. You can adjust the voices (max 12 per path), trigger playback mode, play direction, filter, randomize start position, playback mode, and more.
There are two playback modes including (FFT) Phase vocoder FFT-based playback or (Grain). The latter uses three short grains that are centered at the current playback position with a grain size option. Short of moving granular synthesis. All these modes support a variable rate of playback (and freezing) without altering the pitch.
First Look
A super exciting Max For Live Synthesizer. Anyone who loves Iris 2 by iZotope will find it hard to get past this instrument. I love it because it offers a new way of sound design. This enables sounds that are not possible with classic synths.
And thanks to the possibility of loading your own samples, the M4L tool is fun for a long time. I think it works excellent in combination with field recordings from nature, cities or so.
More information here: Isotonik Studios
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