Randomwaves Drumboy and Synthgirl are new creative open-source touch-based drum machine and synth instruments, now on Kickstarter.
Synthesizers and electronic instruments, in general, are particularly popular in hardware because you can tweak them with tactile control (knobs, faders…).
A new development team from Turkey shows that hardware can be designed differently. With the new Drumboy and Synthgirl, they left out knobs/faders and made everything touch-sensitive.
Randomwaves Drumboy Synthgirl
Drumboy and Synthgirl are new portable instruments that have a lot in common. It starts with the hardware concept. They are powered by a newly developed audio architecture using the 550 MHz Cortex M7 processor, delivering pristine 24-bit audio.
Each unit also hosts a 5” Color LCD joined by capacitive touch controllers scattered throughout the interface. It also has an SD card input for managing data (samples, wavetables, etc.). Plus, it offers a USB-C port and sync in and out on the hardware to ensure seamless integration with other devices.
More importantly, Drumboy and Synthgirl will run on an open-source code developed on the widely used STM32 platform. This is a remarkable step, and I welcome it very much. Now, let’s dive deeper into the differences between these new groovebox-oriented instruments.
Randomwaves Drumboy
Drumboy is a portable drum machine with ten instrument layers, each hosting a .wav sample of up to eight seconds long. You can customize your sound with various parameters, including playback speed, reverse, and normalize.
The instrument allows you to create complex rhythms with 1/64 quantization across eight bars and eight measures in the traditional way or with modern helpers like complex fill generators.
Then, Randomwaves Drumboy features a parametric EQ with one low shelf, one high shelf, and four peak filters. You can adjust the Q factor, gain, and frequency for precise sound shapers. Besides this, it comes with a fully adjustable dual filter with four modes (lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and band stop) and two effect channels.
The latter offers eight algorithms with various controls: delay, chorus, flanger, phaser, compressor, expander, overdrive, distortion, and bit crusher. Alongside, you can find an independent reverb with control over the room size, decay, pre-delay, surround, dry/wet, and more.
Of course, you can also save your sounds and patterns. For this, it has a bank and file system, allowing you to save and recall your creation at any time.
Randomwaves Synthgirl
The Randomwaves Drumboy’s partner is the Synthgirl. Although it is a standalone portable Synthesizer, it has many of the same features.
The core of Synthgirl consists of a wavetable engine with two oscillators that can import custom wave files (up to 256 steps) from Serum and other soft synths. You can adjust the level, tune, phase, start, and end points of wavetables, as well as the ability to flip in both X and Y axes.
Like the Randomwaves Drumboy, Synthgirl also comes with the same multimode dual filter (lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and band stop) that is fully adjustable with various parameters.
The built-in parametric EQ and the 2-channel multi-FX processor are the same and have eight algorithms. The same applies to the independent reverb engine. Further, you can find four shaping multi-wave LFOs with 25 prebuilt types and adjustable parameters (target, rate, and depth).
Randomwaves does not say what type of envelopes it uses. I hope there are some built-in. Further, it hosts a fully tweakable advanced key/arpeggiator (rate, pattern, chord, order, octave…) and a customizable metronome.
If that’s not enough, it also has a sequencer with adjustable parameters such as bar, measure, (up to 8), and quantization (up to 1/64), providing fine-tuned control over your composition. Like the Drumboy, it also has the same file system to organize and store your sounds.
First Impression
At first glance, it is an exciting project. I give a big thumbs up to the open-source idea. But the touch-only interface and the tiny font on the interface would be far too little for me. I prefer to touch on the iPad. But I’m very excited to see how the community receives the project and how it will develop further.
Since it will be open source, we can expect further developments regarding the Randomwaves Drumboy and Synthgirl features.
You can support the development of the Randomwaves Drumboy and Synthgirl now on Kickstarter, starting at $149 for the Drumboy or Synthgirl. Shipping will start in February 2025.
More information here: Randomwaves / Kickstarter
Why not use an iPad instead?
because there are various options. Many people don’t love iPads or “personal computer” systems in general for music, I love them, but for those who don’t like them these are alternatives.
Normally I would agree but since it has no physical buttons I don’t see a real good point for getting this over the iPad.
Making music on a iPad is miserable. I know because I’ve been doing a lot of it. These devices look quite promising, particularly at 150 USD each.