"Introducing Portals – 50 Combinator pads and atmospheres from Tom Pritchard Sound Design. Take your music to another dimension with glacial pads, evolving glitch textures and otherworldy ambience! These Combinators layer Reason’s Malstrom and Subtractor synthesisers to form organic, evocative tones."
Tom Pritchard is back with a new Reason ReFill based on the Thor Polysonic Synthesizer:
ThorKit – 200 patches that push Reason’s Thor synthesiser to its limits! Compatible with versions 4.0 and above, this ReFill contains 20 juicy monosynths, 94 punchy percussion patches, 54 deep polysynths, and 32 massive sequence synths. With a mix of clean, crisp sounds and mashed, gritty tones, these patches are programmed to inspire with their expressive playability and evocative timbres.
465 new Combinator patches from legendary Reason sound designer Tom Pritchard aka Stompp! Here's the down low on Vast:
Tom Pritchard Sound Design presents Vast for Reason versions 4 and above – a unique ReFill packed with 465 inspiring, innovative and incredibly useful Combinator patches. These Combinators make the most of Thor’s modulation possibilities to create expressive, rich sounds that are full of movement and are incredibly playable. Every patch has been meticulously crafted to sound detailed and interesting whilst sitting comfortably in a useful frequency range, so you can easily drop any of these patches into a mix and get down to writing some great music without having to tweak them.
Vast contains 100 atmosphere & FX patches, 42 bass patches, 58 keys and polysynths, 100 leads and monosynths, 100 pads and 65 sequencer based synths. The sequencer can be switched off at the push of a button for each of the sequenced synths, giving you an extra 65 mono and polysynths if you’d like to use your own sequences. Using Vast is like having a new sound module inside Reason. Combinator control mappings are set to be useful – all patches give you control of the amplitude envelope so you can quickly sculpt these sounds to your needs, whilst the Mod Wheel allows you to get some juicy variety in tone, and the buttons allow you to alter the timbre of the patch and activate or deactivate the reverbs and delay designed for every Combinator, so you can quickly get these sounds working with your music. Click on the player below for demos of each category.
UPDATE: Tried Vast for the first time this afternoon, particularly the Keys and Poly folder and man is it good! Many of these patches use velocity sensitivity to alter parameters like pitch, filter frequency and of course volume in ways that make them feel like so much more than software. Seriously, buy yourself Vast for the holidays, you're with it!
If you've been reading Resonant Filter for long, you've probably realized that Tom Pritchard, aka Stompp, is one of my favorite sound designers on the Reason platform. His patches have an "organic" instrument quality to them that make them both playable and listenable. When I first started doing commercial sound design work myself, Tom was nice enough to critique many of my early patches and his insight into creating great combinator patches has been priceless to me... so needless to say when I found out about his new solo venture, Tom Pritchard Sound Design, I was psyched! With this article we're going to specifically look at Tom's latest creation - FatBank; but for starters I asked Tom about his choice to go out on his own at this time after creating so many amazing free refills, and of course his work on many classic soundbanks for Nucleus SoundLab, this is his answer:
"Contributing to Nucleus SoundLab has been fantastic, and Jeremy is an absolutely lovely man to work with - very encouraging and supportive and really passionate about what he does. The main reason I'm going solo is just to try and make this a full-time gig; I've been through five pretty miserable day jobs in the last few years and I want out. I'd have loved to have tried doing this sooner but it's only with the support of my partner over the last year that I've had the confidence to really consider it. With digital distribution commonplace it's possible to enter the sound-design market with extremely low overheads, and with more people than ever before making their own music there's plenty of space to carve out your own niche. It's not like there's cuthroat competition as a lot of these things complement each other. You'd be surprised at some of the software companies that have excellent working relationships when you'd expect them to be pretty fierce competitors."
Let's start by taking a closer look at FatBank: this refill consists of 50 combinator patches broken down into three folders - Basses, Leads and Sequences. The Basses folder holds 12 Bass combinator patches that run the gamut from thick analog sounding tones to sizzling deep Techno triads. The 8 combis in the Leads folder are terrific as well and flavored with just the right touch of effects to make them sit well in a mix. The final folder, Sequences is the largest, with a whopping 30 patches. This folder has everything from leads to basses to lush chordal progressions, that all use Thor's Step Sequencer. However, if you don't care for pre-made sequences don't fret, Button 4 is assigned to turn off the sequences, so you can use the patches from this folder in any way you see fit! Every combinator in FatBank has the four rotaries and buttons on the front combi panel assigned to the most useful parameters for that particular patch. Generally the rotaries are assigned to control the Amp envelope properties, with the occasional tone, effect or filter envelope allocation. Also in the Sequences folder some combinators have Rotary 1 assigned to the rate to enable easy customization of the sequence for the user's song. The four button controls are a little more varied, generally being assigned to turn on effects, determine legato/retrigger, add harmonization and of course enable the sequence in the latter folder.
With a name like FatBank you'd expect the Basses folder to contain many patches using Thor's Analog Oscillator (which it does), but many of my favorite Bass combis in this refill use some unexpected Oscillator choices on the low end. Like the "Sexy Bass Chord" combi with it's four unique oscillators (FM Pair Osc, Phase Mod Osc, Multi Osc and Analog Osc.) Of course sometimes you just want that classic analog sound and "Squarepants" has that in spades! This patch is made up of two Thor synths, the first of which uses two Square shaped Analog Oscillators routed thru two Low Pass Filters that sculpt out just enough of the high end to give the patch that classic synth sound. The authenticity of the sound is furthered by LFO's modulating the pitch of the second oscillator (the first by 15, the second by 22 when the mod wheel is open - for a sci-fi type sound.) The second Thor in "Squarepants" houses the other oscillator, a Saw shaped Osc which is sent thru a LPF followed by a HPF, giving the patch just a touch of sheen. One thing I noticed about many of the Bass combis was the use of a PEQ-2 Parametric EQ cutting the bass just around 125hz or so. I asked Tom about this:
"On those EQs, try inverting the gain (so instead of being -64 or whatever it is it'll be +63). You should hear some really unpleasant muddy resonance. Even when it's not emphasised it really stands out to me. I don't like that in my basses so I get rid of it - I think it's around 150hz or so. I tend to use notch filters to get rid of it, I can't remember why I didn't here - it might have been to do with EQs colouring the sound less."
Let's look at the Leads folder, partcularly "Do It!". This lead patch is made up of two Saw shaped Analog Oscillators (the second sync'd) with an additional White Noise Oscillator sent thru a Low Pass Filter (6 Ladder Slope) then routed thru Thor's shaper set to maximum drive on the Peak setting and finally thru a High Pass Filter which cuts everything below 260hz. The Shaper really softens the sound of the patch from a more nasally searing lead to a classic analog hazy sound. This patch also uses velocity to control the envelope amount on the Low Pass Filter (but not the volume of the amp) which makes the patch incredibly playable! This patch has a lovely reverb (RV-7000) that's introduced with Button 1, as well as a dark ping pong delay (RV-7000 as well) enabled with Button 2. These effects patches reminded me of the lovely effects patches included in Stompp's Ambient Textures ReFill from 2006, which made me wonder if there were any plans for a TPSD all effects refill in the future:
"It's unlikely there will ever be a release devoted solely to FX but it's quite probable that at some point I'll program a whole load of FX patches as part of a larger release - much like I did with the Ambient Textures ReFill. Especially now that we have the new FX devices in Reason 6, The Echo is awesome!"
The largest section of Fatbank is the Sequences folder. As mentioned in the lead paragraph these patches use Thor's step sequencer for some awesome sequences, but can be turned off easily with Button 4, for those interested in creating their own sequences. As a mediocre keyboard player at best I love these combinators! They're great for coming up with song ideas and it's very easy to open up the combinator and transform the sequences into your own creations. One of my favorite Sequences combinators is the "Move Ya Feet" patch. This combi utilizes the Mod Bus section to route the audio from Filter 1 and 2 to the inputs on Filter 3 bypassing Thor's Amp Envelope section. I asked Tom about this:
"If you look at Osc 2 you'll notice the semi is +7 above Osc 1. Basically, as long as Osc 1 & 2 are different (and it doesn't have to be by much, nudging one of the Tuning values a few cents out will do it) routing the two filters to Filter 3's L & R input is a quick way to get stereo - if you flip the rack you'll notice the instructions for it as the third section under 'Some Routing Examples' - 'True Stereo Synthesis'."
Another thing I noticed about the Sequence patches is that many of the combis use Key Note in the mod bus section to modulate the Amp Gain by a negative amount. I found this quiet interesting and asked Tom about this technique as well:
"It means that when you play a note in a higher octave the gain is reduced. Try setting it to 0 - play a note between C3 and C4, now play a note between C6 and C7. It just sounds really loud and harsh. I use the key note functions to help give the sound its own frequency space, if you have a sequence that spans different octaves then you don't want one end to be unbearably loud, it'll clash with other elements in the mix and sound painful. Sometimes presets dominate the entire frequency range and it's really irritating when you want sounds you can just drop into a track - sure a patch might sound great on its own, but patches that cover the entire frequency spectrum will cause havok in a mix."
FatBank has quickly become one of my new favorite refills! It's Tom's attention to detail and contemplation of how a sound will fit in a song that really sets these patches apart. And with the low price of £5 there's no reason not to pick up FatBank today! After checking out these patches I had to ask Tom what's next for TPSD:
"The first two releases were pretty small attempts to test the water, see if this would work - so far it seems to. The next release is pretty huge in size by comparison - I'm 200 patches in and it's not even half way done. It's my firm belief that the most important aspects of any patch are sound quality and playability and I'll never compromise on either. It's taken me quite some time to get this far and it'll take me considerable time to get this finished, but I'd like to see a release before the end of the year. I won't say too much about what it is just yet but I want to show people just how much potential there is in Reason's synths. Computer Music Magazine reviewed Arps Volume One this month (issue 171) and notably said "You'd never guess that the moody metallic percussion of patches like 'Bali' are the product of pure synthesis, and this sort of thing is the highlight of the pack" - I want to build on that and make wonderful, inspirational sounds."
Tom Pritchard, aka Stompp, has a brand new refill called FatBank. Tom's long been one of my favorite sound designers, so the start of his own company, Tom Pritchard Sound Design, and new announcements of commercial refills has me psyched! Check out the info:
"Tom Pritchard Sound Design presents FatBank – 50 chunky Combinator patches for Reason versions 5 and above, with 12 round basses, 30 sequence synths (including throbbing bass sequences, rich chords and pulsating riffs) and 8 soaring leads! Big things come in small packages; this handy booster ReFill packs a massive punch with seriously deep bass and soaring tones that can cut through any mix."
If you've been reading Resonant Filter for long you know Tom Pritchard aka Stompp is one of my favorite sound designers. Arps Volume One is his first solo commercial release under the Tom Pritchard Sound Design banner and judging by the demo sounds on the product page it is a must buy! Expect a full review later this month! In the mean time pick up Arps Volume One for £10 @ tompritchardsounddesign.com
For the past few months I've been working on a secret project for Nucleus SoundLab - the latest incarnation of the legendary Pantheon series of Reason ReFills, Pantheon III! The Pantheon series has been one of Nucleus SoundLab's most popular projects and for good reason - genre absconding sounds from some of the world's best sound designers using Reason's Thor Polysonic Synthesizer. So when NSL CEO Jeremy Janzen asked me to be a part of the sound design team for Pantheon III I knew I had to bring my A game! And it's a good thing I did - because with a cast of designers like Tom Pritchard (Stompp), Adam Fielding (Distinctive Records), Kirke Godfrey, Clint Grierson (Point Zero Productions), Joseph Mizelle (Zensphere) & Shaun Wallace (Sonic Element) anything less would have been an embarrassment.*-). Spec wise, Pantheon III has 260 unique custom combinators. 36 designed in conjunction with Record 1.5, making them ready for the coming Reason 6 upgrade. And after perusing the patches last night from the other designers, I believe this just might be one of the very best refills available for the Reason platform. With sounds ranging from leads to pads to strange atmospheric modulations there's something in Pantheon III for everyone! Many of theses patches would be right at home on a release from Warp, Hot Flush or Ghostly. While others sound like they were lifted straight from 70s or 80s vinyl! But enough of my chatter. Go to www.nucleus-soundlab.com to pick up your copy of Pantheon III today for $49 USD. Or if you don't already own Pantheon I and II, pick up the Pantheon Bundle for a huge savings. And if you're short on cash, make sure to download the demo refill to tide you over until your next check ;-).
Below is a mp3 demo of the patches Tom Pritchard (aka Stompp) designed for Nucleus SoundLab's GuitarScapes ReFill. Tom has long been one of my favorite sound designers for his unique and incredibly playable work and the patches in GuitarScapes are some of his best! As Stompp recently posted on the PUF "my contributions (to GuitarScapes) are the most complex, full, rich and ambitious patches I have ever programmed. The Inception combi alone uses 36 devices..."
New from Nucleus SoundLab - GuitarScapes! I had the pleasure of working on this project along with Jeremy Janzen, Adam Fielding, Shaun Wallace, Tom Pritchard, and Joseph Mizelle. Here's some of the info from NSL:
"The final product of nearly 24 months of effort is the GuitarScapes ReFill. Inside you'll find vocoded hybrid pads, sequenced 'almost-real' plucks, rock-solid bass guitars, monstrous distorted monoleads, classic filtered arpeggios/chords, cinematic ethnic strings and even frighteningly realistic acoustic and electric guitars - if your track calls for simplicity. Beyond that, if you own both Reason and Record, you will be pleased to hear a very special set of patches was created that takes advantage of the Record-exclusive Line6 Amp and Neptune pitch-shifter! Of course, as a Nucleus SoundLab ReFill, GuitarScapes also features extensive PDF documentation to help users harness GuitarScapes in their productions. Details:
1.2GB+ of 24/16-bit 44khz samples. 223 Custom Combinators - each one unique and featuring all 4 Rotaries, Buttons and Modwheel mapped to intelligent assignments. 46 of the above Combinators are for Reason+Record - these unique Combinators are exclusively built using Record amps and FX and as such require Reason 5 + Record. 63 Basic Combinators - featuring a single sampleset with a chain of useful FX. 55 NN19 Patches 25 NN-XT Patches 8 Demo songs packed inside the ReFill as RNS files. PDF Design documentation for each patch, detailing important aspects of its design, inspiration and performance."
Pick GuitarScapes up today from Nucleus SoundLab for $59 USD!
Stompp Presents: Free ReFill - PADMOSPHERE. "Hey Tom, could you make some neat atmospheric and pad patches today?" "You say that like I have nothing better to do." "You have nothing better to do." "Oh yeah."
SO HERE YA GO!
Programmed in just a single day, 10 fat atmospheric and pad combinators!
New from the mind of Tom Pritchard, aka Stompp, comes Stompp Composer! An awesome refill for Reason/record that helps users come up with unique and original melodies based on different scales, modes, and ragas. What a great idea! Is it just me or can this guy do no wrong? Seriously I think he might sh*t symphonies. Check it:
Hello everyone! I have been quiet for some time, but having finished my degree I'm now getting back into making free patches. This is the first in what I hope to be a whole load of new freebies. This time around it's more of a tool than a usual sound patch, so please read the following carefully, absorb inwardly and enjoy.
Recently I've been finding it hard to come up with musical ideas. Inspired by my Kaosillator, I thought I'd program something to get the ideas flowing. It worked quite well, figured I'd share it!
The Kaosillator itself comes with a built in series of modes, which can be transposed up or down to your heart's content. The idea is that by selecting a different mode and playing about, you won't be able to hit a wrong note on the Kaoss Pad and musical ideas will leap out at you as you play - which they do!
What I have done is to take most of these modes and sequence each into a Matrix Pattern Sequencer Pattern inside a Combinator.
Here's how it's supposed to work.
There are 25 combinators in this ReFill. Each one is programmed to play a distinct mode. Here are all the modes with their notes when in the default pitch (starting from C), as according to the Program Category List that comes with the Kaossilator.
Ionian - C D E F G A B C Dorian - C D Eb F G A Bb C Phrygian - C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C Lydian - C D E F# G A B C Mixolydian - C D E F G A Bb C Aeolian - C D Eb F G Ab Bb C Locrian - C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C Major Blues - C Eb E G A Bb C Minor Blues - C Eb F Gb G Bb C Diminish - C D Eb F F# G# A B C Combination Diminish - C Db Eb E F# G A Bb C Major Pentatonic - C D E G A C Minor Pentatonic - C Eb F G Bb C Raga Bhairav - C Db E F G Ab B C Raga Gamanasrama - C Db E F# G A B C Raga Todi - C Db Eb F# G Ab B C Spanish Scale - C Db E F G Ab Bb C Gypsy Scale - C D Eb F# G Ab B C Arabian Scale - C D E F Gb Ab Bb C Egyptian Scale - C D F G Bb C Hawaiian Scale - C D Eb G A C Bali Island Pelog - C Db Eb G Ab C Japanese Miyakobushi - C Db F G Ab C Ryukyu Scale - C E F G B C Wholetone - C D E Gb Ab Bb C
The first pattern of each combinator has one of these modes programmed as an ascending scale. The Matrix is hooked up to the Combinator's CV and Gate input, so that when you run the pattern, whatever is inside your Combinator will be played by the Matrix.
Here's the fun part!
Right click on the Matrix pattern and select Alter Pattern. This will randomise the notes within the current mode. Simply drag in the gate triggers and lengths as you desire at the bottom, and voila! An instant, musically pleasing pattern. Want more variations? Just copy the pattern to another pattern slot, alter the notes again, and tada! Instant variation. Rotary 1 is set to cycle through all available pattern slots, so copy and paste all the patterns you like and switch between them using Rotary 1!
This technique allows you to very quickly create musically pleasing sequences that will work in harmony together. To transpose your mode, simply right click the pattern and select shift pattern up or shift pattern down until you reach the scale you are looking for.
I have included a fairly simple little synth in the patches to demonstrate the potential for these modes - if you like this, please do feel free to use it. To use these patches with other sounds, simply delete my synth and load the relevant devices into the Combinator (don't forget to hook them up to the Line Mixer).
Much love everybody, hope these are useful! I'll be back soon with a proper soundbank.
Just in case you missed it on the Props User Forum or Reason Patch a Day, my man Tom Pritchard, aka Stompp, has a new refill available for download. This a smaller refill in the actual number of combinators, but every patch is a keeper, so what are you waiting for?
Tom Pritchard, aka Stompp, is one of my favorite sound designers for Reason. His work for Nucleus Soundlab on Synthetic Kits and Filter Research is stellar, and if you haven't picked up his latest free refill, Wonderfill, you need to get on that asap. Now I sent Tom a list of questions and he answered them all, so while this is called "10 Questions", there's a couple of extra this time round.....
- first off, where are you based and what's the music scene like there?
I'm in South East London - I don't actually have a great idea as to what the music scene is like where I live, but I'm quite close to central London, so when I do go see something live it tends to be there; the last gig I went to was to see Biosphere (and I think BJ Nilsen) play some of their ambient stuff. Recently I've missed opportunities to see Squarepusher and LFO perform live, there's some great stuff about. Loads of jazz and classical and all sorts too.
-now that we've gotten that out of the way, there's quite a few questions I want to ask you, sound design questions are certainly some of them, but first I want to ask about your own music. I've checked out your Facebook page and really enjoy your tracks. I'd put them somewhere in the shoegaze/electronica genre... shoetronica? I'm wondering what equipment, both software and hardware you use when making your own music?
Thanks on the tracks, great to hear that you enjoy them! :) Shoetronica... I like that! I have a few different projects on the go, all of which use totally different equipment. Everything on that Facebook page is made almost entirely in Reason. I have a couple of other softsynths, and every now and again I sample patches from them and use them in Reason (mainly Albino 2 presets and my own Absynth 3 programming). But 95% of the stuff on that Facebook page is Reason. The other projects are a mix - all the hardware in that studio photo has never been used in any of the tracks that are online - I have it because sometimes you need a change of scene, so one day I'll write a track in Reason, the next I'll do some improvisation with the hardware, sometimes I'll just write something in ReBirth or using Korg's DS-10, and I have this experimental project called Eigenlicht which makes extensive use of things like granular synthesis and waveshaping in Absynth. I only release a tiny amount of the music I record. It just keeps things fresh, so I don't get fed up with working in one environment. It makes you think about how you write too - the stuff I make with the hardware is totally different to my main Reason work.
- as both a sound designer and a musician that composes music, do you sometimes come up with a patch and think, "oh, I've got to keep this for myself?"
Most of the patches in my free ReFills are actually patches I've made specifically for tracks, and sometimes I think to myself "this sound is really integral to this tune, maybe I should keep it under wraps", but I love to share, so usually I let them go. If I have a sound in a track that I haven't stuck in a ReFill, it's more likely to do with that sound relying on too many other elements in a song - like being particularly sensitive to specific notes and rhythms or being compressed with other parts - so for instance I couldn't recreate any of the sounds in August in any useful way in Combinator form because there's so much layering and compression there that the sounds just don't work on their own. :)
- I really love the track "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" on your Facebook page (I'm a sucker for any track that features the sound of a radio being tuned between stations.-) Do you have any albums out and/or a website where people can download your music?
Awesome! Thanks. :D I used to have a collection of tunes up for grabs called 2008 Collected - all of the tracks that were in it are on my Facebook page. I moved all of my music to Facebook from another site so that I could do all of my online stuff under one website - the only websites where I have any kind of presence are Facebook and Propellerheads.se (anywhere else and it's someone else who decided to stick an extra P onto Stomp). Unfortunately, I didn't realise you can't download from Facebook until after the move - I should really sort that out. I'm always happy to send people tracks if they want an MP3 though! Or even a Reason file. :) To be honest, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with my music. I write music purely for fun, so often concerns about how it's mixed are thrown out of the window while I'm working on it - sometimes I feel a bit embarrased by the quality of my production and composition, and take my music down as a result. I hear what other people are doing on the forums, people like Adam and Josh and Mike (Avatar One) and it's just so professional and so well thought through and beautifully written, and then I hear guys like Luke Vibert use Reason and I think "man, he can do that... and I can only do this... I should pack it in". I never will pack it in, I enjoy it too much, but it's that sense of "oh wow they're all so good" that makes me think twice about putting stuff online. I remember when I was just starting out and thinking "OMG THIS IS AMAZING" and you come back years later and think "oh how did I think this is good?" so I wonder if I'll come back in another few years and think "oh the stuff I wrote in 2008/9 is awful". But then I was 14 when I started out, and I'm 21 now so I'm sure I've made SOME progress in 7 years!
-what's your background in music? did you start off playing synths or another instrument?
I've long had an interest in recording - since I got this My First Tomy tape recorder when I was little. I tried learning piano for a bit, but I gave up as I found it too dull (my sister is now a Grade 8 pianist and when I hear her play I wish I'd kept it up). Then one day a friend of mine showed me this Playstation game called Music, and it was amazing - we used to jam and string together loops and just have a great time, it made music fun again. I ended up taking music GCSE at school, and my school had a little room with some synths in it - an old Proteus 2000 and I think a Korg M1 and an old Lexicon reverb; I didn't write anything decent there but I got the hang of things like MIDI sequencing. I wanted to do it at home, somehow ended up finding out about Reason, and from then on just got more and more into the software. I've only picked up the other software synths and hardware in the last couple of years, for a long time it was just Reason.
- what music inspires you?
I'm tempted to list everything, but I don't want to send everyone to sleep if I haven't already - so mostly downtempo, atmospherc and unusual electronic music. Stuff I'm particularly keen on includes Oval, Brian Eno, LFO, Boards of Canada, Bibio, Christ. (Christopher Horne), Luke Vibert, Darrel Fitton (aka Bola & Jello), Aphex Twin, Voafose, FlyLo, Clark... just about anything released on Warp, Rephlex, Planet Mu, Ninja Tune, Benbecula, Thrill Jockey etc... I like more dancey stuff too, so Chemical Brothers, Klute, Propellerheads - basically if it's been in any of the Wipeout games I love it, that inspires tracks like Vector. Some of my friends write music too which is always amazing - Adam Fielding and Joe Rhead in particular, both of whom I'm sure have great musical careers ahead of them, always inspire me. I love a lot of classical music as well, Ravel and Debussy are my classical heroes. Oh I nearly forgot Vangelis! Probably the very first electronic music I really got into, the Bladerunner soundtrack is still one of the best albums out there today. I couldn't pick a favourite artist or album, but I think Memories of Green is my favourite track ever. Just so astonishingly beautiful.
- how did you get into sound design?
All thanks to Reason and wanting to make sounds like the ones I was hearing all over the place in electronic music. At first I used to just stack hundreds of Screams and RV-7000s together and make this terrible noise, and for a long while I was just twiddling knobs with no idea of the outcome - I actually wrote some really cool music, ambient music doing that! But over time I just wanted to be able to make specific sounds so I taught myself how to use synthesisers, with a lot of help from guides in magazines like Computer Music. One day I realised some of the sounds I was making were pretty cool and thought it would be nice to share them so that's when I released my first free ReFill, it's still on the Props site I think.
- I know your work primarily from NSL's Synthetic Kits & Filter Research refills and only recently put two and two together that you also release refills under the alias Stompp. Do you do sound design work for other platforms besides Reason and/or any other companies besides NSL?
Yes, a little. Most recently I did some replacement music and additional sound design for a film called Shooting Robert King, a docmentary about a war photographer. It's going to be shown on BBC Four apparently at some point which is quite exciting! It's a great film, really worth watching. I also did a demo song for Reason 3 which was a great opportunity. I think it was a really bad track so I don't think I'll be asked to do any more music haha! Though through NSL I have contributed a handful of patches to one of the record FX soundbanks. A few years a go I did some work for a guy who scores some pretty big TV shows, but I really didn't get on with the work - I was asked to recreate some very specific sounds, and unfortunately I'm terrible at that and I found it really stressful. It happened to coincide with a pretty low point in my life so I only did it for a few weeks but it didn't work out. One of the things I like about programming patches for NSL is that I actually have a huge degree of creative freedom. However, I'm also a student, and I'm about to go into the final year of my degree, so I'm unlikely to do any commercial sound design in the next year while I concentrate on that. I'll be looking for all the work I can get when that's finished. I love programming patches for my hardware (esp. MFB-SLII, microKORG) and Absynth 3 and Albino 2.
- what's your favorite kind of patch to design?
Drum sounds and massive one-key-press pads. Thor is brilliant at both. I think my contributions to the Synthetic Kits stuff are my best patches to date - they work so well with the effects from Filter Research too. And I hate working with samples - I like to work from scratch. Sound design wise that is - I love using samples in my music. :)
- who are your favorite sound designers?
Pretty much the regular Propellerhead and NSL crowd - they're all so experienced and they really know what they're doing, some of the patches people put out are jaw dropping. Special mention has to go to Ed Bauman, just because his patches are so technically accomplished and unbelievably useful. I also really like Rob Papen, Albino 2 is the only synth where I'll allow myself to use presets these days as some of them are just too good to miss. His Access Virus presets sound great as well, but I've never actually used a Virus so I'm only going by the demos.
- any tips for would be sound designers and those that want to roll their own patches?
Start with subtractive synthesis - it's much easier to understand than FM, additive etc... and you can get great results really quickly. Master one synth at a time - don't buy buckets of stuff only to find it's too overwhelming to get into. Something like Fabfilter One on CM's cover disc or one of the many fantastic free VSTs or Reason's Subtractor - start with one of them (they're immensely powerful) and just learn it back to front. So many synths are subtractive that you can easily transfer skills from one to the other. It's also worth reading guides and tutorials. I guess the main thing is to take it easy and have fun. :)
-what are you working on now & what can we expect in the future?
I was working on an album this year but I don't seem to have enough tunes I'm happy with that I can bring together as a coherent whole so I guess that plan's sort of faded. I really want to get another free ReFill out, but I have a few other hobbies - photography, fractal flames (I love Apophysis), I make (really bad) films with my friends (although I did a pair of music videos for Adam which came out looking cool - one is on Youtube (see below), and I'm slowly teaching myself to draw cartoons, so I can't make any guarantees as to how soon. I mean these things are all competing for my free time when I'm not with friends and family, and until I've finished my degree that has to come first before all of the above, so... I have no idea what you can expect in the future sadly haha! Hopefully more patches at SOME point, anyway. :)
Official video for Adam Fielding's Aurora. Video by Tom Pritchard. Click here to watch in HD.
Thanks for the great interview Tom!
Stay tuned for another edition of "10 Questions" later this month with a surprise guest you won't want to miss...
