SYNTHWAVE KEYS

We have a free, great-sounding synth ROMpler for you in the form of Beatskillz Synthwave Keys. Time to wave hello to it…

Beatskillz are relatively new software developers that specialise in instruments and plugins designed to be ‘great sounding, great looking and inspiring audio tools’. They also have a philosophy to make each one simple, effective and intuitive which is certainly the case with their amazingsounding synth ROMpler that we are giving away with this issue of Computer Music.

Synthwave Keys is designed for synthwave, vaporwave and nuwave, genres that take 80s synth music and add an up-to-date twist. It’s packed with sounds for these genres.

Synthwave Keys is what we call a ROMpler; that is, it’s sample-based and packed with sounds (over 3GB of them across 100 presets). The definitions of what makes a ROMpler and what makes a synth have been challenged over the last decade or more as sample-based instruments increasingly add controls to manipulate their sounds. Indeed in our recent review of Beatskillz’s own RetroVOLT, we met a ROMpler with huge synth ambitions, so much so that Beatskillz call it a Samplesizer!

RetroVOLT is very much the big brother of Synthwave Keys, packed with extra controls so

Synthwave is definitely more old-skool ROMpler, with less controls but sounds as good. There are options for envelope-shaping, filtering and adding an LFO plus some effects, but really this is all about the sample content and playing it back, and here Beatskillz have sampled a load of synth classics for a great set of sounds.

That said, you can delve a little deeper and manipulate the sounds, and over the following pages we will show you how to do that after getting up and running with the software. You can also read a special interview with

Beatskillz’s owner Gaurav Dayal on p8.

LFO FADERS Control the depth and rate with these two ADSR Easy controls to shape the envelope of your preset sound here KEYBOARDS Two sets of keys to control upper and lower notes LFO TYPE Choose from five LFO wave types here 100 SOUNDS This is what Synthwave Keys is all about! Select from 100 sounds here FILTER SECTION Choose from two filter types (high and low) here EFFECTS Two effects for changing pitch and adding ‘verb VOLUME In red as it controls the main signal level POWER! Just in case you need to switch Synthwave on or off, do it here