Creating vintage tones with Peak

Peak can go way out there in terms of sonics, but first, let’s look at how to get a more classic sound out of this modern analogue synth

One of the first tests for any synth is how well and easily it can make solid old-school bass, lead and poly brass/pad sounds. Making these staple sounds on any synth will allow you to really learn the synth’s character and idiosyncrasies (and Peak is no different). These classic sounds are also great starting points which you can save into some user slots and from which you can create some altogether more mangled and interesting sounds. As Peak uses digital oscillators, we need to employ a few of the onboard sweeteners/tricks to add more of that analogue/vintage texture as the waves are (by nature) much more precise than you’ll find on most analogue synths. Here’s a vintage bass recreation… Initialise a sound. Set oscillator 1 to a Saw wave (16'), and set oscillator 2 to a Square wave (16'). Use MonoLG mode or envelopes set to mono-trigger. Set the env amount to about 3 or 4, filter cutoff to just under half. Set mod envelope 1 (filter)’s A,S,R to 0 and Decay to half. Add a detuned sine to get some chorusing and extra weight to the sound. Turn the filter resonance up halfway for more harmonics. Add some pre-filter drive for texture, and set oscillator 3 to a triangle wave (at a low level) for some extra thickness. Add in a subtle amount of filter and oscillator divergence, and some drift to add a little instability into the sound. Then in the mod matrix, set Source A to mod wheel, Source B to LFO1+ and Destination to 0123Ptch for some mod wheel vibrato.