BUILD YOUR OWN PLUGINS

Creating your own instruments and effects is surely the best way to get a completely custom sound. In this feature we detail three of the best ways to build DIY synths and effects

Back in the olden days, many people would fiddle around with the innards of their studio kit to change how it operated and sounded. Things aren’t quite so simple in today’s digital studio. The complexity and exacting nature of digital audio hardware does not lend itself to a bit of casual circuitbending, and the source program code that underlies commercial audio software is locked down tighter than a hipster’s jeans. One solution for those wishing to tinker in the digital audio world is to take a computer science degree, and then use that knowledge to start developing their own processors and instruments. This is an extraordinarily longwinded way of getting into a bit of DIY plugin making, though, so thankfully there are other options – at least three as it goes – that require a lot less mucking about!

At the simplest end of the spectrum are “plugin chainers” such as Blue Cat’s PatchWork. In essence, a chainer is a plugin that hosts other plugins, thereby allowing you to create your own custom chains of processors and instruments. But chainers are a limited solution, incapable of detailed patching and modification, and restricted to the plugins you have available in the first place. They can also be fiddly due to the need to configure each plugin’s parameters individually.

The best known code-free tool for creating your own processors and instruments is Native Instruments Reaktor. Having been around in one form or other for nearly 25 years, Reaktor is a mature and stable platform, with extensive capabilities and a large community of creators. The program’s graphical building tools are certainly more intuitive than writing lines of code, but it still helps to use the logical thinking of a programmer if you plan to delve into its deepest depths.

Next up there is a tool that sits somewhere between the purely graphical and the purely code-based: Max by Cycling ’74. This staggeringly capable system is not designed specifically for audio work, but its ability to integrate with Ableton Live has made it an important studio tool.

Finally we take a look at Melda’s MSoundFactory, the latest plugin creation platform and the one behind your free plugin in this issue!

Creating your own effects and instruments opens up a whole new universe of possibilities for producers and creators, and with tools like Reaktor, MSoundFactory and Max we’ll show you that it needn’t even be that difficult…