Electrophonics is an eclectic library of sounds created by, or processed through a modular synth system. Great for soundtrack work, but equally useful for adding texture or more organic elements to all types of electronic music. There are 138 patches (plus an additional 32 Time Machine versions of patches with rhythmic content), made from more than 730, 24 bit 44.1kHz samples. The patches are arranged in categories: Coolicon, Drones, Filter Sweeps, Modular Tones, Odyssey FX, Percussion, Space Atmospheres, and Zither. There are also convolution impulses from a Roland SRE-555 and a Doepfer A-199 spring reverb.
The Coolicon is a type of light shade that was used at the BBC in the 1960s. While recording at the Radiophonic Workshop, Delia Derbyshire discovered that they were rich in harmonic overtones, (similar to a Tibetan Prayer bowl or bell), analysed the frequencies, then recreated the sound with a collection of oscillators. We’ve used band pass filters to break the sound down into its different components – some tonal and some atonal – and then processed them through a variety of synth modules and effects. There are 40 patches in the Coolicon section and the demo track ‘The Green Lamp’ was made purely from these.
The filters in our modular system include a cloned ARP 2600 by Analog Metropolis, a Buchla Low Pass Gate by Thomas White, a Blue Lantern Polivoks, Moog and TB303 types by Doepfer. Some sounds were also created by our ARP Odyssey and a toy zither.
The main panel has controls for volume envelope and modulation, pitch mod and filter controls (only a couple of patches use the Kontakt filter, but it is here as a convenient method of quickly changing timbre). There is also a global effects bypass switch. There are a further three control panels – Voicing/Time Machine, FX1 & FX2 – see the photos below.
