A Labor of Love - Developing a Free Synth App

I am lucky to be one of the volunteers working with Open Source software developers AudioKit on a new synth app for iPad that will be coming in June called SynthOne. Unlike alot of "Free" apps this one is actually free with no annoying ads or in app purchases. My role in this has been designing some of the preset sounds built in to the synth.

There are over a hundred people who came together to make this happen volunteering with coding, testing and designing the app. Matthew Fecher at AudioKit has pulled together many talented developers to build something to increase accessibility of music making to anyone that can access an iPad. The philosophy behind this was genuinely altruistic as there are lots of people that have access to an iPad but may not have the funds to buy music software.
In addition all the code that goes in to making the app is free and Open Source so anyone with some basic coding skills can take the source code and adapt it to make a synth app of their own.
The video above tells the story of the app so far. The great part is that the synth will develop over time based on people's ideas and suggestions and whatever the developers and users can imagine.

For those that don't know Synths it is great to just open up and play and experiment. For the synth nerds like me who have a basic idea of what all the knobs and buttons do the app uses Subtractive Synthesis with 2 main oscillators with variable waveforms, sub oscillator, filter, FM, Noise, 2 LFO's for modulation, effects, arpeggiator and even microtonal tuning options.

The microtonal tunings are tunings outside of the normal "western" (doh ray me far so lah tee doh) scale. These alternate tunings allow interesting and unusual melodies and opens up all kinds of creative options for musicians.

I am honored to have played a small part in this project designing the preset sounds along stellar app designers and engineers that have worked with Rihanna, Kanye West, M83, Tycho and others. The synth can make some really lush sounds from gritty leads to funky basses to ethereal sounding pads. There are also some really nice performance options like dual XY pads and on screen keyboard and even a built in programmable sequencer. There are plans to add Audio Unit support so you will eventually be able to use the synth inside Apple's own free app Garageband as well.

So....I am gushing about this alot but it is not available yet. If however, you have an iPad and a penchant for Eighties synth sounds there is a really nice (Also Free and Open Source) Yamaha DX7 app by the same developer called FM Player. I also did sound design for this.

So if you have an iPad floating around go grab FM Player for free on the app store and that should help whet your appetite until AudioKit SynthOne arrives in a few weeks.

FM Player: Classic DX Synths by AudioKit Pro
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fm-player-classic-dx-synths/id1307785646?mt=8

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