Interlacer is a monophonic synthesizer built around ideas from Linear Phase Distortion Synthesis, West Coast, and Subtractive East Coast Synthesis. At the core are two sine-wave oscillators. Both track with midi input and have their own mix knob to feed them into a State Variable Filter (with lowpass output going to a BBD, and a bandpass output going to a reverb) to the output, and the second oscillator has its own fine-tune. The oscillators have FM Feedback and Cross Modulation to each other, meaning you can have VCO 1 feeding back into itself or VCO 2, and VCO 2 can feed back into itself and into VCO 1. This makes up about half of a true complex oscillator, hoping a future update will feature a waveshaper! These are all set up with VCAs, and I have value controls for each of those, as well as single pushbuttons to connect the Envelope or LFO to the VCAs feeding the FM inputs. These simple sine waves get mangled and modulated to produce a wide range of musical timbres and tones, as well as nasty enharmonic shards.
On the control page, at the top is the “Mod Matrix” so to speak, with the pushbuttons to select LFO or Envelope modulation on the Feedback and Cross Modulation. These are all latching, and in the center are the two momentary effects: one of the LFOs pushing the Delay Time around for that beautiful tape-like warble, and the BBD feedback ramp (much like every other patch I’ve uploaded, but one of the coolest most performable features I love about ZOIA). You have individual control over the VCO Feedback and Cross Modulation, Filter Cutoff Frequency as well as a normalized LFO to the filter. I have it slightly resonant, just a smidge, gives it slightly more vocal quality. There’s control over the Delay Time, Mix, and Feedback, and the Bandpass mix and Reverb mix are tied, and lastly a time control for the Reverb. At the bottom of the page is a standard ADSR envelope, connected to a final VCA to control amplitude.
The three LFOs each affect specific things, the first one, top left, is dedicated to the parameters affecting the first oscillator. The next specific to the second oscillator. The third, third-row center, affects the filter and the delay time. Having three independent ones and an envelope makes it nice and modulated but still pretty tame. These connections can be broken up but everything is tied to multipliers, I’d say to add another LFO wouldn’t hurt or put too much on the CPU if you’re looking for more wackiness. As it sits now it’s incredibly stable, well under 90%.
So far this has been super fun to experiment with. It was in part inspired by the C15 synth, and the latest Kickstarter synth I am dazzled by, the Implexus by Majella Audio. Learning about how that style of synthesis works and the components that make it up has been super interesting, and the sounds they both are capable of are amazing. Figuring it would be a fun experiment to start with the two cross modulating oscillators and then go Subtractive for the rest, make it as musical and wild as possible. Synthesis and particularly FM Synthesis has really led me down an interesting path I wouldn’t have expected as a guitarist. ZOIA makes this whole world right within reach, and too incredibly fun not to explore. Thanks for checking it out!
