At the 2019 Brooklyn Synth Expo, Gamechanger Audio’s Ilya Krumins gave a presentation on their new Motor Synth and an in-depth demo of how it works.
The Motor Synth is a unique synth design that uses drone engines as oscillators. It generates sounds by accelerating and decelerating eight electromotors to precise RPMs (revolutions per minute), which correspond to specific musical notes. Each electromotor is fitted with a magnetic pickup/inductor and an infrared photosensor that reads a spinning optical disc with printed sine, sawtooth, and square wave-shapes.
The Motor Synth is being funded via a crowdfunding project on Indiegogo, which has already raised 5 times their project goal.
Interesting presentation. This is also the first demo with a lot of examples of the Motor Synth doing less distorted and abrasive sounds, which was good to hear.
I do like the synth but due to the name of their company, I just can shake the feeling of being a victim of clickbait.
In one of the videos I watched he addressed their name and indicated it’s something they take seriously. They have gotten positive comments from some big names.
Still waiting to hear a single sound I like….
Total madness starts from the 13th minute. It sounds absolutely crazy!
It’s clearly not for everyone, but minute 13-16 show some truly breath-taking sounds. Suddenly pretty tempted.
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Worst name for a company since Beat Kangz Electronics, makers of the now mostly forgotten “MPC killer” Beat Thang. Other than that, cool little synth.
no interest at all from what I’m seeing and hearing but it’s making waves with many they are doing exceptional with their indiegogo funding!
At about 1:20, he says to exclude the Hammond organ? And why is that?
Basically he is saying: Look how innovative we are by being the FIRST to use electro-motors as a sound source (excluding Hammond Organs).
Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, (1935-1975) -Wiki
Here is the text /verbatim/ starting at [1:03]:
“So, I, um,… I don’t. I don’t want to like uh,…
I, I don’t want to Generalize, but basically this is the first commercial uh, musical instrument that uses electro-motors as a sort of source of sound.
I think we can exclude the Hammond Organ. Let’s not talk about that, like that’s… We all know about that.”
Tone wheels are a very different concept.
Tone wheels all spin at the same speed, generate only sine waves and are tailored to additive organ patching.
This design is using electromechanical oscillators in the role of traditional analog oscillators. So they can play any oitch, do glides, do different basic waveforms, etc.
It’s interesting that they went for a table top form factor rather than just a eurorack unit with just an oscillator. I would have thought that most of the people interested in this kind of thing were into eurorack. Maybe the eurorack is coming next. The table top one is looking very successful.