Darwin Arts has introduced Trilobite 0.9.3, a freely downloadable modular software synthesizer that lets you create new sounds using ‘Darwinian Evolution’.
Will it lead to ‘survival of the phattest’?
Check out this video intro and decide for yourself:
The video covers:
- Basic overview of main window user interface features
- Some visual patch anatomy
- Loading patches from banks
- First sounds
- Midi CC mapping
- Midi key mapping
- Saving presets
- Plugin host parameter mapping
Features:
- Interactive patch evolver
- Visual patch editor
- Fully-integrated patch bank librarian
- Intuitive drag-and-drop loading
- Descriptive metadata editors with text and images
- Web publishing features
Trilobite is available for Macintosh OSX as well as Microsoft Windows. Audio Units and VST plugin versions are provided for their respective platforms.
The app is currently in beta and is available as a free download; registration is required at the site.
If you’ve tried Trilobite, leave a comment and share your thoughts on it!
via vjavant
missed opportunity to call it survival of the sikkest imo
This article and this comment makes a reference to the phrase ‘Survival of the fittest’ and wrongfully attributing that to Darwin, Herbert Spencer is the man you are thinking of. And I don’t see what is Darwinian about this plugin, which may do beautiful things over tens of thousands of years but in a instant could have a mutation that has a child being born inside out.
Holy fuck that GUI is ugly and unintuitive! Like it was designed by a color blind …no, a completely blind sloth. And YES, GUI fucking matters! I hate poorly designed shit. Darwinian law demands that poorly designed shit go extinct.
Besides that, I found the demo so boring and uninspiring, I still don’t see what the hell this thing does!
Obviously you’re not a golfer…
Have to agree on that garish GUI…redolent of a guy probably called Larry wearing a late 80’s Hypercolour shirt, sweating profusely in a tourist trap somewhere in Jamaica… 😀
LOL… I love these kind of comments that superficially seem abstract and non sequitur but you know _exactly_ what he’s talking about.
The video is pretty useless as a demo. Maybe a mistake has been made? It’s just a tutorial on the basics and doesn’t at all demonstrate functionality everyone wants to see – The system of patch Evolution.
freaky late night music making
I tried to do something with trilobite, but I’ve got quickly bored and frustrated. GUI is ugly and non-intuitive. Features are poorly documented, and overall experience was messy, especially over 10 objects or something. You can surely find better made environments for such task – ie. PureData or even SynFactory
I really don’t get it, the interesting feature is the patch evolution – otherwise it’s just a really boring modular synth – so that’s what we really need to see. How do you pick which candidates to keep in your gene pool? Can you build different gene pools for different types of sounds (Bass, Keys, Pads, …)? etc. Lots of things I had to deal with when developing PatchMorpher where, although the synthesiser routing is a constant, I discovered I needed to give the user lots of control over whether they wanted to simply modify the timbre, or the filter, or the envelopes etc.
Wow that UI is really far out there man. I hope the next update will spit out some fractals too man, me and the cats would love that. Peace.
BAD UI
MODULE SELECTION UNCOOL
CONNECTING FROM RIGT TO LEFT ( VICE VERSA IS USEFULL)
CREEPY SOUND ( !! )
ARTEFACTS IN AUDIO (SYNTHESIS PROG’S ON MY OLD ATARI ARE SOUNDING BETTER….)
WHO NEED THAT?
Creepy sound? I need that!!
At least the GUI is not full op capitals.
You all hating. But
(1) You can’t point to an evident example of a good modular synth GUI.
Yes there SHOULD be one, but actually, there isn’t. This is not so far from early versions of Reactor.
(2) The video is quite pedagogical. Yes, the color scheme is on the garish side of bad LSD brain hemorrage, and this clashes with the probably professional reader, and the corporate style text.
But did the maker actually say “hey, I know synthopia readers are really elite synthesists and art critics, THIS video is for them”? No, Synthhead posted what he found.
The sound seems good (from the video). At least FM didn’t sound aliasing over Youtube. Might even try it later.
UHE do a decent modular GUI. so does propellerhead
Not quite at this level of detail. Reason is more a rack of semimodulars.
All softsynths that allow construction from single numbers and sinewave oscils face this problem: How to handle the complexity of 100s of parts in the GUI?
Max has the sub-module to box in the tanglement of lines.
NI Reason has its two levels, not sure if you can take full control from the surface level now.
The old Creamware brand took this quite far, would have liked to try that sometime.
The Darwinian perhaps takes inspiration from Ableton, which may be good, or not.
Just thought they could use a bit of support, since everybody got into a fizz over the colors.
I see from the website that you can control the color scheme.
We’ll see if that’s enough for users to forgive the videos 😉
re: Reason
yes the Rack has CV routing and itself is very semi-modular but check out the A-Series modules~ https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2013/01/30/new-modular-synth-rack-extensions-for-reason/ and for those with hardware modulars, Reason also has a SilentWay RackExtension for interfacing with the outside world, with all of the CV control a real modular has never been more tempting.
the Nord Modular Editor would be an example of what I’d consider a modular UI done well, also the new modular system for Ableton Live by MAXforCats, OSCiLLOT, looks really good.
I need to give this a closer look but at least the webpage says that there’s customizable color schemes, because orange with green and purple is the worst…
OK, so it’s starting to sound like I should hire an artist.
Regarding “CREEPY SOUND”, that was really the whole point.
Trilobite 1.0 is now releaed, with new features and a slightly less garish color scene.