Benn uploaded a really interesting video discussing the more obscure or forgotten pieces of software used by Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) throughout his career:

As someone who creates experimental music, among other things, I was truly delighted to watch the video and discover a bunch of things I hadn't known before. With that same spirit, I came up with the idea of starting this thread with the purpose of sharing and exchanging knowledge about interesting and experimental music-making software ou there. What do you say?

 

Thanks for posting. Looks like this will be a memory-bud twanger.

 

MetaSynth was the jam back in 90's!.....

 

Yea, so many forgotten pieces of hardware, some of them are still unpaired!

I'd love to try Metasynth, unfortunately it's still MacOS exclusive... I spoke with one of the devs and it seems like they're going through tough times.

 

Well I expected I bit more from the video when Benn announced it on his stream channel (https://www.youtube.com/@alphabasic/streams), just one piece of software was new to me Praat: doing phonetics by computer
Always wanted to try Atari algorithmic Dr. T's Music Software KCS Omega, he made lots of innovative programs and shared the market with Cubase and Logic, read an interview with him (https://www.furious.com/perfect/drt.html)
Benn also mentions UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu) software by Xenakis and there is a modern implementation of it called HighC (http://highc.org/) it has similarities with Metasynth



Here is a list from the video description

Spoiler: >

Okay, big list of things to check out that were more or less ambiguously used.
Not for the faint of heart.
Please dive in! Old hard/software:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OctaMED
  
• https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/digidesign-turbosynth/2295
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_Music_Machine
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum
  
• https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/dr-ts-tiger-cub/451
  
• https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/c-lab-notator-logic/5491
  
• https://www.vintagesynth.com/casio/FZ20M (for timestretches)
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/playerpro/
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPIC

Stuff we cannot find much about in 2024:
PDS Soundview (mentioned here https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680904 )

Stuff you can easily run today:

• https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
  
• https://www.composersdesktop.com/
  
• https://www.ircam.fr/
  
• https://supercollider.github.io/
  
• https://uisoftware.com/metasynth/
  
• https://www.iannix.org/en/
  
• https://inagrm.com/en

 

Last edited: May 27, 2024

Thanks a lot for the infos! I really appreciate it. Praat is a unique software, it's a bit annoying to use but it does pay off, I've used it a few times before.

 

I did not know Metasynth was Mac only, what a shame.

PlayerPRO for Mac OS X has some features that are unique to it. You can code your own waveforms I believe. That is how Aphex Twin achieved some unique leads, bells, and pads in some tracks.

Windows users can potentially try that one out by using a virtual machine with Mac OS X installed and loading PlayerPRO in there.

Working with tracker-based sequencers is so much more tedious compared to the standard MIDI that we use now.

 

Not all of them, but trackers are definitely not for everyone. Metasynth for Mac is $380 now.

 

You can actually write your own waveforms in almost every tracker out there, it's ancient tech believe me or not, haha. And yea, it's a different workflow but it's not as tedious as it look, I actually feel that sequencing midi on a conventional midi editor is 10 times more tedious.

 

Do you have a video example of that or a software you can recommend? I'm a beginner.

Also wanted to come back and say I really appreciate your post @Synclavier - I almost forgot about UPIC even after watching the video. It is a really fascinating system and in some applications UPIC can be considered one of the earliest granular processors.

To find more info search Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu or UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu).

Mycenae Alpha by Iannis Xenakis was one of the first works to be completely composed with this system.

 

Modern experimentalism in music, which mostly started in the second half of the 20th century, has not brought significant musical results. It has summed itself up in newer forms of combinations of sounds, otherwise hasn't added anything special to the world of music, nor has it improved the previous situations.
Devices that change sounds electronically have been used by experimentalists, and in the end, the only thing that has happened is the emergence of some genres which musically are mostly weak ones.

 

While I agree with you (as in I don't really like very experimental music), I think everyone agrees that whenever one experiments he opens up his mind to new ideas, new points of view, new workflows, etc. which in turn can provide inspiration and new fuel for other kinds of style.

 

There are lots of trackers to try classics: ProTracker 2 clone https://16-bits.org/pt2.php Fasttracker II clone https://16-bits.org/ft2.php MilkyTracker https://milkytracker.org/

more new free ones OpenMPT https://openmpt.org/ SunVox https://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/
or paid one Renoise https://www.renoise.com/

Or ultimate chiptune tracker with real chip emulation https://tildearrow.org/furnace/ Furnace Tracker

 

Last edited: Jun 4, 2024

What you call weak is pure subjective.
All electronic music we know today is a result of experimental and avant-garde studies of 50s and 60s musicians.
The masses don't need experimental stuff it will never be able to compete with pop music. Does it become weak of that? Don't think so

 

This is a place for you to share your experiences with obscure and experimental software (you're welcome to do so), not for you to share your personal tastes, preferences and disagreements towards modern or contemporary experimentalism, as they don't necessarily mean anything to anyone besides you and they're not the focus of this discussion.

 

Last edited: Jun 4, 2024

DtBlkFx - FFT-based Multi-Effect by Darrell Tam

DtBlkFx is a unique tool based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) that allows you to stack up to 8 different effects in series, including harmonic filtering, spectral shifting, and more.

https://github.com/dozius/DtBlkFx/releases

https://archive.org/details/dtblkfx

This is sort of like Unfiltered Audio SpecOps. They have a lot of cool plugins too.
It's good to share and post because it helps keep and bring back memories.

There are so many interesting and creative FFT-based tools out in the wild. Many for free (GitHub and elsewhere) or cheap. It's another fun way to get experimental. I would share names if I could think of them.