The story
Every morning, I brush my teeth. I use a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, which means that, every morning, I hear the distinctive humming sound it makes. Although “hear” isn’t quite the right word. As the brush makes contact with your jaw, the note echoes throughout your face. This experience of having the brush mechanism vibrating inside of your head is strangely immersive. Sometimes I sing along with it. Or harmonize. I had been meaning to record this for ages, and I finally did.
This instrument library comes with six presets:
– Sonic Toothbrush Dry: The dry sound of the toothbrush without any effects
– Sonic Toothbrush FX1: Distorted the through Noise Engineering Ruina
– Sonic Toothbrush FX2: Distorted the through Noise Engineering Ruina
– Sonic Toothbrush FX3: Distorted the through a range of outboard effects
– Sonic Toothbrush Reverb: The sound of the toothbrush through a large hall-style reverb
– Sonic Toothbrush Shimmer Pads: The sound turned into a pad using Valhalla Shimmer
Each preset has the following controls:
– Attack
– Decay/Release
– Chorus Level
– Tone
– Reverb
The Story: How this sample pack came to be
Interface
Reviews for Sonic Toothbrush
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Personal Passion Project
I was expecting something from the Device Orchestra youtube channel. I was surpirsed, that's a cool sound. At base, it may just by a synth pad, but I found it at just the right time to immediately use it. And it sounds very nice, expecially the shimmerverb version.
Now, having heard the story, I like it even more. From your morning routine to an instrument.
If Dentists Were Samplists
Love love love this found sound synth. The included presets are all instantly playable, useful, unique, characterful, and fun. I figured the FX presets would be weird noises that I'd never use. How wrong I was. They're all super useful synth keyboard type sounds that I found instantly inspiring and standouts in this instrument. The shimmer pads are great too. I was a little disappointed that the dry instrument seems to have so little sustain. You can kind of fake it by turning up the release, but then you're not going to be able to play any short notes. Even so, these are minor complaints given how fun, inspiring, useful, characterful, and wonderful this library is. Give it a download; you won't be disappointed!
A triangle wave, majestified!
It is very fascinating to realise how much music there is around us. Unlike my fridge, that sounds like a doom-drone, this e-toothbrush sounds very similar to one of the simplest waves, the triangle one. David didn't sit there though, because you will also find 5 extra patches that have been processed in a different way, and all of them have something new to offer. My personal favourite was the Shimmer Pads, I'm always a sucker for those, though!
Overall, everything plays well, the sound quality is amazing, and the GUI elemets are very nicely placed on top of the toothbrush itself, smart, and clean! On there you will find Attack and Release which are really useful for such sounds, along with a Chorus knob and a Tone filter that I recommend binding to the modwheel. There is also a Reverb included.
If I had to complain about one thing, that would be the samples dying off fairly quickly. After a while, I realised that the problem is not in the looping, but in the Release settings, because the Release triggers after pressing the note, not after releasing it. If you increase the Release, you get a longer sound, but if you press down with a short Release, it will just die. It's more like a minor inconvenience, not like a big dealbreaker though.
The attached video was very entertaining, and overall I'm sure that this be a very useful tool for many!
Pads kept me interested
For me personally, every patch that wasn't the shimmer pads didn't really captivate me. Its defenitely interesting and creative sound design and i commend David for that, but the end result felt pretty much like a synth bell i could find in my stock synth. I also agree with alex about the way the release knob is working. When its turned up it lasts pretty long but when its turned down it stops really suddenly. My description of that might seem confusing because that's what release is supposed to do, but it felt like it was harder to find a nice middle ground than on most other instruments.
Although I didn't like most of the presets much, i think the shimmer pad is amazing. It is indeed shimmery and super interesting. It can get boomy or resonant depending on how you play it but nothing some eq couldn't fix and i really love the sound and the "alive" feel the pad has. The release settings here are also a bit weird but its still really playable and good sounding. Overall this is a cool library that i really like some aspects of and i suspect many others will like this even more than i do.
