The story
Where I live in New Zealand we get a lot of Cicadas, I think predominantly Chorus Cicadas (Amphipsalta zelandica) and I’m always amazed how loud these little insects are! Even just one on its own can be incredibly loud! Anyway, I happened to spot one by the path one day making a racket, so I ran inside and got my Zoom Livetrak L-8 and a small-diaphrame condenser microphone and spent a few minutes capturing the sound. I’ve pitched the resulting samples as best I can, but it proved quite tricky to detect the pitch, presumably something in the nature of the waveform makes it hard to get a hold on. While editing I discovered I’d also captured some birdsong, so I isolated those and included them as ‘bonus birds’.
To be honest I don’t know how versatile or useful this instrument will be, but as I always say, I hope someone finds this interesting, inspiring, and dare I say perhaps someone will even find a use for it!
Thanks for giving it a go!
Interface
Reviews for Chorus Cicada Synth
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
A great, gritty synth
Expecting some kind of ambient cicada-pad, I was quite surprised by this instrument, whose gritty synth sound I wouldn't have guessed had invertebrate origins. The sound is highly customisable with 4 different sounds (2 'cicadas' and 2 'birds') which can be blended to taste, plus other effects and controls. There are also a number of presets with a variety of pre-prepared sounds. I enjoyed playing and writing with this and would happily collaborate with these cicadas again on a future project. Thanks Tobias!
A textured synth with awesome automation potential!
This is a synth instrument based on 4 different layers of sounds that you can manually blend however you want. What makes it even more interesting in my opninion is that you can also change the tuning of each layer. I immediately thought of leaving one layer (the Cicada 1) as a default, and automate the other 3 with binding them to a different CC setting each, and leaving their level a little lower. With this idea, you get create your own "evolving" sound, and along with the other included global reverb and chorus you can achieve a quite unique result!
A raucous collection
A very raucous set of presets. The pack offers several controls to vary the sounds and add a synthesized bird song. It is amazing that all this content weighs less than 3MB.
I love the GUI, especially the detail of putting knobs as decorations on the controls. The image looks great with the other elements. That light green tone gives it a natural touch.
An extraordinary synth
This little instrument, which has a lot of customisation knobs, has a pretty unique sound, in my opion that is. The 'synth' has some 80s sound to it which I find difficult to describe... It's really something you need to try to find out. (Spoiler: It doesn't really sound like insects nor birds, in a good way)
I like the windy sound in the background a lot, good job!
