As a distinctly non-commercial synthesiser, I think Native Instruments have managed to do a good job of finding a marketing niche to fit Absynth in. A "limitless spectrum of unusual, evolving sounds" as they describe it.
Unfortunately, as seems to be synth marketing law these days, they also encourage potential customers to view Absynth as a synth that can do everything.
Consequently the factory preset library is filled with an enormous number of - in my view - unremarkable "bread-and-butter" synth sounds.
Personally, I like a synth to have some character, and that means there are certain types of sounds it will do well, and certain types it won't. Absynth is definitely a synth with character and I wanted to try to articulate the sound-world that I think Absynth lives in.
As well as being a fan of synth sounds (of course) I am huge fan of blues guitar music, and occasionally I dig out my Squier Strat to exorcise some middle-class angst.
Whether it be the use of bottleneck slide, the rattle of finger picks on a resonator guitar, the subtle use of string bends, or the sound of a fuzzed-up, overdriven guitar amplifier, this affection for distorted sounds is clear.
I believe that this tendency actually originates in one of the sources of the blues, traditional African folk music.
The thumb piano (pictured to the right) often has objects affixed to the soundboard to give it a rattling sound. Thin membranes are are added to the gourd resonators of African marimbas to add a nasal buzzing. And the steel drumming tradition that emerged in the caribbean actually used instruments built from oil drums discarded by the US Navy!
And I think that Absynth very much belongs in this sound world. All the sounds I end up programming seem to have this impure, distorted quality.
If you want big fat supersaws, lush chorused pads or crystal-clear FM sounds, I think you need to look elsewhere. But if you want to conjure up dry, warped basses, scorched, resonating soundscapes or scraped, twisted percussion sounds, then dive in!
I Went Down to the Crossroads... by pedalsteeldrummer
Related links
- Absynth: http://www.native-instruments.com
Attributions
- Photo of slide guitar by Lubos Bena, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
- Photo of Mbira Dzavadzimu (thumb piano) by Alex Weeks, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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