AIR Music Technology Loom II

We’ve not looked at AIR’s well-regarded
additive synth in
before, but the release
of version 2 presents the ideal opportunity to
get it on the test bench. Loom II (VST/AU)
generates up to 512 sine waves (or partials,
as they’re known in additive parlance) per
voice to create tones of potentially great
harmonic complexity, which are subsequently
processed, modulated and morphed. The sine
waves are manipulated en masse (don’t
worry – you never have to deal with more than
a handful individually!) to ‘emulate’ standard
synthesis functions, such as iltering and
modulation, and all manner of efects.
Lowering the volume of all partials above a
certain frequency has the exact same efect
as a low-pass ilter, for example.
These operations are handled in Loom II’s
main Edit page – a powerful but very easy-to-use
semi-modular environment, comprising ten
serially arranged slots, into each of which one of
37 partial-processing modules is loaded. The
modules include ilters, efects, sequencers,
dynamic shapers and a set of core Basic devices,
which turn of speciic partials to conjure up
immediately usable raw sounds.
Full of additives
Loom II introduces four new modules to what
was already a well-stocked list. The Five Sines
module in the Basic category kills all but the irst
ive partials, for stripped-back, straightforward
sounds. Its controls consist of volume sliders for
the four partials above the fundamental. The
Hype module is a dual shelving ‘ilter’, cutting or
boosting the low and/or high frequencies, with
adjustment of cutof frequency and bipolar
amount. Discrete Adder is a ‘targeted’ version of
the regular Adder module, replacing the Key
Track control with the Discrete slider, which
thins out the emphasised partials for an
increasingly inharmonic tone.
AIR Music Technology
Loom II $99
This colourful semimodular instrument aims to make additive
synthesis approachable and easy, but is it a simpliication too far?
EDITOR SWITCH
Switch between the
Edit, Morph and
Wave screens
DISCRETE ADDER
Apply a variable
partial ‘hump’ with
this new module
SUB HARMONICS
Dial in sine wave
subs one and two
octaves down
HYPE
This new
module
emulates a
dual shelving
filter
SPECTRAL
NOISE
Add
harmonically
‘connected’
noise with
this new tool
SPECTRAL
MODULATION
Per-LFO partial
frequency wobbling
LFOs
Every module can access one
of Loom II’s three LFOs
EFFECTS
Loom II’s
four effects
are now in
separate
panels
ENVELOPES
Modulate each module with
one of four envelopes
SPECTRAL
DISTORTION
Spread out the
partial frequencies
The most interesting of the new modules,
Double Wave literally doubles up on the original
vocoder-style Wave module, shaping the levels
of the partials in accordance with the sonic
proile of two audio iles. The module slots aren’t
big enough to hold the duplicated controls this
involves, so a whole new panel has been added
to the GUI to cater for them, plus a host of
additional parameters (including Wave 1/2 Mix)
and modulation assignments. Like the regular
Wave module, you can only instantiate one
Double Wave in a patch.
Each module features a concise array of
editable controls, and can be modulated by
one each of Loom II’s four envelopes, three
LFOs and ive standard MIDI messages –
Velocity, Modwheel, Atertouch, Key and
Key+Velocity. A real-time graphical
representation of the partials in every module
makes it easy to see keep tabs on the efect
each one is having on the signal.
90 / COMPUTER MUSIC / February 2018
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CMU252.rev_loom2.indd 90 07/12/2017 11:09