Lightning Leads

Well this is it, the end of the road as they say. The fourth and final season is here. Don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened. Now I know what you’re thinking; “another soundset” for that green monstrosity. Yep damn straight it is. But unlike some film series, I think the best has been saved for last.

192 patches you say?!

This sound bank (funnily enough) features some of the best leads I’ve created with this synth. Officially 64 – this lightning bunch is inspired by my youthful 90’s and has everything from mellowed out plucks and wormy leads, to leads sharper than razor wire. Tortured slabs and stabs are delivered with aplomb, whilst classic trance arps & keys are there for when you need them. On top of this there’s a second bank with another 64 patches featuring more iconic System-1 sounds.

To round things off there’s even a third bank of 64, with some hard hitting percussion, some Soundsauca atmospherics and a few new basses too. It’s nearly got it all as they say. But – there’s more! Since this will be the last patch bank with my trusty System-1, I’ve thrown in a load of my sound experiments & effects I’ve made over the years. A party popper sound, yep it has it. A convincing Vuvuzela, sure thing! Also the samples of the drum patches used in the demo are included. They’re still available as patches if you wish to tweak or re-tune.

Highlights

Like my kids, I don’t have favourites, but here’s a few that caught my ears:

• “Nine PM” – Not a 1 for 1 but it has that vibe. Perfect for a Peggy Gou jam!
• “Felix Fix” – A not too shabby Roland JX-1 Rock Organ B,
• “Acid Dog” – The XL bully of the System-1, brutal…
• “PianoGal” – Old skool house piano,
• “WAOW!” – Well wow,
• “Bebé Tempa” – Awfully bad but had to stay in,
• “Solar Pluck” – Really trancy & glassy pluck

The end

As I’ve said a few times before. S-1 is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s so easy to sit down with, fiddle around and come up with inspirational stuff. The panel is near perfect, the keys though – quite the opposite! However I decided as it’s around a decade since green briefly became the new grey, that I’d finish on a high note. There’s always more to discover in a synth so I’m not saying this is all I could get from it, but time to move on it is.

FAQs

Demo & content

The demo for Lightning Leads is a little different to my others. I figured I’d treat it as a little bit of a send off, so I multitracked some sounds and layered them up to achieve stereo spread. I know some people in the synth fraternity will be shaking their knobs in disgust. To make matters worse I used one or two plugins like Xfers LFO tool and Devious machines Infiltrator at choice moments. LFO tool was used for some brief side-chaining, really needed when I layered some sounds. Infiltrator was only used on some additional samples not from the System-1. And then there’s a few 3rd party sample loops, a vocal and some pitch fades in Logic X.

The release comes with all the patches from the demo, along with the drum sounds. These drums are also provided as samples for convenience. As a bonus there’s extra patches from my journeys with the System-1.

To be clear, I won’t make a habit of doing this, but sometimes it’s nice to use the sounds in a mix context. I like to view my videos as a showcase, so anything goes really, but I endeavour to be transparent about what I do as I know some use them to help with purchasing decisions.

Tuning

There are some sounds that have a limited range of play. Others may be slightly “off”. It’s a consequence of me using the X-mod (frequency cross modulation between the oscillators). The thing is this, System-1 (like some analogs) is really great at making timbres & textures. Sampling these and re-using them is also a great technique.

The cross mod works like a real analog synth and with some settings, pitch tuning becomes an issue. Sometimes it’s minor, other times it can really go out of whack. Since oscillator 1 cannot be independently tuned (as on the System-8) there’s little workarounds.

The vast majority of the main leads are in tune, but some more experimental sounds and pianos can be out. I have tried hard to tune them in the plugin version, however on testing when sending to the hardware, tuning is global. YMMV but I’d rather use the functions and push things to discover timbres instead of limiting things. I hope you understand:)

Bundle & Price

This soundset is a new release and as such stands on its own. It contains more content than a single previous System-1 banks (64 patches), or the bundle (192 total patches) and as such is only available separately. I thought hard about this. If I created “another” bundle, previous purchasers would likely feel hard done by. It would be difficult for me (at least) to create another upgrade path for those people, so I tried to keep it simple and above all fair.

As always, I think the time gone in to the whole project vs the asking price is a good deal;)

Enjoy!