Eris is the dwarf planet that according to modern astrophysics could confirm a model capable of explaining dark matter and energy. I don't know how much the reference to this small planet is intended, which in turn bears the name of the Goddess of Discord precisely because of the diatribe it generated at the time of its discovery, about being considered part of our solar system or not.
What I can confirm is that Eris, the instrument I am about to tell you about, will certainly be able to explain the dark matter of musical density and the energy of sound pressure with which it could violate the gravitational force of your woofer.
What we are talking about I'll explain in a very simple way: a library of sounds for Contact 5 dedicated to the creation of atmospheres, landscape e spaces in evolution. As with any prestige library built for what is now the de facto standard of sampling, customization through scripting is not limited to the graphical interface only, but includes a powerful, although decidedly exclusive, synthesis chain.
The technology behind this tool is called ACT ENGINE, Where ACT is going to Aautomatic Composing Technology and was created by Composer Tools, a company (or should I say startup) that I had never heard of before, probably due to its young age considering that it currently only has two products in its catalog. Immersing oneself in Eris's philosophy is not exactly immediate, or at least it is not so much as immersing oneself in the mysterious atmospheres that it is able to generate in total autonomy. But as I will illustrate below, a minimum of attention is enough to understand the potential of the instrument and be able to shape it according to your own inclination.
Software distribution and test environment
The library can be purchased from the manufacturer's site and is distributed through digital download from the e-commerce site www.e-junkie.com.
The total amount of material to be downloaded is around 15 Gb divided into multi-files .rar. Once unpacked, you can place the library anywhere on the hard drive and then manually add it to the Kontakt catalog. Beyond single files .wav and the usual files in Kontakt format (.nkc e .nkr) you have an instrument (ERIS.nki) and about fifty snapshots (.nksn) made by the manufacturer and to be used as normal factory presets. Snapshots have been implemented starting from Kontakt 5.5 and allow you to store different scenes of the same instrument. Unlike the other files in the library, they must be placed in a specific path, as appropriately indicated in the quick user guide.
The library was installed on a MacBook Pro of 2011 with processor i5 e Ram 16 Gb on which it was already installed Contact 5.5. An M-Audio was used as the sound card Profire 610 and as listening, a pair of headphones were alternated SONY MDR-7506 to a pair of Studio Monitors Event 20/20 Bas.
The sound engine
The rawest audio material available in the synthesis chain is represented by 13 Gb di individual samples that make up the instrument. It is about 2700 .wavs divided into three groups from 25 timbres for the 37 note on which the extension of the instrument develops. The three groups (Atmo, Sphere and Rotor) can be activated in any combination and each of them is controlled by an automatic envelope generator. For each of the three groups it is possible to activate the 25 timbres present at will (even all at the same time). The balance between atmosphere, Sphere e Rotor can be established by means of a pads XY visual (obviously controllable via MIDI) and adjustable sensitivity. The mix of the three groups is in turn controlled by a classical general envelope ADSR and may or may not be processed by a chain of effects simple but effective. The available effects are arranged in series: Forming, Chorus, Drive, Filter, Reverb each with a few essential controls.
The graphical interface
Eris's graphic interface hides a series of quite unusual practical and aesthetic features. The first impact with this tool is unfortunately not the best as one feels completely blown away by the diversity with which controls and selectors are arranged. It must be said, however, that the 6 minutes of video tutorial present on the manufacturer's website are sufficient to provide the right size of use of the product, providing concise and timely information on all the key points of the interface.
I will try to give a brief description of it, as it really takes a long time to understand it by looking at the tutorial provided here.
On the right are the three zones called Atmo, Sphere and Rotor, each represented by one 5X5 grid of sample selectors. The graphic symbols used for the individual waveforms are vaguely reminiscent of Japanese idioms but it is not clear if they also have a real meaning. Under the ranks of 3 × 25 idioms, there is a feeler for the random generation of layers (Pic-1).
At the center of it all dominates a sort of Vitruvian Man by Leonardo, deprived of the Renaissance man, replaced by a comfortable XY axis visual and characterized by the animated rotation of the circumference. Once again, therefore, a reference to the astronomical universe: the legendary squaring of the circle (properly the transformation of a circle into a square of equal surface, by means of geometric procedures) symbolizes the desire to bring back the "celestial" and "terrestrial" element to an ideal concordance (www.artericerca.com).
Outside the circle, a further square of larger dimensions to enclose the whole, where the envelope level regulators are placed at the four vertices ADSR as a real aesthetic quirk, while in the background an animation of cloud densities of interstellar gas runs (the animation can be disabled using the appropriate option).
On the left instead we find three envelope generators automatic volumes (one per zone) that autonomously draw histogram curves on a temporal axis: the scrolling speed is adjustable by means of a single potentiometer (Pic-2).
It is obviously possible to interrupt the automatic generation (Pic.3) and zoom in on the three curves to manually draw your envelope using the mouse. Also in this section you can completely rely on chance, with a button for the random generation of curves. The evolutions drawn can be memorized on areas of the keyboard not used for the notes, and quickly recalled at will by pressing the keys of the master keyboard. In this way it is possible to use different combinations of “Envelopes” on the same sound layer.
The entire program is stored via snapshot saving which adds our file in the appropriate folder.
Nota: There is also a feature of load/save preset from Eris interface which, besides being redundant, does not seem to work perfectly; probably it should be used with versions of Kontakt without snapshots management.
With a hardware controller
If we are still not satisfied with the evolutions that Eris's synthesis engine is capable of, we can count on the assignment of real-time checks to any hardware MIDI controller. The assignable parameters concern the movements of the pads XY, each of the three parameters available for each effect processor and the scrolling speed of the volume envelopes. Even the activation and deactivation of the individual signal processors can be entrusted to external hardware, but the operation is redundant as by default this operation is carried out using the note keys of the lowest octave not assigned to notes (pink keys in the images).
So hardware in hand I started tinkering: for the XY pad I used a iPad2 (now delegated exclusively to this type of functionality) with the LK software. With this app, in addition to numerous midi functions, you can have a very comfortable XY pad as large as the surface of the tablet. It was enough to assign the same control changes as Eris to LK but (obviously the opposite could also be done) and the control of Eris's pad movements was immediate and functional even if it is not perfectly clear how the levels of the three zones on the two axes.
At the same time I tried to assign through learn, the three parameters of the Formant processor (talk, s, size) to as many knobs of one Akai MPD32 and the three filter parameters (cut off, reso, bw) to as many sliders of the same controller. So I played a note and held it with the sustain pedal by moving one hand to the iPad and the other to the Akai. The result was something incredibly supernatural: you can play with formants until you give voice to the cosmos and you can saturate the filter until you feel vertigo of omnipotence.
The sensations in use
Generating atmospheres is an apparently simple but in reality very complex job: playing random notes with articulated libraries of samples often gives acceptable results with very little effort; but the professionals of the atmospheres are real sound architects attentive to every little detail, especially to the musical evolution in relation to the flow of images. Eris is a tool that adapts perfectly to both situations: it can give immediate satisfaction even by generating random evolutions, but at the same time it provides professionals with the possibility of studying the succession of emotions frame after frame, accentuating the suspense, the thrill, lighting or switching off sound environments with virtuous crescendo / decrescendo.
The sounds generated by Eris have a thick, deep body, a rarefied density that manages to strike emotionally without illusions, they are pure vibrations that pass through the stomach, leaving it free to jump in pleasant spasms. The confusion it manages to generate is anarchic-futuristic in the sense that it unhinges the rules by building a bridge of salvation on the fear of contemporary emptiness.
Comparison with other tools
Cataloging Eris in a specific category of sound generator is a difficult undertaking: personally I have never understood that I work with anything similar and consequently I cannot make comparisons with any other instrument. Probably the philosophy of use is close to that of Omnisphere Spectrasonics, which more or less proposes itself with the same intentions, but fundamentally, from what I understand reading here and there, we are talking about quite different operating principles: Omnisphere is a more complex instrument from the point of view of synthesis, also because and a real vsti and consequently also manages to be less sample-dependent. It also doesn't fall into the same price range as Eris at all. I can probably venture that with some thorough work on Massive, a good programmer might be able to stratify several instances of the plugin creating equally complex textures, but obviously the amount of hours to spend on programming would be infinitely higher.
Downsides
I would like to highlight a characteristic of Eris that I personally consider a weakness, even if it is clearly a precise design choice: the length of the basic waveforms with which to build the mega-carpets. The average length of 15 seconds with natural decay, surely it allows to reduce the imperfections due to the loop points and to eliminate the decay artifices through envelope. At the same time, however, it reduces the margin of intervention on the design of the applicable evolutions, since the sounds already have an intrinsic “mobile” content. Of course we are talking about slight fluctuations in the samples, which in any case do not really compromise the programming of the layers. In all cases, I think it would have been interesting to try to implement one as well wavetable of very short waveforms, something that could approach the concepts from which the granular synthesis then developed, in short, a sort of evolved wavestation.
Another slightly annoying aspect is the lack of dynamic help on the software function keys. Many functions are not immediately recognizable (particularly misleading the keys for storing the volume envelopes and the cone that determines the stereo opening of the master) and despite being described in detail in the tutorial, it's easy to forget its functionality.
Conclusions
The perfect user of Eris, the one who in my opinion just shouldn't do without having it in their setup, is obviously the manufacturer of scores. That they are films, documentaries o videogames with this instrument the task of creating mysterious, dark, esoteric sound environments is immensely facilitated: a track made with Eris hardly needs any post-production interventions and it runs smoothly as it was conceived during the composition.
It cannot be excluded, however, that the sounds it is able to generate may also arouse the interest of producers who have always traveled underground roads, urban decay, post-industrial malaise. The typical sound of the Massive Attack, the famous "bristol sound”Started at the dawn of the 90s and subsequently poured into the desolate atmospheres of artists like Kapinynas e Kode9.
In short, a really interesting product that gives us the hope of seeing the manufacturer grow with the launch of instruments of the same caliber made with the same spirit of innovation.
Technical Specifications
Size: 15GB
Kontakt Version: 5.4.1 or higher
Audio Format: 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed stereo PCM wav audio
Price: $199
Info: www.composerstools.com
Demo information
From our website www.composerstools.com there are several demos that provide sufficiently clear ideas about the evocative settings generated by this library. For this I tried to create a small demo that could also provide evidence of other features of Eris, in particular filters and formants. I have uploaded three instances of Eris to Logic X plus a minimal, slightly noise rhythmic base. The sounds I have alternated are first a long and sustained environment, then an arpeggio with filter automation and then a kind of lead with interventions on the formants in real time; finally I let the three parts play at the same time. All the tracks are absolutely flat, devoid of any equalization / compression in the mix phase. On the master, only “normalization” was applied to have a more uniform listening volume.
Pasquale Tarricone
