** 2 page review / 1105 words **

Sultans of Scribble

Doodle your way in the sound synthesis game, Shiuming Lai reckons it's easy...

If you want to have a go at creating electronic sounds but don't quite know your VCA from your LFO, Scribble Synth could be what you're looking for. On the other hand, you may be a real synth expert searching for new techniques to explore your art, and here Scribble Synth equally fits the bill. Intrigued? Read on...

Last issue we looked at Whip! by Escape, which takes sound and turns it into graphics. Scribble Synth can be thought of as the opposite - you give it visual input to create sounds, by means of additive synthesis. The difference is Scribble doesn't operate in real time, so don't expect to read off a video file and hear great music come out at the other end. Graphics data inherently requires much higher bandwidth than audio, so Scribble binds its input parameters with a simple set of rules and synthesis model, otherwise with the extra processing involved, the sounds would take ages to render.

Scribble's user interface is a simple, uncluttered affair. Its control surface is dominated by a large blank space, this is your drawing pad. Here you define a spectrum envelope (figure 1) for a sound slice, of which there may be up to five in series with respect to time (figure 2). During sample rendering, each frequency band's amplitude value is interpolated over time, then they are all summed. This gives the potential for very complex harmonics.

Furthermore, the time between each slice may be varied, and if you're feeling really adventurous, the Custom Frequency Map (CFM) designer allows irregular frequency band increments and ranges. CFMs may be embedded in the sound patch files or saved separately as a template, for your own sonic signature. You may also choose from four different oscillators (sine, sawtooth, square and triangle) to make those unique sounds. That's the theory out of the way, let's see how it measures up in use.

More clock cycles, Jeeves

I like the consistent look and feel of Electronic Cow products, Scribble is no exception and operates with a reassuring smoothness. Informative progress bars and clear labelling ensure you're never left in the dark about what's going on inside. Running on a fast machine is desirable in order to cut down the (off-line) rendering time, though as I found on my accelerated Falcon, all the toggle switches then change state so quickly they make several transitions, often ending up as they started by the time the mouse button is released.

Undoubtedly the most crucial aspect of Scribble's function is its drawing pad. Strangely, in contrast to the toggle switches just mentioned, even on a quite fast machine the cursor sample rate isn't sufficient to capture every movement and I find myself re-tracing steps to get some continuity, rather like trying to write with a pen that's starting to run dry. Fragmented lines are a useful attribute in their own right so it's difficult to strike a balance; personally I'd prefer the computer to keep up and if I want fragmentation I'll make it myself. Perhaps some global envelope filters would be useful here, such as an erode algorithm (it could then evolve into Deluxe Scribble or Apex Doodle).

There's also a "memory effect" which is a double-edged sword. Each time you select the pen to draw a new envelope, the pad displays a copy of the last one drawn. Useful for creating time domain envelopes, a little frustrating if you then decide you didn't want to alter the frequency envelope at all, because cancelling the draw proceeds to paste the cached parameters into the current slice. No undo is available here, so use with caution!

Some tidying up of the control logic in other areas would be nice, too. Scribble doesn't check to see if you've made any edits on your current sound, so if you inadvertently hit the calculate button it will merrily re-calculate the same thing all over again. Press the [Esc] key in time and you'll abort the calculation, but even then it's too late because the old sound is already flushed from the playback buffer.

It's entirely possible to design some interesting sounds with total spontaneity, as suggested by the program's title. However, as we've seen, the sound schematic is described in 3D space. If you want to be a little more structured you must rely on your spatial visualisation to estimate the sound's characteristics. I'd like to see an enhanced view mode window, where the same 3D schematic is calculated from current data set and can also be altered live, for example, dragging the time lines to new positions. Messing around with buttons is slightly fiddly in the scheme of the visual abstraction concept. That's not to say I'm completely against them, only in this case they'd serve better as a fine-tuning device than primary input method.

In a similar manner to other Electronic Cow synthesis products, sounds can be exported as sample files to disk, via MIDI, or as patches. A folder of example patches is provided, demonstrating some lovely metallic timbres and eerie modulation, warbling sci-fi pads...

Overall I find Scribble a useful tool with a novel approach to achieving its goals, although it seems to feel restrained in the way it conveys the model of your sound. I'd say there is fair room for exploration and refining of the input-specific implementation, and that would immensely improve its ease of use. Besides that delicate issue, Scribble bears all the hallmarks of an Electronic Cow release, namely enthusiastic presentation and value for money. Looking to the future, I hope all these ideas will be taken to a level where we can plug in a master keyboard or slave to a sequencer and play away as the sounds are generated on-the-fly.

** product boxout **
Scribble Synth

Publisher:
Electronic Cow
(Note new address!)
5 Exhall Close, Redditch, Worcestershire, B98 9HY

Contact:
Tel: +44 (0)411 544133
Email: electronic_cow@dial.pipex.com
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/electronic_cow/cownet.shtml

Price: œ16.00 + œ2.50 P&P

Requires: ST/TT/Falcon, 640x400 resolution minimum

Pros: Falcon DSP port output, plenty of options to investigate
Cons: Needs more fool-proofing

74%
** /product boxout **

** Images and captions **

** COW.GIF **
** SCRIBBLE.GIF **

** MIDIDUMP.GIF **
A review of an Electronic Cow program not showing its MIDI Sample Dump? That's like chicken pie without mushrooms

** OPTIONS.GIF **
Set your own sample reference frequency, if the system hardware options are not flexible enough

** SCRIBPAD.GIF **
Figure 1: The main screen

** TIMEENV3.GIF **
Figure 2: This diagram shows a sound making use of all five frequency slices, with varying lengths of time between each