About
I'm Valmont, french dude of 21 years old :D
After a double major at Paris Sorbonne University in Musicology and Mechanics, I am now doing a master at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière.
While doing this I'm also producing music on some french label!
Find all my works on this page: http://linktr.ee/Valmont
If you appreciated my works, I'd be glad to hear from you!
You can contact me here: digitalsystemicsoftwares@gmail.com
Or via Instagram (@Valmont_Naudin)
I don't make money with this, I'm against advertisments and I try to propose an alternative to expensive industrial-scale softwares.
That might sound ridiculous, but I trust in it! 🤗
> How do you make your plugins?
I use SynthEdit to make my plugs. I only have basic knowledge in C++, which is really not enough to start an audio company xD
Despite being heavily criticized, SynthEdit is an incredible tool that allow a super fast, intuitive workflow for fantastic results, without any programming skillz. Many people did basic VSTs back in the days, with terrible UIs and not so great sound, so SynthEdit got associated with amateur sounding plugs... Since then, SynthEdit evolved a lot. The tools provived in the software were deeply improved, or even rebuilt with the new updates. There are some great sounding plugins made with SynthEdit, that some people don't even think they are made with :D
I don't use ready-built functions, but only axioms of sound: basic oscillator, addition, division... To have my very own sound at the end.
To emulate a machine, I mostly use my ears, but also spectrum analysis with Adobe Audition and Audacity.
Take for example the Synsonics-V: I recorded the Toms sounds, isolated different parts of the sound (The click, the noise and the tone). I then reproduced each part with FM synthesis and heavy filter series. For the tone I analyzed the pitch decrease, the ratio between VCA envelope and pitch envelope, the signal waveform fluctuation by the pitch variation. For the noise I observed on a scope the shape of the signal, I saw how it oscillated, then I recreated it using fast triggered Sample/Hold quantified the same way I heard on the Synsonics, then filtered and shaped the result with dozens of filters to get as close as possible from the noise character. So it's mostly art and subjective comprehension of machines, rather than a carbon-copy of schematics, recreated component by component :)
Maybe it's not C++ lines, but it sure is a lot of work ^^
> Why are your softwares under the name of "Mode Machines"?
When I started working with SynthEdit, I used a non-licenced SynthEdit version to publish the exports, so the plugs appeared in some DAWs under the name of 'SynthEdit". A licence was 150€, and as a 16 years old making random freebies I couldn't afford one.
But then I got in touch with Mode Machines' creator, Michael Thorpe, who wanted me to work on some experimental synthesizer ideas (Additive FM synthesis with Fourier analysis-resynthesis). Since I was making prototypes on SynthEdit, he offered me a licence :)
The project never went further than a prototype, but I still earned a SynthEdit licence for my works, which was named after Mode Machines.
That's why in some DAWs, where plugins are sorted by manufacturer, I appear as Mode Machines!