Metasynth - The Curious DAW From A Parallel Universe

This gets thick. Timestamps are you're friend.
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Timestamping:
0:00 - A Little History
2:40 - Overview
4:00 - Image Synth
11:14 - Effects Room
12:20 - Drum Chaos
14:38 - Montage Room
15:30 - Sequencer
16:35 - Spectrum Synth
18:02 - Image Filter
19:05 - Improvisation Playground 1
12:12 - Improvisation Playground 2
22:09 - Improvisation Playground 3
24:59 - Spectral Image Oscillation?!?!?
30:19 - Improvisation Playground 4
32:12 - Final Thoughts

[@MOSMASTERING]

It’s such a shame we have to go to work, otherwise you could live inside the infinity of Metasynth and create a multidimensional masterpiece

[@coztfu]

fuck capitalism

[@MOSMASTERING]

@@coztfu I 100% agree

[@stevoofd]

This could have gone for 12 hours more, I would have loved every minute of it! I was fascinated by the process and the loops you made

[@GabrielMillerd]

and sadly like he says, not a millisecond more is to be found. such an interesting gem and approach

[@ixxirecords26]

20:15 Flume punching the air rn cause you exposed his secret weapon

[@ezrabrownstein3237]

It does sound a lot like synplant, which I think is what he actually uses along with max4live devices

[@orionishi6737]

@@ezrabrownstein3237 Yeah I know for sure I read something where he was taking about synplant.

[@ixxirecords26]

@@ezrabrownstein3237 oh cool, I was just dropping this comment for the meme, but I'm happy to learn something new about Flume. He made me fall in love with EDM all over again.

[@MarkBlasquez]

Another "way back" user here. Meta synth was my go to for creative sound design. Took a long time (for me) to get the hang of it but was totally worth it. Then, the dark ages hit. Glad that it's back. Time to dive back in.

[@timdanyo898]

I spoke to the new developers and they said piracy was the biggest killer for the software.. they were unable to sustain profitability before.

[@AuralVirus]

@@timdanyo898but that makes no sense - those who pirate have no intention of buying in the first place, either they can't afford to or just wouldn't - thus it can not be considered a lost sale, the piracy CRY is a falsehood. It has been "proven" through out the games industry when denuvo (anti piracy protection that actually punishes the legit purchasers only) was added to games, sales remained the same, people simply didn't play that particular game that was uncrackable (until later, and someone did crack denuvo).

[@AuralVirus]

and 1 argument could be made that sales are generated off piracy as the software/game whatever is exposed to a wider audience, some who will buy, if not immediately maybe (re games) in a steam sale or when the price drops, not something you see in the p audio world - tbh I think as weird and wonderful metasynth is/was it is a limited tool (in that you can spend days "playing" but are tied to the image you input, similarly to artmatic, spend days when time is limited) compared to a "traditional" soft synth. and wasn't it only on osx? (i used apple back then so wouldn't know, now, F apple (right to repair, imac's over heating and dying, not paying 2k again mentality set in having been a pismo ppc chip mac owner throug to the intel change, i'd had enough/learnt enough). Maybe this new iteration will have features of use to the average user as well as the adventurous.

[@BennJordan]

@@AuralVirus It's not just them, it was just tech culture at the time. When I released an album on torrent sites, it was "radical" and "crazy" for me to want people to listen to my music whether it was free or not. 13 years later, Fortnite is worth something like $30 billion.

[@AuralVirus]

just looked, still remains apple only, where as voice is windows only but FREE........

[@NickSuda]

Very stoked you've made a video advocating for MetaSynth. I remember you showing this to me back in like 2006 - I used it on a few tracks in the years after that but It's been an endlessly-deferred TODO to revisit it. Now it's been years since I had an installation and it's not cheap, but it's awesome they have new versions up and running so it may be time. It has such an early 2000s IDM character to it, cold and cerebral but endlessly stimulating.

[@Herfinnur]

I had legit nearly drifted off when you said: "you're probably getting bored", but it wasn't because it was boring. I feel like that final jam could become a hot hit in Europe with some Kraftwerk-like vocals

[@SkeledroMan]

Some of those sounds remind me of Sophie and AG Cook. Crunchy weird mechanical harmonics.

[@jakubmarszaek8330]

I never heard of them using it but I wouldn't be surprised. They used heavily massive and a little bit of synplant here and there. Sophie used primaly drummachines tho

[@nikitavychuz]

15:41 Very strong pilotredsun vibes, I love it

[@elijahjflowers]

a man of culture.

[@rue49121]

Certainly

[@somaticjet2717]

[@somaticjet2717]

Do you think pilotredsun uses this thing?

[@sensiblynumb]

Richard D James must have sampled the crap out of this synth

[@SamuelCape]

Ben, thanks for making this video. I really dig your stuff. I'm a longtime Windows user who just bought their first Mac, and this is exactly the type of unicorn that I'm looking for. Hats off to you for making a relevant, new, thorough video on this.

[@secretelitemusic]

Metacreations was the company that got me into all manner of visual arts weirdness. Poser, Bryce, Ray Dream 3D, Canoma, Carrera, those mad Kai's Power Goo Potatochop plugins, and the idea of intuitive interfaces. He must've done okay from all the patents he sold to big bad monolithic megacorps. I'm wondering what happens if you drop a fractal from MB3D into the grid.

[@risortestvideo5340]

big bad monolithic megacorps - joe junior provides access for a "small" fee lol

[@tonipepperoni3424]

My mind is officially blown 🤯🤯 I mean I knew that there were experimental image based synths out there like for instance, harmor can resynthesize images but I've never seen anything like this where it gives u full control over the image properties and has all these settings to change the scale so that u can make actually musical things with it and not just noise

[@MrSonicAlchemy]

Best demo of Metasynth ever! If I had seen this 25 years ago when I started playing with MS it would have saved me so much time!

[@tk-zh3dd]

It is a small miracle that this incredible software was still around. Thanks for the vid!

[@kalibduarte536]

Recently recreated.

[@danieklerr]

I used to use Metasynth everyday, about 15 years ago. Glad to see they are not belly up.

[@marcoose777]

No wonder Richard D James 'loved' this software, an instant time sink with plenty of unusual results awaiting.

[@peetiegonzalez1845]

If you drop one of his tracks into Metasynth (can't remember which one) the spectral graph shows a photo of his face. What a legend.

[@Aquatarkus96]

@@peetiegonzalez1845 The track is ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n] [Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] +Fexti[n−1]]

[@lundsweden]

Wow, Metasynth is soo weird, love it!

[@Aaronmcgrattan]

@@peetiegonzalez1845 or any spectral analyser

[@peetiegonzalez1845]

@@Aaronmcgrattan Well, obviously. Tools that do a thing, tend to do the same thing. Back in the day this was pretty much the only tool that did it, though! Way ahead of its time.

[@Linguae_Music]

BRYCE 3D FUCKING DREAM THEATRE ALBUM COVERS FOR DAYS

[@garethbull5303]

OMG, Ben Jordan is The Flashbulb. WTFlip! I'm such a dope. I was looking through your patreon on a lunch break and let out the loudest laugh of glee when you mentioned who you were. I was wondering I have to get into your music, and BAM, I already am! Rose Hierarchy is a personal favourite of mine. Love you man! Telling Alexa to play your music is so disconnected from actual awareness of the artist. Great to find you on KZbin. OK I LOVE YOU , bye byeeeeeee!

[@Unkraut]

getting really big huge chrome cylinder box unfolding vibes from the improvisation playgrounds. absolutely love it and love the video!

[@kiickinballistics]

Oh my, I remember this from 1997 on my PowerPC 120MHz. I used to use it it with Rebirth RB338.

[@JacobPadlock]

When you switched to the line drawing mode with the drum samples I literally screamed "WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" at my screen. Too powerful.

[@JacobPadlock]

Also the part starting at 24:28 was *painfully* beautiful.

[@somaticjet2717]

Both highlights. Love the triangles for drums. Like little whippy filters on each hit but with a granular sound

[@dfxmonkeyhead]

So much of the Matrix sound came from this program - I heard it several times as you were taking us through this. What a fun way to compose and play! Thanks, Benn!

[@cliftoncameron5632]

Benn, great job on demonstrating Metasynth. It's been an incredible journey into the universe of sound.

[@sleekitwan]

Extraordinary. And also makes you realise why they created ‘instruments’ in the first place! It’s a long reach back, into making a source sound origin that’s quite original, I’d get lost. Did make me think though as you progressed through your ‘light to sound’ tutorial, as you spun the image, it begs to have a motion facility, eg to have the image spin at some speed of rotation, not just be distorted and turned into a new orientation? That’s just me thinking out loud, extrapolating from the present capabilities. Probably everyone notices sometimes, when you adjust a parameter of an effect, it makes you hear the transient or transitory sounds while you make the adjustment, and wonder how it would sound if you could somehow ‘automate’ such shifts. I too, have the iPadOS ones that do some amount of this functionality, as other contributors mention, and while it’s too much for me to make much of it, it’s a fascinating approach to sound creation and even as you showed, music. It’s a ‘try it and see’ thing - until some creative crazy person enacts the system to provide the buttons and levers that actually make this methodology possible, how do we ever know it’s ‘worth it’ as it were. So, hats off to the creators of this sort of musique nouveau, it’s a whole other niche in soundscaping. Kind of wonderful. Thanks Benn.

[@IanMonroe1]

This was a fun watch, Benn. You should do more metasynth jam vids.

[@kalibduarte536]

This guy does a bunch kzbin.info/www/bejne/omfUYoOjZqyWqKs

[@cmd_f5]

What a totally awesome way to make textures and pretty much full blown sound design. I love hidden gems like this.

[@newguy6935]

Wow! The creative juices and possibilities are flowing. Thanks for this!

[@dontnormally]

Bryce was very important to me and I always wanted to try this Honestly it would be amazing if you kept going with a whole series on this

[@donovanthompson2212]

Thank you I cant wait for this to blow up and find more videos on this!! You inspired me to save up for it and hopefully many more of us!

[@zenn_desu]

wow I love your music I was halfway through your video before I realized you were the flashbulb. your music was a big part of what got me into making music and custom audio circuits

[@this_connor_guy]

HOOOOOOLYYYY CRAAAAAP. I may just have to buy a Mac device just for this. This is right up my alley.

[@this_connor_guy]

Update: I did just that. Old refurbished macbook air and metasynth. This is a blast to use.

[@rippspeck]

You don't need to buy an Apple device to use macOS. _Hackintosh_ is the keyword here.

[@TheDeadlyKind]

thats just an amazing audio tool, and i was captivated the entire time. What amazing sounds!

[@gjb7966]

best metasynth video i've seen yet... more of that, please! :D

[@homelessballoon]

Excellent presentation of this unique audio tool!

[@yawninghyaena]

I loved the sounds you created, especially the harmonious drones

[@JoshuaDb_The_Witness]

I interned at Dane Tracks, Dane Davis's post house for a year, got a lot of time with the man himself, spent hours watching him work, and talking. Genuinely one of my favorite folks. Learned a ton, mostly about the effect of the sound design on the audience - less about the technical. Hollywood was a nightmare, and I left. But I don't regret the year I spent with Dane.

[@somaticjet2717]

This is what I imagined music software would be like before I got into making computer music.

[@vaaalsongs4867]

Really appreciated this video. Very inspiring stuff. Mind blowing.

[@aipsong]

Thanks for this trip down memory lane! I was a user of metasynth long ago, and am tempted to dive back into it now.

[@dreamaera]

Benn you are a blessed mix of talent and knowledge, you're opening portals to special places with this music

[@sublow]

omg thank u so much - i had no idea this was still alive! i am purchasing it now

[@gloria_hello]

wtf this is actually incredible

[@stefanhansen5882]

Thanks a million for this! I have never heard about it, but now I really want to try it out!

[@JordanService]

Oh the lighting is really improving nice !!!

[@altogethernow]

I’m very much looking forward to the series on this.

[@MrSonicAlchemy]

Yes! Do a series on this please! Artmatic and Voyager are amazing as well!

[@matthewdearstreaming]

Thank you thank you thank you! I’ve had MetaSynth for a year and needed this right here to make sense of it all.

[@durulvarol]

Thank you letting me know this thing. It's really inspiring and weird. 21:09 That sounds awesome!

[@somaticjet2717]

This was my fav bit. Beautiful twinkly chord progression. Love when he changes the scale and it goes all anxious for a sec too

[@ArturTadevosyan]

Great work Benn!!! I love meta synth. Bought it 15 years ago. Yes there it not really much video content on YT. Thanks a lot 👍

[@edictum]

Thank you for selling me another Plugin (after Generate). Your channel is pure gold! So much inspiring quality content!

[@mcshafty1]

Wicked mate. Pure AFX! Great demo wirh lots of exciting ideas. Thanks

[@timdanyo898]

I’ve been a Metasynth user since 19 freakin’ 98! I love the organic surprise component and experimentation and ideation generation on so many levels.

[@rolandmdill]

Oh I used it like 15+ years ago. Few weeks I suddenly thought about it and couldn't remember the name or find anything useful on Google. Thank you so much for making this video!!!

[@RetsaGames]

Fascinating, love finding new ways to make music

[@earlcash05]

Can't wait for Ketasynth

[@mitchelldries6628]

another great video! i used to use metasynth 17 years ago on my apple green imac running os9.... watching you demo this has me wanting to get back to it! i still have a bunch of loops i've made on it rendered to audio i still chop up and use when i can. what a great tool!

[@ravenoftheredsky]

This for percussion is amazing

[@glyph6757]

If you like metasynth, you might also enjoy "din is noise". It's not visual in the same way, but it has a certain weirdness to it that metasynth reminds me of.

[@s90210h]

Metasynth was always amazing, glad it's still around. Perhaps this time round more people will get it. Thanks for the video!

[@nightcrawler731]

Very well produced. Thankyou for the entertainment . Education and information

[@my4trackmachine]

Metasynth is beautiful. I need this. Perfection!

[@MrSonicAlchemy]

I used to use Metasynth for sound design in the 90s and with the new CTX I'm getting back into it. It's great to find a modern, up to date walkthrough to help me get reacquainted with amazing tool. Thank you for posting this.

[@SuperJamesus]

I could listen to this all day !!

[@WillyWanka456]

if i had your job i would never get any work done. it's an absolute treat to get to see u play with this kind of stuff

[@balakebeats5590]

Nah you're deadass goated af for those melodies 🤯🤯

[@aurumalive]

THANK YOU FOR THIS I discovered your video at random in my suggestions, I couldn't believe what I was watching. Today I downloaded Metasynth, LET THE GAMES BEGIN HUAHUAHUAHUA

[@faastwalker2273]

Love this. Amazing way to generate interesting, crazy and useful sounds. I'm on PC so will be looking into the alternatives suggested in the comments ;-)

[@macronencer]

Oh god, Benn - don't tell everyone about Metasynth! It's my secret weapon. Now they'll all know it exists :D

[@illiqual]

Yeah ! My first soundscape software ( ok ok rebirth was first) cool to see you dusted it off !

[@illiqual]

Reaally cool soundesign/droney pieces Mr Bulb

[@facundomidvetkin6698]

I'd love to see 12 more hours of you improvising on this software

[@OVXX666]

this is ridiculously fcuking awesome

[@andrealamanamusic]

Thank you so much for this! I can’t believe I did not know that tool before 👍👍👍

[@cybWasHere]

28min synth felt like something out of earthbound ost, felt pretty emotional and had to type this. Definitely becoming my favourite channel of all time. Thanks Benn

[@Aqua_1014]

Dr. Andonut's Lab! :V

[@KordTaylor]

Wow! You are old and so am I. And I have always been interested in the meeting of graphics and audio so Metasynth and this video are so appealing. I too, remember the 90s and it’s introduction. Thanks Ben for the update. 👍🏻👏🏻❤️🔥😃 “insert coolest emoji du jour here”

[@passivecee]

Wow!! There wasn’t any single moment the sound you were making was boring! This was like listening to set of Autechre of Aphex Twin! Amazing stuff right here!

[@umanoid1523]

I used to use and LOVE Metasynth back in the day. I saw that they released a newer version but its ridiculously overpriced. It used to be a reasonably priced audio toy. I also used Bryce way too much and spent a lot of time forcing it to do things it wasn’t built for. And after watching the entire video i see they added a ton of features but many i would never use. I dont need this to be a Daw, just a sound creation tool. It would be nice to be able to use the synth as a vst of some sort to play in another Daw too.

[@arnthorsnaer]

Thank you for making this video

[@Luis-kt9wm]

Cool aff you got a natural talent for Sounds and this is awesome

[@davidthiel5186]

Metasynth is the only reason that I own a Mac..... I used it extensively for the audio package I created for the Transformers Pinball game years ago. I've got to get back to it now that I updated to the new Mac mini. Great stuff for a sound designer.

[@user-lt2rw5nr9s]

They really rewrote the source code five times and never thought to port it to a multiplatform solution? Lame.

[@DROPTHEGRID]

Well that's Apple fan boys for ya.

[@gesslr]

This was great. Thank you. 🙂

[@marvinlehmann2211]

Thats so nice The first Sound and the final result 👍

[@chrisisasavage]

Really cool. The sounds are really reminiscent of what I've gotten out of Virtual ANS or Photosounder

[@chrisisasavage]

Neither are a daw and more about spectral synthesis uses images so this is cool

[@kalibduarte536]

@@chrisisasavage While the original MetaSynth 23 years ago was closer to just ANS, with controllers, synths, samplers, effects, sequencers, recording, mixing, and folks making entire albums in it. What makes it not a DAW?

[@daryx.langdale]

10 minutes into this and I've lost count of how many times I've said the words "what the fuck, this is crazy" out loud and held my hand on my forehead in disbelief

[@POPDELUSION]

This is so beautiful, It would be so amazing if these were released as tracks 😣🥲

[@joelkulesha8284]

I hope they make a windows port! This is insanely cool but I'm not going to buy a Mac just for this :/ Great video though Benn! I love these experimental crazy sound making videos, this and the resonant tube video are my favorites!

[@UISoftware]

We started development but had to halt due to funding/Covid. Mind taking a 1 min survey to help moving the project forward? www.surveymonkey.com/r/2MFC26J

[@mark35mi]

@@UISoftware i did the survey. Would love a windows port. Seems it would open you up to tens of thousands more customers.

[@UISoftware]

@@mark35mi Thank you Mark!

[@jonaslund556]

Make another video with an hour of random improv, its really nice!

[@steveslivka]

Like others, used this a ton when it first came out. So glad it's updated!

[@MrIzzy4real]

This is my intro to synths... amazing!!!!

[@pawnotdaw4559]

Metasynth had been my secret weapon for a long long time. That and the old Soundhack application

[@chalkboardguy226]

Any examples of your work using these my good man?

[@pawnotdaw4559]

@@chalkboardguy226 see below

[@chalkboardguy226]

@@pawnotdaw4559 - Thanks mate. I love seeing/hearing what other people get upto.

[@StanSerebryakov]

Thanks for such a detailed review Benn! Many of things you shown sounds so similar to Autechre and AFX music 🙃 For a long time I thought they used to program tools themselves in MAX/MSP...

[@markfinlayson280]

Loved this on my Blue G3 95

[@Jamslerr]

I need this in my life.

[@mcshafty1]

13:00 min onwards: line flow, brushes, repeats, pitch scaling, chords etc - some very nice beat mangling fun!

[@tuomashelin555]

I have an ever growing respect for Delia Derbyshire :) I mean, she did these kind of voice collages with magnetic tape and razor blade

[@ts4gv]

this appeals to me so much

[@CoolDudeClem]

Being the nerd that I am, I was able to turn the sound from the image synth part of the video back into images!

[@Dilworthy]

I use Artmatic, another of his software goodness, its almost the opposite of this and is like a modular synth that creates images. Proper trippy stuff when you get into it and seems to use those parts of the brain that don't usually get tickled. If you feel like exploring, most my recent videos on my channel use it for my visuals overlaying my performance video.

[@coomamusic]

Hi, Artmatc user too. Link to your channel please?

[@Dilworthy]

@@coomamusic Indeed I do, great program! Not sure if it links via my name in the comment but here's a link to my stuff, particular the Live performance videos for the artmatic videos. Thanks :) kzbin.info

[@coomamusic]

Hey Dilworth, thanks for the link.Great stuff, the fusion of acustic and electronics is very pleasent.👍

[@darthbanana7]

sick videos and sounds bro . gonna look into that

[@Dilworthy]

Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed it, I've another fresh one in the pipeline to upload. Great to hear some feedback on them. 😊

[@kalibduarte536]

Time to block off the calendar and watch this video in detail and make a track. The MetaSynth sequence generators and MIDI controllers app Xx has been updated now too. Love to see what you do with it!

[@diegobeccaris4270]

I lost the part where you went from crazy noises to best soundscapes in the world