Drifting away and blissing out with Spotykach

[music] Hello, Oscillator Sync here. This past year at Super Booth, one of the tents that I returned to multiple times was the Synth Academy tent, mostly to snatch another few minutes with what is arguably their current flagship product, Spotty Catch. Spotty Catch is one of those wonderful bits of gear that sits in the intersection of effect and instrument and its focus is around exploring looping in all of its forms, emulating tape techniques as well as various eras of digital looping and sampling. [music] It is one of those bits of musical equipment which feels to me like a companion to the music making process. It's surprising without being unpredictable. New ideas are readily born out of whatever input you provide. perpetual stream of happy accidents. It can also be approached in many different ways. So, in this video, as we explore its features, I'm going to focus on one particular way of using it, a more open, unsynchronized, exploratory approach, which is how I've been enjoying using it. But it can also be very rhythmic controlled to it. Has a full MIDI implementation and lots of features around clock synchronization, gating, but I am who I am and today I am feeling a little ambient. Synthax Carney sent this body catch across to make some videos about it. And while I haven't otherwise been paid, I am allowed to keep the unit. So I'll be marking this video as sponsored. Let's get to looping. [music] So, Spidey Catch is based around this idea of the two tape decks, if you like. So, it seems like a good place to start would be to record something in. So, I'm going to arm this first deck by doing alt and play. Uh, it doesn't start recording till it gets uh a signal above a particular threshold. In terms of what I'm going to record into it, I thought the Polygene 2 would be a lovely aesthetic match. So, let's just play something in [music] [music] >> [music] >> and then when we press play it will start playing immediately. [music] So we have these two tape decks which have essentially the same functionality. There's a difference between the two sets of modulators [music] if indeed you think those belong to the tape decks. not convinced that's necessarily the case. So, um, yeah, let's briefly go through these controls and then continue exploring. So, at the top we have this mix control, which is going to be a mix between the dry input and the tape deck. So, turn it all the way to the side here is going to [music] mute what's going in. And then over here, we're only going to be hearing the live thing. So, you can essentially treat everything below 12:00 as like a volume control for the loop as well. [music] You then have this switch for the different modes. We're going to explore all of them. Of course, at the moment, the version that we're in is kind of acting like a straight up [music] tape loop. So, kind of an analogy of analog tape. And then you have your four main controls here. These all do philosophically the same thing in all three modes, but what they technically do is slightly different. Um, and the reason for that is that the meaning of these things is going to be changed by what these modes do. Uh, but you shouldn't ever be surprised uh, in terms of what they do in each of the modes. I think is kind of the idea. It works very well. Um, I'll just mention also obviously we've got the play control here and importantly a reverse control for uh, any sort of tape loop. [music] Yeah. So just quickly going through these controls. In this mode, we have the pitch control, which in the tape mode will also slow down [music] the speed of the tape as you would expect um with a a tape. That's how you lower the pitch of [music] a loop. So we can go half speed, which is best speed. Uh, as you well know, uh, [music] if you want to, um, move around the pictures, you'll hear that it does kind of click to like musical amounts if you move quickly. And if you want to jump between musical um, intervals, if you hold down [music] alt, it's going to do fifths and octaves, I think. So, it goes faster if we increase the pitch. um the position is going to move the position of the playhead and that does happen live as you're playing. So [music] this is a way that we can change the speed of the playback without uh kind of uh changing [music] the pitch as well. It's kind of microl loop type things. And then size is going to change the uh size of the loop. So, we can pick out different parts of the loop by [music] going for a smaller size and move that position around. [music] And then this um envelope control here uh it gives you uh an envelope over the [music] uh loop. So if we come to this one here where you can [music] just have a delay, sorry, not delay, decay envelope in the middle, we have this kind of triangle attack decay or sweeping [music] in. This one's really good if we go like smaller and want to just drag this position around kind of this sort of nice smeary kind of thing. [music] And then finally, we have this um attack and then instant decay. I think I like this one here. And moving this position around. Uh you'll be happy to hear these are CVable. So we can use one of the internal um CV sources here. I'm going to use uh this side. So the difference between the two CV sources [music] is that uh on this side it's all stepped stuff. On this side it's smoother. And then in both cases you also have an envelope follower for that channel. Um, so you can kind of do like uh cross interactions [music] based on that. But I'm going to go with something smooth here. Probably this middle one here. And come in here. This input is going to affect either the position, [music] the size, or both of them if you're in the middle. But I just want the position here. And then we have a cycle control, which is the speed essentially. [music] And then this glow control, which is your depth. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Oh, that's nice, isn't it? >> [music] >> Yeah, nice tiny little plucked micro loops being shifted around. Uh the other thing that we have on the different decks here are some effects. So we have this flux control here which is kind of our delay e type effects. And then you control the uh different parameters by holding down the flux and moving different controls. So the pitch here is our um delay time. We have the mix here [music] on the mix knob obviously and then position gives us feedback. [music] So these are punchin effects by default but if you want it on all the time you can press alt and tap it and then it'll turn it on at all times. [music] Pretty cool. Um let's go up an octave maps. [music] >> [music] >> I quite like that sound there. I quite like what it's doing. [music] Uh, but I maybe don't want to sort of give over this entire deck to that sound. So, as well as being able to record from the inputs, we can also record from the other decks. We can bounce across. So, for that, we use alt and reverse instead. So, I'm going to record what's happening here into here. And perhaps I'll manipulate uh the pitch while I'm doing it as well. [music] >> [music] >> change the size as well. [music] How far it's been moved across. [music] [music] And now when this gets to its maximum recording, it's going to start playing back and we're going to start overdubbing. So you can hear what we just recorded. [music] And I can also other stuff in here. [music] >> [music] >> And then I can just press play to stop recording. So now if I just come across to this side, we've just got what we've recorded from the other one. So we don't need to maintain this crazy modulation anymore cuz we've recorded it. [music] There are various different stereo modes here. Um there's like a true stereo mode where one is going to each side. In the middle we've got this kind of unison thing which is what I'm using at the moment. And then across over here we have this generative mode where things will start panning around. And the way things pan [music] depends on which uh mode we're in again. So here it's just going to like nicely pan around. Very nice. We could also set like the entire [music] envelope for the whole thing. And that's going to kind of fade it in and out. Maybe we want to make the size a bit smaller. We're going to do that though. Perhaps we'll stick um some more delay on top of the delay as well. especially as we're having it fade in and out. Uh, we also have a distortion effect here called the grit. Um, I reckon like straight up distortions maybe a bit much for this one, but we can actually move to a different mode here by tapping tap here, which is like a bit crusher sample rate reduction instead, which I quite like. Also wet dry for this. Again, if we want that on all the time, we can alt it and bring it in. Nice. It brings down an octave. [music] That's nice, isn't it? Very [music] good. So, we still got this one going as well. I'm just going to stop playing that so we can just listen to this [music] one on its own. Oh, that's gorgeous, isn't it? Let's very slowly move this position [music] around. Maybe the size as well. So, we'll use uh this here. We'll set the cycle nice and low so it's nice and slow. [music] If I had one complaint, I think these LFOs could go slower. Personally, as a slow person who likes slow things. [music] Yeah, I barely want it moving. Nice. Okay, so coming back to this side here for a second. I'll just bring it over to just this. [music] Let's try out one of the other modes here. So the slice mode is going to do some nice panning here. Uh with the generative mode, uh the slice mode here is going to be um more like a digital sampler and it will do the sort of time stretching along with its pitch. Let's just take the uh turn it off for a second. So as I turn up the pitch, it's kind of doing that granular sort of Akai style uh repitching. So, it's not getting faster as I turn it up, which is quite cool. The other thing is it's much more um designed to be um uh tempo synced. So, if we start getting [music] these smaller chunks here, you can hear that we're not smearing in the same way as we did with uh with the tape mode. [music] It's much more sort of discreet. And actually be tempo synced as well. [music] So we could take our um steppy random here and start moving that position around. [music] >> [music] >> It's sort of similar to what we had before, but it's a bit more sort of discreet. Now, the other thing we can do is send that into the uh the pitch as well. And the nice thing about this mode is that it's only going to change the pitch each time a new slice starts. So, it's very sort of discreet. And [music] cool, right? You could also straight up sequence this, of course, um, if you wanted [music] to do proper pitch sequencing. I don't think this is the right vibe for what we've got going on today, though. So, let's go to the final mode, which is the drift mode, which is granular. >> [music] >> like so. [music] Nice. [music] Let's put our delay back on. >> [music] [music] >> Let's bring the other side back in >> [music] [music] >> We could use the same slow modulation. for the position over here. Use a stack cable to move it across. Let's bring the feedback on that [music] delay right up as well. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Let's see what happens if we record some of these lower notes in, shall we? So, let's overdub into our granular one here. And the playback head is going to be separate to the record head. So, we can still record linearly across this. [music] So, I'm going to leave some space. [music] That should give us pretty much the whole thing. >> [music] >> You can hear those loaded notes. >> [music] >> We're not currently modulating the whole thing, so we're not maybe hearing all of the notes. Let's just expand out this modulation amount a little bit. [music] >> [music] [music] >> kind of a glitchy vibe to what's going on there. What if we distort this side a bit? That's nice. [music] That's dangerous, but I like it a lot. Let me just lower the mix tiny bit. [music] >> [music] >> That's a beautiful little soundsscape, isn't it? [music] We're still going to get the effects on these channels as [music] well. So, the distortion and the uh delay still. [music] I think that's a really lovely time. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat up here. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat up here. [music] >> [music] >> Heat. [music] >> Gorgeous. Heat [music] [music] up. [music] I hope you enjoyed our little stumble through spot catch today. If you did, then a like, share, and subscribe is always appreciated. I think it's worth mentioning that this is an instrument which is still being actively developed, both officially by Synthax and given its open- source nature by the community. I know that there is a new firmware on the horizon as I record this video, which expands on the grit and flux effects in some very welcome ways. If I had one main criticism, it's that on an instrument which absolutely loves to be modulated, the two modulation sources do feel a little meager. Given its digital nature, I do wonder if there would be scope to add a little random jitter on a per knob basis just to animate more of the instrument without introducing a bunch of urak, which of course is always an option. Anyway, thank you [music] so much for watching. I'll see you again soon. Take care. Bye-bye.