Arturia Buchla Easel V

WEST COAST SOUND DESIGN PLAYGROUND
The Buchla Easel V is the first recreation of Don Buchla’s iconic instrument that helped define experimental West Coast modular synthesis in the early ‘70s. Our enhancements translate to vastly expanded possibilities for sound design and avant-garde music.

You’ve always wanted to paint with sound. Now you can with the Buchla Easel V.
One look at the Buchla Easel V and you know this is a different beast. In fact, it makes you think differently about sound right from the start—and the soundscapes you can design with it are as unique as the front panel array. To put that experience at your fingertips, we meticulously recreated the rare 1973 Buchla Music Easel right down to the component level. As you’ve come to expect from our other V-series instruments, we’ve gone the extra mile by designing in an enhanced feature set including polyphony, innovative new modulation/control sources, step sequencer, effects, and more.
If you like to paint outside the lines, Buchla Easel V is the perfect artistic tool for you.

Forget going online and hunting for expensive, historical artifacts. Use your MIDI controller to get back to the earliest days of synthesizers with the new Buchla Easel V. Made by Arturia, their trademark True Analog Emulation (TAE) brings the original Buchla Easel to life with an incredible recreation of the original synthesizer. Despite it’s creator, Don Buchla, referring to his instrument as an “Electric Music Box”, this was one of the first synthesizers ever made, and remains a treasured collector’s item to this day. Now we can get the Easel’s distinct voltage-based oscillation in a far more streamlined (not to mention much cheaper) package. As soon as we started using this plug-in, we realized that not only did its presets sound great, but we could create our own customized signals in an intuitive, fun way.

The original synthesizer’s most obvious feature was its lack of keyboard (something that was changed in later editions). This software version gives you a keyboard interface reminiscent of the later, 1973 version. It has a control interface with knobs and faders, and it also includes a patch bay interface. This interface is one of the coolest things about this synth – if you’re a studio rat like me, using the patch bay is going to be a lot of fun for you! It gives you direct control over your audio path and allows you to route the audio through multiple stages of the synthesizer, which include sequencers, voltage sources, envelope generators, pulsers, modulation and complex oscillators. Topping it off is an optional Universe interface, which allows you to create your signals with visual waveform representation, as opposed to the main interface’s knobs, faders and patch bay. This can be helpful for those of us who prefer a digital, numerical interface. Between all of these cool features, you have as much control over the synthesis as you would ever need, and you can really experiment with different routing options.

This software version even adds some new expansions to the original synthesizer, with more stability than the notoriously finicky hardware analogue. For starters, it has up to 4 voices, making it polyphonic, which the original most assuredly was not! Between that and it’s expanded envelopes, new effects, and new noise generators, it’s got far more diversity of sounds than the original. With a streamlined interface, over 200 presets, and several features that weren’t found on the original, Arturia has brought this monolithic synthesizer into the 21st century, giving you all the analog glory in a plug-in

Features:

• Complete TAE (True Analog Emulation) recreation of the Buchla Easel, an early Semi Modular Synthesizer
• VST, VST3, AU, AAX, and standalone operation
• 255 Factory Presets give you a plethora of sounds at your fingertips. Plus the ability to create customized presets, playlists, and more.
• MIDI Learn assigns parameter controls to your MIDI controller, giving you hands-on control
• Controls for voltage, complex oscillator, modulation oscillator, and the dual lo pass gate, with faders and knobs controlling each
• Pulser, Envelope Generator, and Sequential Voltage Sources give you control over the voltage oscillation
• Patch bay allows for customized routing, including rerouting signals multiple times
• Universe screen gives you a visual of your signals, giving you even more advanced controls

Features unavailable in original Buchla Easel:

• Four Voices of Polyphony
• Quantize switch allows you to quantize oscillators to chromatic scale
• Noise and feedback generators in pre-amp section
• Self-trigger mode turns envelope generator into low-frequency oscillator (LFO)
• MIDI Learn lets you control parameters with your MIDI controller
• 32-step polyphonic sequencer with voltage transpose
• Five Function Generators to create custom voltage curves
• Gravity Universe, a Voltage control lab that visually represents your waves and oscillators
• Dual effects section with assignable effects including phaser, chorus, delay, analog delay, overdrive, distortion, reverb and compression

Controls:

• Keyboard interface gives you a 29-note keyboard to generate sounds
• Control your clock rate, portamento slope, arpeggiation pattern, and and voltage sources from the voltage control strip on keyboard interface
• Patch bay interface gives you direct control of your audio path, allowing you to route your audio multiple times through the Sequential Voltage Source, Envelope Generator, Pulser, different oscillators, and the Dual to Pass Gate, as well as to the master output.
• Complex oscillator controls allow for keyboard control, quantization, polarity reverse, fine tune and timbre controls, plus pitch and timbre faders
• Modulation oscillator controls allow for keyboard triiggering, quantization, range and fine tune controls, three waveshape forms, three types of modulation, and frequency and modulation control faders
• Sequential Voltage Source controls give you voltage controls for 5 stages of sequencer, with keyboard, pulser and clock triggers and individual faders for each stage
• Envelope Generator controls gives you attack, sustain, and decay control faders, trigger select, and three different envelope modes
• Pulser controls give you three different trigger and clock modes, plus period and input controls via fader
• Envelope Generator has three different trigger and clock modes, plus attack, sustain, and delay controls
• Dual Lo Pass Gate is a custom low pass filter with a slope control, with two gate stages, three different modes, and fader controls for each gate
• Random voltage generator gives you a completely random signal – a favorite technique of the original creator
• Output controls allow you to patch the output using the patch bay
• Dual Master effects stage includes phaser, chorus, delay, analog delay, overdrive, distortion, reverb and compression, with individual controls for each