Thump One Manual

Thump One is an easy to use music synthesiser plugin with a fun glitchy 'wavetable' engine and a bank of flexible multi-segment envelopes to shape the sound in any direction you desire. Perfect for powerful kick drums, huge club basses and soaring leads

The synthesiser features two powerful engines that can be layered together for a variety of complex sounds and textures. The ‘Kick’ engine features a great sounding 'wavetable' oscillator, with a set of wavetables created from a selection of clean and processed analog kick drum sounds. The ‘Kick’ engine has a high quality saturation and filtering circuit plus an additional 'Buzz' circuit to add a buzzy ‘broken speaker cone’ effect. The second engine, ‘Layer’ uses an accurate model of the 'supersaw' oscillator found in the Roland JP8000 synthesiser, this oscillator has a selection of operating ‘modes' that configure the oscillator to play in intervals and adds various amounts of modulation to create noisy, retro synth sounds, fuzzy glitches or just plain noise.

 

Kick Engine

The kick engine is based on a wavetable oscillator with a separate 'Buzz' oscillator that can be used to simulate the sound of a broken speaker cone. These are mixed together and passed into an analog 'Drive' section and then through a high-quality low-pass filter.

The 5 'Main' knobs of the Kick engine are:

  • Punch—Controls the amount of pitch modulation from the MSEG assigned to this control
  • Wavetable Position—Sets the playback position of the wavetable used for the Kick engine's main oscillator
  • Drive—Controls the amount of analog saturation. This control has an effect on both engines
  • Buzz—Adds a buzzy, grinding sound on top of the kick simulating a torn speaker cone
  • Level—Controls the volume of the Kick engine

The 5 'Tweak' knobs of the Kick engine are positioned directly below each of the engine's 5 main controls, these are:

  • Pitch (note icon)—Adjusts the pitch of the Kick engine
  • Select Wavetable (waveform icon)—Selects the wavetable used for the Kick engine's main oscillator. The wavetables are derived from actual recordings of real 808 kick drums passed through various analog processors (tape, tube saturation etc)
  • Drive Filter (filter icon)—Adjusts the amount of filtering in the 'Drive' section. This control has an effect on both engines
  • Buzz Tone (dots icon)—Adjusts the tone of the buzz sound
  • FM (exclamation mark icon)—Modulates the pitch of the Kick engine using a separate oscillator to produce a richer, more complex tone

Layer Engine

The layer engine is based on 2 'supersaw' oscillators modelled on the 'supersaw' oscillator of the Roland JP8000. The oscillators  are mixed together and then passed into the 'Drive section' of the Kick engine.

The 3 'Main' knobs of the Layer engine are:

  • Detune—Detunes the 7 individual voices of the 'supersaw' sound. If Layer Mode is set to 'Noise' then this control adjusts the amount of static, if the Layer Mode is 'FM' then this control sets the amount of feedback in the FM algorithm
  • Filter—Adjusts the filter amount of the Layer engine
  • Level—Controls the volume of the Layer engine

12 different modes can be selected for the Layer engine. The first 10 modes make adjustments to the intervals between the 2 supersaw notes and also introduces varying amounts of internal cross-modulation from the Kick engine, adding some extra tone and dirt to the sound. There are 2 extra modes: 'Noise'—a simple noise oscillator with a control for the amount of 'static', and 'FM'—an FM (frequency modulation) style oscillator with a 'feedback' control. In this mode the oscillator's frequency is modulated directly by the output of the Kick engine, with the 'Level' control of the Kick engine adjusting the amount of internal FM modulation. You can mute the output of the Kick engine (using the 'Bypass Kick' button) to hear only the modulated output of the FM oscillator.

Envelopes

There are 8 versatile 'multi-segment' envelopes, one for each of the plugin's main knobs. You can select the current envelope to edit using the triangular buttons above each knob. All 8 envelopes run simultaneously at the same speed, triggered by incoming notes. A small white dot moving along the line will show the current playback position. The envelopes playback speed is controlled by these 2 knobs:  

  • Attack—Controls the speed of the first 20% of the envelope's path
  • Decay—Controls the speed of the remaining 80% of the envelope's path

Note, the playback speed of the envelope isn't linear along it's path. The playback speed is faster at the start of the envelope and slows down towards it's end, thus allowing you to focus on the more important transient (initial attack portion) of the sound.

Randomization

There are 2 menu options in the 'Preset Menu' to create random variations of the current preset:

  • Randomize Preset—Completely randomizes all parameters of the current preset. The envelope nodes are not randomized
  • Mutate Preset—Adjusts all parameters of the current preset by a very small amount, subtly changing the sound in a random way

Clicking the 'THUMP ONE' logo at the top left hand corner of the GUI will repeat the last used randomization function (either 'Randomize' or 'Mutate') which is handy to quickly create variations of a sound.

MIDI Learn

You can assign incoming MIDI CC (Continuous Controller) messages to any of the the instruments knobs using drag-and drop like this:

  1. Enable 'MIDI Learn' mode from the 'Settings' menu
  2. Turn a knob on your MIDI controller
  3. Drag and drop the CC number that appears in the top section of the GUI onto any of the knobs to make the assignment.

MIDI CC assignments are automatically saved for all instances of the plugin and can be reset using the 'Reset MIDI Learn' menu item in the 'Settings' menu.

iPad Version

The iPad version of the app is identical to the desktop version, except in how presets are handled.

On the iPad the presets are stored on a special 'sandboxed' (hidden and secure) folder that can be accessed from both the standalone version and the AUv3 plugin version. This special folder can not be accessed by the user using the iPad's 'Files' app.

To make it easier to share and backup user presets the app will automatically backup all newly created presets into a folder that can be accessed using the 'Files' app: "On My iPad/Thump One/Exported Presets". Every time you launch the standalone version of the app it will backup any newly created presets that were created either in the AUv3 or the standalone version of the app.

Zip compressed folders of presets can be imported using the "Import Zip File...' menu item. 

You can save your own presets using the 'Save Preset As...' menu item and typing the name of the new preset. You can save your presets into separate folders by simply typing the name of the folder and then a 'slash' character, for example typing something like "My Kicks/My Big Kick"