#168

A fellow lines member messaged me and we did a Mangrove/Plaits trade. I’m having a lot of fun with Mangrove so far. Here’s a patch that uses Mangrove for bass, Rings for the higher strings, and Plaits/Warps/Humpback for the weird cloud of plucky stuff. I think Mangrove compliments the other modules well and adds a new, growly dimension to my rack!

5 Likes
#169

Thanks for sharing this. I just bought a Mangrove, and have a Plaits waiting to ship. Despite being extremely anxious now, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

#170

Did the track make you extremely anxious? I hope not. :anguished:

Here’s another un-cutted/edited track with the pair Plaits/Mangrove. Plaits in chord mode as well.

2 Likes
#171

Yes, extremely anxious for Plaits and Mangrove to show up on my front porch :smile:

1 Like
#172

traded in my mangrove for a plaits, and so far really enjoying it. mangrove had a wonderfully unique and focused personality and i love the design, but for the music I make it felt like I was always sort of fighting the sound, it was frequently too…angular and chiptune sounding for what I was going for.

but onto Plaits- there’s almost too much fertile ground to explore…

Having the Tides oscillator back is a joy, because it is a really pleasing sound that I could never quite get anywhere else, especially when put through a vactrol.

The FM mode is also super useful and immediate and can get some exceptional mellow bell tones really quickly.

The formant oscillator sounds excellent as well, and as one might assume, can actually sound quite a bit like Mangrove when set right, but even that mode alone I’m finding more flexible sonically than Mangrove, just not quite as thick as the real analog deal, esp with the Air control. A tradeoff I’m willing to accept for the time being.

The wavetable mode also has a very useful array of warm FM-type sounds that I love, great for drones, especially with some gentle modulation using the interpolated mode, crossfading between similar adjacent waveforms in the table.

Chord mode is pretty special, as everyone else has also realized, especially at that organ-like setting, another drone machine with modulation to the timbre control.

The filtered noise is obviously exceptionally useful for use with Rings, and the particle noise is an immediately pleasing sound with a great plucky resonance to it.

And the last of my favorites, the kick drum, surprisingly thick- put up against an analog kick, I’m not sure I could identify which is which, it really does sound good. And the controls give a great amount of flexibility to the sound- PLUS the aux input gives a slightly different flavor with it’s own response to the controls. Panned left and right you can get some pretty massive sounds.

All in all very thankful for Olivier and his designs, I think this recent trio of modules are his best three modules yet and demonstrate a further honing and design maturity to go along with his talent as a creator of these little instruments. Can’t wait to see what else is on the horizon.

10 Likes
#174

I think that both the formant mode and mangrove work super well together. Plaits can really “smooth” out while Mangrove has more weight at tamer settings. I really like the pitch stuff you can do with messing with barrel/formant (and especially the weird in-between stuff you get when things aren’t quite to the next pitch). Droning on together panned left and right is a lot of fun.

I’ve found one thing that helps with Mangrove is running it through a filter to “complete” the voice and for taming. I feel like I do this less with Plaits.

5 Likes
Mutable Instruments modules: design, usability, theory, philosophy, etc
#175

Not sure why those comments regarding Plaits criticism were just taken down, even if the points were unfavorable/unpopular I was interested in the perspective. Can someone tell me why they were removed?

3 Likes
Mutable Instruments modules: design, usability, theory, philosophy, etc
#176

I was not the mod who moved/merged, but it looks like those comments were kept intact and transported over to Mutable Instruments modules: design, usability, theory, philosophy, etc, since they extended past Plaits and into MI’s general approach. the chain icon above your post is a quick low-key indicator of a topic split/merge/general move-around.

(also, thank you for asking! this clarifies a sincere need to help make these moves more visible)

6 Likes
#177

Well, since i rambled and those comments got migrated to the MI interface thread, I’ll repost what was really key to this thread:

PARTICAL NOISE IS AWESOME! Finding many uses for it around my system. Like the best multi mode modules, i could likely leave it in just this mode and have a second for other uses.

7 Likes
#178

Well, i went ahead and bought one… should arrive next week.

#179

I wish it was somehow possible to run something like the noise modes out of the AUX when in another mode. Would introduce some fun self-patching opportunities!

1 Like
#180

That would be really cool. I’m going to try that using the disting recorder

#181

Finally! Couldn’t resist to join the club. Been missing Braids and its meta mode for a while.

1 Like
#182

Does the frequency knob range setting reset every time you power off? Mine does, not a big deal but I’d like to leave it in full range and at the moment it reset to a small range in the middle somewhere.

#183

Yes, but changing models via the buttons is supposed to save it for next time. I prefer keeping it at full range myself.

#184

Ah great, I must have missed that instruction somewhere, I’ll try that. Many thanks

#185

Explanation: saving the settings causes a small pause (about 100ms) - which I think is tolerable when changing models (because there’ll be a discontinuity in sound anyway), but not when changing octaves, especially since the octave change might be used as a “performance gesture”.

9 Likes
#186

Surprisingly I found Plaits BD mode as very interesting in creating melodic lines (not only for bass area).

1 Like
#187

Got my Plaits (and Stages) today, and just spent a couple of hours going through the modes. Fantastic range - so many opportunities! Well done, MI :). Ended up mesmerized by the dust mode modulated heavily by Stages (“sequenced” by Pressure points) into DLD into picoDSP reverb. Bubbly goodness!

#188

just to second this as a very cool voice I found “accidentally” as well.

2 Likes