WREN is an open source modular software synthesizer for Windows

Equipment
#1

hello,

I could not find any mention of WREN on this forum although perhaps I have missed it. If I have missed it, please accept my apologies for starting a new topic.

tl;dr direct link: Wren, an open source modular software synthesizer for Windows

Why am I posting about WREN?

WREN is very cool and sounds rad. If you have a Windows machine and ever think about modular synthesizers you should consider downloading WREN right away.

WREN functions extremely similarly to the Nord G2 editor but has many, many more modules and is constantly updated by an inspired developer.

My hope is that some peoples on this forum also use WREN and that perhaps this thread could serve as a patch-exchange.

Sadly, all of my good patches lived on a computer which was STOLEN by a criminal but I’ve recently started diving back in to patching it.

A record I wrote using WREN as the main sound source lives here:

Thanks for reading & hope to see some of your patches pop up.

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#2

Never heard of this but I’m intrigued. Checking it out now.

edit: I’ve spent about 30 minutes with it and while I’m not in love with the interface I feel like it’s worth diving in to!

1 Like
#4

Wow, I didn’t expect to see a Wren topic. I was just a once in a whiler here (new to synths as of 3 months ago and you know time/forums) but since Wren has been my main instrument I felt like I had to sign up because yes I agree, Wren is very cool (also this forum is cool, so, not a total time waster I guess? :slight_smile: )

That said it’s probably not for every/many one. Its UI takes some getting used to, it’s ‘Windows’ (but I guess it works on Wine, maybe?). Actually the initial reason I started using it was because I couldn’t install VCV on my laptop.

But I’ve stuck with it because more than anything Wren feels to me like a real instrument with a lot of play in it and just a lot of cool ideas. Maybe that has something to do with the Nord, I think a lot of it comes from Wren’s developer jan.

As I said I’m new to synths so I don’t really have much yet for patches (though there is a huge list of patches at Wren’s site) but for any other beginners I do have a running forum thread where I’ve been documenting some beginner-friendly patches, see electro-music.com :: View topic - Beginner sounds with Wren

(btw @mrsoundboyking your patch looks interesting but it clips at 700db, not sure why…turning the Grain volume to off fixed that but probably not what you want? Also there was no audio output module in the patch so maybe the patch file was missing stuff).

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#5

Whoops! I uploaded a bad version. Thanks for catching that, I’ve removed it.

Thank you for the link to your thread and for the heads up about the thousands of patches on the Wren site, too.

I see you use Orca to sequence Wren. If you have a moment, would you post about how you make that work? I’m not an Orca user (yet!) but feel pretty curious about it.

Also, are you using a MIDI controller with Wren? I’ve got an old Korg nanokontrol 2 laying around which I imagine would work pretty well but haven’t fiddled with it yet.

#6

So I’ve done just the most basic MIDI control of Wren, sending notes from Orca to a Wren MIDI input module, which controls an oscillator/envelope. Probably the hardest part is figuring out your virtual MIDI port connections on Windows, I used loopmidi, loopMIDI | Tobias Erichsen, there probably are other options?

I haven’t used a hardware controller (we have an akai 249 that I’ve been meaning to hook up but haven’t found a need to yet, it will happen eventually), but I am currently having fun with TouchOSC.

#7

I haven’t used Wren recently, but it certainly worked well via Wine for me on Ubuntu / Mint a few years ago. I will try again using Manjaro.

#8

i really like the track you linked. sounds awesome