Happy holidays synth friends!

During the past few years I have been experimenting with machine learning algorithms that search for parameter settings to imitate any sound with any synth. Today I am happy to reveal the first fruit of this labor: Vintage Tonic.

Vintage Tonic is a patch package for Microtonic created from recordings of the following classic drum machines:

• Maestro Rhythm King (1960)
• Keio / Korg Minipops 7 (1966)
• Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm (1978)
• Korg KR-55 (1979)
• Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer (1980)
• Oberheim DMX (1981)
• Linn Drum (1982)
• Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer (1984)
• Roland TR-707 Rhythm Composer (1984)
• Roland TR-505 Rhythm Composer (1986)
  
  

Notice that the collection includes both analog and digital drum machines. Naturally, the digital drum machines are much harder to reproduce using Microtonic's synthesizer engine, but even imperfect results are fun, and I find the sounds quite useful.

The older drum machines were mainly preset pattern players. I have painstakingly tried to reproduce not only their sounds but also all of their original patterns.

I hope you will find this collection useful. I believe it shows a new side of Microtonic, and it amazes even me how versatile this old plugin still is.

Have a listen for yourselves:

Download the package from our download page: https://soniccharge.com/download

Also, check out the skin that Fredrik made to celebrate this release: https://soniccharge.com/forum/topic/1777?~post8491

Best wishes for the remainder of 2020 and let us hope that 2021 will be a better one.

/ Magnus Lidström

What a wonderful surprise gift! Many thanks, Soniccharge, for this update to a real classic.

Season’s greetings.

these are fantastic

thanks!

This is absolutely bonkers, Magnus :)

This. Is. Incredible. :)

The best Boss DR-55 emulation I've ever made is with MicroTonic. I've done passable interpretations of The KR/KPR's and some Neo-X0X stuff, but this is just magnificent.

Thanks so much for this wonderful gift!

Sweet! Thank you very much, Magnus and Fredrik!

Whowzers, amazing stuff man! I was checking this forum for news at the usual places: nothing. And now this very amazing and interesting technique and update! Whowzers!

Happy holidays Magnus, Fredrik and family!

Cool! Thank you and happy holidays!

I absolutely do not regret the purchase some days ago, wow. Thank you so much! <3

And all the best to you people here and at Sonic Charge! (=

Wow. Thank you! Happy holidays!

Sonic Charge = Magic People, Voodoo People! 😍

Thanks !
But how to have such pictures in mtonic browser ??

I own all your other plugins, is there a chance i could get a Christmas discount for Microtonic please?

”Game changer” is a term often overused, but in this particular case I can’t pick a better word. This is indeed a game changer.

Hatten av!

Really wondefrul !!!! Thank you and best wishes for all

You rock as always, cheers.

Aw... Very appreciated! As thoughtful a gift as masterful a feat! Thank you! Happy holidays and best wishes!

Awesome, i have never thought that is possible...

Because I'm also a sound designer, I would be personally interested in what you found out with the various settings and algorthym.

Frank

Amazing skin! Merry Christmas!

WUT??!?!? Thanks, you two!

Those are fantastic! Thank you so much and Merry Christmas to you too Magnus!

Magnus, I stumbled across this in your posting:

„I believe it shows a new side of Microtonic, and it amazes even me how versatile this old plugin still is.“

Exactly this! Right now I am producing an album with a classical trained georgian singer and pianoplayer. My job is to bring the modern side of music into hers. ALL the beats are made with the good old Microtonic. In fact, it´s not old at all. It is a topmodern tool with a superb and timeless quality of sound. Thanks so much for this.

Thank you, this is awesome. :)

Beste ever Xmas gift! Thanks and merry Christmas, Magnus!

cheers
Jeps Salfischberger
The Netherlands
Darker

Fantastic !!! Thank U

Awesoooome!
Thank you, guys,
Happy Holidays and much love to you and your families!
/th

Thank you so, so much. Merry Christmas!

Thanks for the gift! Nice sounds.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays!

Thank you so much!

ohhhh it's wonderful!!!!! i love you

Fantastic! You guys are so innovative. Happy holidays! Thanks for your generosity!

Awesome! Thank you!

Thank you. Fantastic stuff! Merry Christmas

After playing around with them I find myself wanting more !!!! Damn you LOL.
EH DRM16 or 32, KPR-77, TR-606. When I see how close you came for some of them, I would love to see if you can get as close with these. But hey, I don't mean that to sound ungrateful, it's the absolute opposite. They're so fun and matched with the great new skin it feel new! I feel it deserve an additional THANK YOU!

What a excellent surprise! You guys rock! Cheers from Iceland.

One Question: Are we free to change patterns but keep the new kits sounds ?

That's pretty astounding happy holidays, all!

Just when you think where might Microtonic possibly go next (not that it needs to) and boom to the left field, just brilliant!, thank you Magnus and Fredrik for the ongoing developments and hard work raising the bar yet again on this wonderful drum machine, a classic in itself. Microtonic can bend like Beckham. Top kick!

Yes, thank you very much for this special gift! Happy holidays to you and your family!

This is fantastic! Thank you <3

Many thanks! Merry Blipmas! <3

This is an unexpected but pleasant surprise. Thank you, Merry Christmas, Good Yule, and assorted other felicitations.

Thanks for these chaps.Very accurate programming.Merry Christmas.

Thanks for a lovely gift!

What an a-ma-zing surprise, i wonder wich machine you emulate next!
CR-78 and TR-606 maybe? :)

having some trouble - when loading one of the presets my drum patch doesn't change. the preview feature in Finder doesn't seem to be working for these kits either on my computer. anyone have any ideas? i can load up the drum sound patches but not the entire kit all at once, it seems

THANK YOU SYNTHA CLAUS!

your x-mas presents are always surprising and top notch!
many thanks Magnus & Fredrik!

Amazing, love both the sounds and the skin. Brilliant!

Merry Xmas and thank.

1 question - as someone badly Red/Green colourblind - is there any way to change the colour of the LED's on the new skin to something other than Red? (Blue or Yellow e.g).
They're just a bit tough for me to see.

Not the end of the world, still a lovely skin, but would be nice if simple to change.

Thanks again!

Very Cool! Thanks

This machine learning thing is very intriguing. Love these new sounds. Thanks for the gift!

perfect timing! I was just about to attempt to make a few kits like this on my own so I could start with something more traditional for re-sequencing classic breaks. Thanks!

Thanks guys, we love add. firmwares !!!

Thank you! it sounds brilliant like all of your plugins!

Magnus opus! It amazes even me how versatile this old developer still is. Who cares about global lockdowns when we get gifts like this!

Love, good health, and inspiration to everyone! <3 <3 <3

Thank you so much, such a wonderful gift! I have tons of fun with this.
After all these years, Microtonic is still my No1 "go to" drum machine ever!
And this comes from someone who owned and (ab)used a lot of drum machines through the decades ...
Happy New Year to you and to all! Thank you.

THANK YOU and greetings to all at Sonic Charge.
This drum machine app never gets boring, and here is an amazing addition to the sound palette already existing for µtonic. Wow.
I would love to read more details how this machine learning thing was created and used for recreating the sounds.
Finally I can have a mini takeaway 808, 909 etc. in my TE PO-32 Tonic...

Thank you!

Thank you. Really made my Xmas believe it or not :)
I love the sound of the KR55.. and that's bloody close *and tweakable :)

I absolutely love this Magnus!! thank you so much, I still haven't got round to getting a PO-32tonic as I've been leaning towards Eurorack lately.
Any chance users will have the ability to analyse their own samples to import sounds into uTonic in the future??

Thank U!!

Thank you guys for the gifts.

- martin jones wrote:
Amazing, love both the sounds and the skin. Brilliant!
Merry Xmas and thank.
1 question - as someone badly Red/Green colourblind - is there any way to change the colour of the LED's on the new skin to something other than Red? (Blue or Yellow e.g).
They're just a bit tough for me to see.
Not the end of the world, still a lovely skin, but would be nice if simple to change.
Thanks again!

Sure, this can be done quite easily in most image editors (free image editing apps like GIMP should do the job just fine) by changing the hue of the (red channel of the) images containing those red LEDs. Some LEDs already use yellow (e.g. when clicking the 'trigger pads' in the top right corner), so I guess you'd want to turn all red into blue.

I'll be happy to put this on my to-do list in case you need any further help, but I would suggest first trying to do this yourself, as it's really not hard to do, and I figure you run into similar problems more often, so it would be useful when you can just help yourself.

Thank you for this lovely gift. Microtonic was my go-to drum machine for a long time. This year I started working more with samples to change up my workflow and save some CPU on my ancient computer,but I always end up going back to Microtonic since it can create such great synth percussion sounds. This will be a nice addition.

- Sjoerd van Geffen wrote:
Sure, this can be done quite easily in most image editors (free image editing apps like GIMP should do the job just fine) by changing the hue of the (red channel of the) images containing those red LEDs. Some LEDs already use yellow (e.g. when clicking the 'trigger pads' in the top right corner), so I guess you'd want to turn all red into blue.
I'll be happy to put this on my to-do list in case you need any further help, but I would suggest first trying to do this yourself, as it's really not hard to do, and I figure you run into similar problems more often, so it would be useful when you can just help yourself.

Thanks for the response. :)

And yes, always happy to have a go myself when its available to be changed.

Replaced Red LEDs with Green and a brilliant skin now looks great to me!
I've put my copy here if anyone else finds a use for it.
https://we.tl/t-wG6p8jsVp5

Thanks again!

(and for anyone curious - was really simple to do in Gimp:

Open the file.
Convert to RGB (Image - Mode)
Colours - Hue-Saturation - select the Red channel and slide the "Hue" slider to taste.
Convert to Indexed (Image - Mode) (accept defaults)
File - Export as - overwrite file, defaults.
)

- martin jones wrote:
They're just a bit tough for me to see.

Ah, yes, sorry, I didn't consider this when I made this skin. Glad you managed to fix it yourself and adjust it to what best suited your need and taste.

Convert to Indexed (Image - Mode) (accept defaults)

Thought I might add that Index color mode is not a requirement, our products will read any kind of PNG just fine. We make our default resources indexed because it saves a bit of space and we rarely need more than 256 colors in a single resource.

Thank you for the gift!

- martin jones wrote:

- Sjoerd van Geffen wrote:
Sure, this can be done quite easily in most image editors (free image editing apps like GIMP should do the job just fine) by changing the hue of the (red channel of the) images containing those red LEDs. Some LEDs already use yellow (e.g. when clicking the 'trigger pads' in the top right corner), so I guess you'd want to turn all red into blue.
I'll be happy to put this on my to-do list in case you need any further help, but I would suggest first trying to do this yourself, as it's really not hard to do, and I figure you run into similar problems more often, so it would be useful when you can just help yourself.

Thanks for the response. :)
And yes, always happy to have a go myself when its available to be changed.
Replaced Red LEDs with Green and a brilliant skin now looks great to me!
I've put my copy here if anyone else finds a use for it.
https://we.tl/t-wG6p8jsVp5
Thanks again!
(and for anyone curious - was really simple to do in Gimp:
Open the file.
Convert to RGB (Image - Mode)
Colours - Hue-Saturation - select the Red channel and slide the "Hue" slider to taste.
Convert to Indexed (Image - Mode) (accept defaults)
File - Export as - overwrite file, defaults.
)

Awesome! You know what they say about giving out fish versus teaching to fish, right? Perhaps even Jesus got that one wrong. ;)

- Fredrik Lidström wrote:

- martin jones wrote:
They're just a bit tough for me to see.

Ah, yes, sorry, I didn't consider this when I made this skin. Glad you managed to fix it yourself and adjust it to what best suited your need and taste.

Have you considered how u-he does it in Diva? You get an automatable parameter for LED hue, so it also works per instance, and can easily be hooked up to an LFO for party mode.

thanks for this vintage gift. merry dmx-mas

Noël Noël ...merci ..

Thank you so much!

Thanks Microtonic is still my go to drum plugin

Much appreciated!

Thank You SO MUCH!!!

This is it!

Thank you Magnus! I don't know what to say man. This is just...

Hey Magnus and Friedrik Merry Xmas Thanks for the gift! You guys are fantastic! Wish you are healthy safe and sound and that 2021 turns great for you and your families! Much Love and Respect.

Thanks a lot for this , !! I have same problem as someone wrote here earlier ..; I can load preset (I'm using MT as stand-alone) but no sounds load. The instrument section is empty , labeled "Init"..
I can then separately load each instrument but shouldnt the patch also load the instruments?

Amazing ! thanks

Thank you for the good work :)

Yeah!
Thank you!

in which position of Mac ?

This is amazing, almost surreal though nowadays almost unsurprising in times where machine learning is being used to model filters etc :)

Heck, I now have a 808+909 on my PO-32 :O ...so, all I'm missing is a 303 on my OP-1 ;D

I'm so impressed about Vintage Tonic, because it sounds really, really good !!!
Now i don't need a Behringer Hardware-Clone anymore. My Prophet REV2 comes to live with Vintage Tonic !
The new Skin is also very nice and much better for my eyes (sorry for this cheek Fredrik).
Thank you friends for the new skin, and thank you for this soundset, Fredrik !

I have only one problem with the new skin...it is difficult to see which note is triggered.

Incredible expansion! Many thanks from an original "TinTonic"-owner! ;-)

thanks for the gift! do you think one day we could use microtonic on teenage OPZ like on po32?

Just tried with my PO Tonic, it's amazing!

Thanks for this nice present!!!!

Wow - great addition to an already great drum machine!
Many thanks indeed!

Thanks for the download. This is awesome.
As a developer, I am extremely curious about how you used ML to produce these kits. I won't ask you to share the code but I wonder if maybe you could point us towards some online resources to help us understand the process. Or just give us the basic outlines of it. Thanks !!

Thank you so much.

Thanks for this! Outstanding stuff.

Really impressive. My favourite drum machine (hardware or software) is now even better. Thank you

Thanks for this nice gift, very interesting that machine learning was used to create the patches! :)

What a stinger in the stocking. Thank you microtonic providers and cheers from Nova Scotia, Canada!

HI Marcus, love your work and thanks for the continual support of Microtonic (and your other plugs). I would be lost without Microtonic in my productions (a great companion to NI Maschine), and it also saved me spending big $$ on Elektron !!

Sounds so great !!!
Thank you !!!!

My dream became reality!
I bought microtonic long time ago to emulate classic drum machines. Now I can do it.
A fantastic peace of software.
Thank you very very much!!!

- Magnus Lidström wrote:
Happy holidays synth friends!
During the past few years I have been experimenting with machine learning algorithms that search for parameter settings to imitate any sound with any synth. Today I am happy to reveal the first fruit of this labor: Vintage Tonic.
Vintage Tonic is a patch package for Microtonic created from recordings of the following classic drum machines:
- Maestro Rhythm King (1960)
- Keio / Korg Minipops 7 (1966)
- Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm (1978)
- Korg KR-55 (1979)
- Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer (1980)
- Oberheim DMX (1981)
- Linn Drum (1982)
- Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer (1984)
- Roland TR-707 Rhythm Composer (1984)
- Roland TR-505 Rhythm Composer (1986)

Notice that the collection includes both analog and digital drum machines. Naturally, the digital drum machines are much harder to reproduce using Microtonic's synthesizer engine, but even imperfect results are fun, and I find the sounds quite useful.
The older drum machines were mainly preset pattern players. I have painstakingly tried to reproduce not only their sounds but also all of their original patterns.
I hope you will find this collection useful. I believe it shows a new side of Microtonic, and it amazes even me how versatile this old plugin still is.
Have a listen for yourselves:

Download the package from our download page: https://soniccharge.com/download
Also, check out the skin that Fredrik made to celebrate this release: https://soniccharge.com/forum/topic/1777?~post8491
Best wishes for the remainder of 2020 and let us hope that 2021 will be a better one.
/ Magnus Lidström

This is insanely great!

- mats unnerholm wrote:
Thanks a lot for this , !! I have same problem as someone wrote here earlier ..; I can load preset (I'm using MT as stand-alone) but no sounds load. The instrument section is empty , labeled "Init"..
I can then separately load each instrument but shouldnt the patch also load the instruments?

Hi, i ve also the same problem with the presets vintage tonic. in fact when I try to load on my Mac a vintage preset nothing happens on microtonic. The others kind of presets work perfectly well but not the vintage s ones... On the other hand I can load individual sounds from the vintage kits...
thanks for helping me...

- Nicolas B wrote:

- mats unnerholm wrote:
Thanks a lot for this , !! I have same problem as someone wrote here earlier ..; I can load preset (I'm using MT as stand-alone) but no sounds load. The instrument section is empty , labeled "Init"..
I can then separately load each instrument but shouldnt the patch also load the instruments?

Hi, i ve also the same problem with the presets vintage tonic. in fact when I try to load on my Mac a vintage preset nothing happens on microtonic. The others kind of presets work perfectly well but not the vintage s ones... On the other hand I can load individual sounds from the vintage kits...
thanks for helping me...

I answer to myself because I ve found my problem and it can be useful for people who has the same issu :
You have to update your microtonic to make vintage presets working!

How did you decide which sounds to reproduce when you only have a palette of 8 but some of the drum machines have as many as 16 sounds?

Hi,
Probably a stupid question, but is the Oberheim DMX called "VT-DMX #0000FF Mon" in the list? I cannot find Oberheim with that name...

- Jonathan Pilate wrote:
Hi,
Probably a stupid question, but is the Oberheim DMX called "VT-DMX #0000FF Mon" in the list? I cannot find Oberheim with that name...

Yes. "VT-DMX Beats" and "VT-DMX #0000FF Mon" (<- any computer nerd that can figure this rebus out?) are two presets that use the VT-DMX drum patches.

(<- any computer nerd that can figure this rebus out?)

New Order - Blue Monday!

I'm late to the party, but these vintage presets are amazing, thanks!!