FreakBone-9000, experimental feral-sounding microtonal VST2

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DOWNLOAD FreakBone 9000 beta VST2 HERE (2.5 meg zip)

FreakBone 9000 is a crazy sounding, circuit bent, microtonal analog-style synth, VST2 synth based on Microtone 5000. But on FreakBone 9000, moving the Mod Wheel on your controller activates the oddness. Demo MP3 link of FreakBone 9000 above. More examples on the 3 songs with “FreakBone” in the name on the BipTunia album also called FreakBone 9000.

(It has a different VST ID, so won’t interfere with any projects you’ve made with Microtone 5000.)

It has 32 presets and 5374 microtonal tunings. Any tuning with work with any preset or you can make your own presets with any of the tunings.

This synth is very similar to Microtone 5000, except the Mod wheel works, is set to wrong extremely far out (yet harmless) values, and it makes the mod wheel do different freaky things.

HOW TO USE FreakBone 9000

This is the VST without the tuning files, so if you have Microtone 5000, unzip and put in the same folder, as FreakBone 9000 needs to share the microtonal tuning files from that VST (folder is named TuningFiles):

If you don’t have Microtone 5000, get it here. (FreakBone 9000 will work with the tuning files for either the VST2 or VST3, either version of each, of Microtone 5000. It’s all the same tuning files. Will also work with the tuning files (same files) in Simple Microtonal Sampler, either VST2 or VST3 of that will be fine, too.)

Don’t wiggle the mod wheel as you would with other VSTs, so much as gently move it to different positions, or even just leave it where it sounds good. Will sound all kinds of crazy. Try moving it just a little ways away from off. Then a bit more. Then all the way. Sometimes the best sound is in the middle somewhere or near the start, sometimes full throttle.

There will not be a VST3 of this one.

WHAT PARAMETERS DOES THE MOD WHEEL CHANGE?

It changes whatever the

LFO Assign

drop-down picker in the lower left is set to. (If you use the OFF setting on that picker, it does nothing.)

And those sliders to the left of that drop-down affect it.

Usually the VF Rate slider (far bottom left) has to be somewhere in the middle for the most extreme effect.

That’s normally the kind of thing that a Mod Wheel would change, but my VF Rate slider can go to -20v (virtual), on most synths it wouldn’t. Would probably go to zero or maybe -1.

WHOSE CAT IS THAT?

That’s our cat Beast. He’s a little freak bone.

–Michael W. Dean, BipTunia (music), and BipTunia Synths.

May 1, 2023

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TUNINGS IN AUDIO EXAMPLE

Through all of it as chimes:

• zesster_c (Harmonic six-star, group C on Eb, from Fokker
  8)

Then these five, about a minute each over that with different sounds and slowly moving the mod wheel:

• kurzweil_arab (Kurzweil Emperical Arabic)
• lambdoma _prim (Prime Lambdoma)
• mohajira-to-slendro (From Mohajira to Aeolian and Slendros)
• ptolemy_diat5 (Sterea lyra, Dorian, comb. of 2 Tonic Diatonic 4chords, also Archytas’ diatonic 7)
• rast pentachord 5-limit (Rast pentachord 600:675:744:800:900)