ReGurgiTron
More fun than a heaping bucket of stomach acid! Psycho circuit bent noise distortion 8-bit glitch. And that's the pretty part.

Experience "the Difficult Listening Channel" podcast where the sounds in my head become the sounds in yours.

Extreme Tape Manipulation
Play analog tapes on a turntable! All you have to do is replace the needle cartridge with a tape head and then make a "tape record". I'll show you how.

Concept:FX
Make your next sting KILL! Need a sonic knockout punch? Unleash F7 Sound and Vision's Concept:FX series royalty free sound effects and go from "stun" to "kill".

The Mushroom Accelerator.
Runs on Reaktor 5. It sounds like a bunch or drunken R2-D2s having sex with outdated fax machines (because the world doesn't need another 303 clone!).

**** Not available to the public. Come on, I've got to keep a few tricks up my sleeve. Besides, I did release "Circuit Bent SputniK".

What it is:

The Mushroom Accelerator is a synthesizer ensemble created in Native Instruments Reaktor 5. This ensemble evolved from my earlier works including "Circuit Bent SputniK" and a few other unreleased proto-synths. But that's not important. I based its creation on the idea of "what if I crossed an Atari Punk Console with circuit bent Elektron SID Station? (note: I don't think it's a good idea to really try to circuit bend an Elektron SID Station)".


What takes this synthesizer forward is the fact that I have dozens of LFO's set up in arrays or 3 or 4 each (see below). These LFO arrays work at different frequencies, waveforms, and volumes which when combined, create unique and changing waveforms on their outputs. In addition, I added delay effects to select LFO arrays which are independent of any outside effects and work only on the specific array.


These LFO arrays can either be kept as audio modifiers or converted into event signals and then used to modify the controllers of other objects like pitch, filter frequency, loop start/length, delay times, panning and lots more. This adds an almost unlimited amount of variation to just about any sound.


Big deal. It's not like I invented something that's never been done before, right? Right. But just listen to the sound of The Mushroom Accelerator. It almost CANT sound the same way twice. Even pressing the same key a second time creates a slightly (or hugely) different sound variation. That's what I love about Reaktor, you just think of a way to do something to a sound. Then you make it. You're only limited by the processing power of your computer.


And The Mushroom Accelerator can be used as a live instrument. It can be controlled from a laptop keyboard so the whole thing can go anywhere a laptop can. No external keyboard controllers are needed (but they can be used) because there's so much going on in the "background" anyway.


Wait, I forgot to tell you... it's MONOPHONIC! Yes, only 1 voice at a time. All this sound is coming from a single voice! So why didn't I make The Mushroom Accelerator polyphonic? I mean, in Reaktor, that's very easy to do. Yes, and early on I did make a polyphonic version. It just got too cluttered and messed up. A better explanation is that it didn't sound right when it had more than one voice. Plus, adding voices meant that the processor load went through the roof. And I'm using this on a G4 Powerbook. Anyway, I don't think that a monophonic Mushroom Accelerator is limited.


Why I made this synth:

It was either make this synth or become a brain surgeon. I'm not into hospitals and all that "medical stuff". And the thought of sawing into people's craniums kind of made me sick. So I took the easy way out and created The Mushroom Accelerator.

Circuit Bent Sputnik!
Can a computer simulation really make a dead President SOIL HIMSELF? Get the details, plus download some free mp3s.

"Difficult Listening Channel - show 121" Do computers have souls? Is this what the machines will be listening to when they take over? I travel 20 years into the future to find out.

show release date 8-8-2008

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"Difficult Listening Channel - show 120" Now you shall experience the full power of the Mushroom Accelerator! Oh, and this was all done live with just one edit near the beginning.

show release date 7-29-2008

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LaptopNoise.com - I've got even more Reaktor soft synth action going on here.

** Witness the evolution of a noise instrument.

Right: Here is one of the many LFO arrays in The Mushroom Accelerator. This one combines a sine wave and slow random LFO via crossfade. A delay is also added as an effect for this array. BTW, the crossfade is purposely set to not allow a pure signal from either LFO.


Also note at the bottom left "N-mod" input. This is an external noise source being converted to an event signal, then reduced in volume which is combining with the sine wave's frequency control. Now the sine wave has an unstable frequency.


Confused? So am I.


Keep in mind that there are several LFO arrays in The Mushroom Accelerator. Each one is different. Some have up to 5 LFO's plus an outside modulator and a delay. Now you see why a 1.5GHz G4 processor is pushed to 70% during the operation of this synthesizer!

Hear The Mushroom Accelerator

Michael Oster doesn't claim to be a Reaktor genius or guru. In fact, he probably knows how to get about 3% out of the program at best.