ATELIER Review
GRM Tools Atelier is a fun new modular sound design environment, I decided to download the demo and give it a spin and wow there’s a lot to love here. First off, the UI is somehow full of detailed information while remaining very clean, I love the design choices and how they create a scientific feel that is just lovely to look at.
Atelier you stack multiple audio processing modules and control them with some original modulators. You may be tempted to compare this to other modular systems, but Atelier choses to do several things in very unique ways that lead to unusual results.
The sound of Atelier is very clean and high resolution with lots of fine details. Each module on its own may look simple on the surface, but when combined with modulation and the powerful multi-node based system, the detail and clarity really opens up some novel sound design.
Two generator modules allow you to produce audio; a sample player and an oscillator. Each can produce multiple tones at once with the multi node system. The oscillator is simple and clean, while the sampler can be used to create granular textures. The magic really comes from the effects and modulation. Five effects can be chained together in any order you want, with as many instances as you want.
COMB: A nice sounding comb filter, the damp control has pleasant natural fall off. Phase can morph between all and odd harmonics and creates a nice flanging sound while traveling. The Warp control shifts around harmonics to create atonal qualities
BAND: This one can be used as a band pass or as a notch filter. Slope and bump allow you to alter the filter curve. I am reminded of the Elektron style dual filters
PITCH: A pitch shifting delay with control over the grain window size, spread and feedback. Stacking multiple nodes can be used to create a unison type sound.
TIME: A multi-tap delay with speed control, seems simple on the surface, but when you start messing with the repitch it can get quite odd
GAIN: Not your typical volume control, this one has the ability to replicate doppler effects for added depth and motion.
Each of the sound modules can contain a plethora of nodes, each node is like a single voice with its own controls and modulation. You can apply modulation to any control, and each node will get its own instance of modulation from the source. This allows you to create and move whole clusters of oscillators, resonators and delays all at once with minimal routing
I also discovered that you can record directly into the sampler module, meaning you can create a whole sound design rack, record it, remove everything else, and use the recording as a new source for the next experiment.
MODULATION
what makes Atelier unique is that each modulator can output distinct modulation to each target. If you’ve ever found yourself creating multiple Sample Hold randomizers because you want different randomization per target, you’ll understand just how useful this can be. They call this “polyadic” modulation, which I’d love to see in more synths.
The modulators are all deviate from what you’d expect. You wont find typical LFOs here, instead there are modules named “agitation” and “peak”. Both can be configured to behave as traditional LFOs if you desire, but by default they offer some unique twists on the classic ways of doing things.
Agitation lets you blend between smooth and stepped random with controls for bias and jitter. The cyclic control allows it to act more like an LFO if you so desire. Peak loops basic shapes, but also has a division control to “ratchet” the modulation, and a chance control which randomly mutes various cycles.
There’s also a control module that acts like a macro with some additional features allowing you to lag any control changes. This lag can be asymmetric too, for example if you want downward motion to lag but not upward motion or vice versa. There’s even a “loop” control that will echo any motion imparted on the control.
I also didn’t see any “bpm” or tempo settings anywhere, perhaps I am just missing them, or perhaps this was a design decision. Either way, being removed from tempo divisions forced me to explore more creative organic design choices that I would have otherwise put off for future exploration. Add this to the already unusual ways in which most of Atelier behaves and you get an environment that pushes you out of your comfort zone.
Atelier also hosts a routing display that shows you every source and destination routing with colorful cables. It can be very beautiful to see an entire patch mapped out while watching the clusters of motion dance around.
Putting everything together I found that really spending time to build up a set of modules and modulators allowed me to explore some fun soundscapes. Atelier abandons much of the familiar, and feels almost like a modern day “Buchla” by forgoing many standards that have been adopted over the years. I do hope they expand on it in the future though, I could have really used a limiter. Multiband compression and some distortion flavors would have helped add some character to the sound. I also know that GRM makes some cool spectral tools, so I’d love to see some sort of spectral module added in the future.
As I play with the demo I continue to find more and more ways to use Atelier, in some ways it is a complete inversion of what I am used to, but this also opens up many design ideas that would normally either be impossible or incredibly tedious. I’ve also neglected to even test the morphing feature that lets you save and store up to 8 snapshots per module. You can jump between these snapshots or use the morph time control to blend between them. This morph time also applies to the parameter randomization. I really enjoy tools like this, on the surface, if you just look at the available modules, it may not look like much, but once you open it up and realize just how different everything is approached, you can find so many new sounds you wouldn’t normally go after.
You can pick up Atelier from INA GRM’s website here: https://grm.tools/en/atelier.html