Two days ago we wrote about Suzanne Ciani’s 1976 Buchla Cookbook going free, and made the case that West Coast synthesis has always suffered from a documentation problem rather than a difficulty problem. Here’s the adjacent problem: software West Coast instruments usually suffer from an interface problem.
Electric Atlas Phantom Sun, out now, is a new experimental West Coast semi-modular synthesiser for iPadOS with AUv3 support — and its most interesting decision is about patching.
What’s in it
The module complement is properly West Coast rather than a subtractive synth with a wavefolder bolted on:
- Oscillators
- Slope generators
- Lopass gates
- Sequencing
- Random voltages
- Logic
- Modulation
inside a focused semi-modular architecture. It’s aimed at generative patching, experimental sound design and expressive performance.
Lopass gates and slope generators are the tell. A lopass gate — the vactrol-based combination of filter and amplitude that gives Buchla-lineage instruments their characteristic plucked, woody decay — is the single most identifiable West Coast component, and “slope generator” rather than “envelope” signals the Buchla approach where the same module is an envelope, an LFO or an oscillator depending on how you set it.
The patching decision
Instead of virtual patch cables, Phantom Sun provides a dedicated Source-to-Destination patch page. Each patchable destination can receive up to four sources simultaneously, each with an independent bipolar amount.
This is the right call for a touchscreen, and it’s worth saying why the obvious alternative fails.
Skeuomorphic virtual cables work on hardware because you have two hands, physical depth, and cables that hang out of the way. On an iPad you have one finger, no depth, and a display where ten overlapping cables hide the controls underneath them. Every software modular that reproduces cables ends up with a mode where you hide the cables to see the panel — which is an admission that the metaphor isn’t working.
A separate routing page keeps the main instrument interface clear and playable, which is the stated goal, and the four-sources-per-destination-with-bipolar-amounts structure is arguably better than cables: on hardware, summing four modulation sources into one destination with individual attenuversion means four attenuators you may not own.
The trade is real. You lose the at-a-glance visual map of the patch that cables give you — the thing where you can see the topology of a Buchla patch across the room. Whether a routing matrix or a cable tangle better communicates “what is this patch doing” is genuinely arguable, and depends on whether you think with your eyes or your ears.
Practical notes
AUv3 is the important spec. It means Phantom Sun runs as a plugin inside AUM, Loopy Pro, Cubasis, Logic on iPad and so on — so it can be one voice in a larger mobile setup rather than a standalone app you have to record out of.
Pricing isn’t published anywhere we could verify, and we’re not going to guess at it. Check electric-atlas.com before committing.
For anyone who read about the Buchla Cookbook this week and wondered how to actually try West Coast patching without buying a 200e: an iPad instrument with lopass gates, slope generators and random voltages is a considerably cheaper entry point than the alternative, and the concepts transfer.