GForce impOSCar2 Controller
Take a look at this picture. Tell me what you see. The gentleman twiddling is Darren Price of Underworld, contributor of many sounds to the impOSCar soft synth. In the background is Dave Spiers of GForce, speaking to Karl Hyde of Underworld. But I’m sure readers of this blog will be casting their eye back to Darren, and in particular what Darren is playing with! Yes, it looks suspiciously like an OSCar synth, that most unique of British synths from back in the early 80’s. Except it isn’t. Oh no. Look more closely. This is an impOSCar controller, an impOSCar2 controller, no less! Yes, my friends, this wee beastie is a bona fide custom built controller for the new impOSCar2 soft synth, soon to be released by GForce.
Already I can hear the click clacking of keyboards and mice, desperately searching Google for this thing. Save your time. Here is the link to the creator. But before you click, just stop. Be aware of the following.
This is a one off. This is unique. There are none for sale. There are currently no plans for this to go on sale. You. Cannot. Buy. One. End. Of.
At this point, it’s best to let Dave himself take up the story. Here are portions of an email conversation we had this morning, printed here with his kind permission:
I don’t know what people really know about this controller so I might be imparting old info that’s of no use to you at all. I do know that someone at KVR spotted it on the website of the guy who built it and as soon as it appeared on KVR, both ourselves and the chap who built it were inundated with requests asking “How much?” & “When?” & the usual “I’m a famous producer, you should build me one for free”!
However, it’s a one-off controller that was built for us by Mario Jurisch at http://www.synth-project.de and at the moment we love the idea of it being utterly unique so there are no plans to take it into production.
After we took delivery, I used it to create several patches on the imOSCar2 because I wanted to see how different it would feel to use a bespoke controller, as opposed to a generic one (or indeed a mouse). Needless to say I found the difference pretty stunning and it really did evoke loads more subtleties when it came to sound design, particularly after Chris here built me a bespoke GUI that matches the controller exactly.
The idea that the brain doesn’t have to make a connection between the hand, the knob, the parameter and the screen is something I find utterly fascinating from way back when Chris and I made a MIDI controller called the Phat Boy.
The Phat Boy was the first of the generic MIDI controllers and at the time we observed people using and talked about this ‘connection’ quite a bit because, while the Phat was brilliant in it’s immediacy and simplicity, there was still a mental translation process due to its generic design.
However with imp2 and the controller, once you’re familiar with the layout of the instrument, it’s as organic an experience as tweaking something like a real OSCar, and it’s my belief that with the ‘mental translation’ out of the way, the ear takes over and you find yourself programming with all the grace and subtleties you think is only available from hardware, but actually is equally available from software.As a result of that, I thought it’d be interesting to take it to various musician friends and see if they had the same experience.
That pic was taken at Underworld’s studio with Darren Price, me & Karl Hyde in the pic (left to right). Darren had contributed some great sounds for the impOSCar 2 and knew he’d be a great candidate to watch and assess. Unsurprisingly, he had exactly the same experience as me and after watching him vanish into a programming abyss for hours we ended up leaving it with him until next week. LOL
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be taking it to a few artists you may recognize and depending on the feedback, we may look at trying to take it further.
Dave also told me that he will be filming these events and that two further people who will be granted an audience with this unique controller will be Paul Hartnoll of Orbital and Billy Currie of Ultravox, himself a big proponent of the OSCar in it’s heyday and a fan of the original impOSCar synth.
Perusing Mario Jurisch’s site, you will also see another one off project of his, a keyboard version of the impOSCar 2 controller.
But please, do not bombard Mario or Dave with requests on when, where and how much this will be. It is not for sale. It is a unique hand made article. Who knows what may happen in the future, but until then, leave them be! 😉
[…] (Original story via Failed Muso blog) […]