SICU by LDM Design

The instrument has 3 components. First, the initial blowing sound, then the breath sound and a filtered square wave oscillator. The breath is created with blue noise running through a carefully designed bank of resonant bandpass filters, which is something you can’t really reproduce using most synthesizers. These sounds have then been carefully tuned to attenuate the tone across a range of notes to balance out the output. Care has been taken to give the widest range of useable notes, but there is definitely a sweet spot around C3.

The instrument is optimised for MPE playback, but any keyboard with poly aftertouch can produce beautiful expressive tones as the aftertouch attenuates the output, mimicking the variations of a real breath. MPE users also have the ability to subtly or dramatically alter the pitch of the notes.

The interface is minimalist, focusing on simply creating a realistic expressive sound. The top row of dials is for Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release, indicated by the simple descriptive icons. Then we have timbre control, velocity and pressure. Crossfade between the breath and the square tone, and change the amount that velocity and pressure will affect the output of the sound. At the bottom, we can select a mono or polyphonic sound and also modify the volume level.