HALion 6 is here

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Here are some first live-on-video-experiments with HALion 6, re-synthesizing/wavetabling some samples, experimenting with the different modes, WT spread, detuning, speed, formant modulation and so forth - for re-synthesis and wavetabling I do think HALion 6 is a game changer, the sound quality and possibility to combine waveforms from different samples in one wavetable just via drag&drop is highly intuitive and will result in an abundance of new, interesting sounds...


Resynthesis - Piano String played with a pencil

Resynthesis - Vocal phrase

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More video experiments - wavetable pad made in HALion 6, using two wavetables I extracted/re-synthesized from electronic textures made for my Iris subscription, laying out some chords, tweaking the modulation wheel and 3 assigned Macros on the fly.


The whole wave-tabling thing can get pretty CPU-intense, problem for me in LogicX: there is no multi-core support in HALion 6, at least not in the AU version of the plugin so everything runs on 1 core. And why the didn't add more polyphonic LFOs and some new filter models in HALion 6 is beyond me, well, I'll keep on begging...


But the artifact-freeness of the re-synthesis is simply amazing - I spent weeks of my life removing faulty waveforms/smoothening transitions and whatnot in the Serum WT editor, unfortunately H6 uses it's own wavetable format, so the the WTs one creates in H6 can only be used in H6. But the glass is definitely more than half full in HALion 6

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Re-synthesized glockenspiel sequence in HALion 6 wavetable synth, using the Exponential mode for the re-synthesis limiting marker amount to 40, later dragging some of the 40 markers around to find the right waveforms. The tinkling sound in the pad also results from modulating formants with a slow random LFO. Quite beautiful...

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After learning some more about the SPECTRUM editor in H6 and how to manipulate phases and other things, here is another video experiment:


Re-synthesizing/wave-tabling a choir recording with speech and lot's of consonants, placing the markers manually, manipulating the resulting wavetable in various ways - highly experimental.

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HALion 6 wavetable sound - re-synthesized/wave-tabled cello sample (flautato articulation) in two wavetable oscillators, OSC1 was edited on the Spectrum page to modify the harmonics and phases, OSC2 was left untouched.

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Re-synthesizing/wave-tabling one of my Hang loops with HALion 6 resulting in a rhythmical, vocoder-like sound, tweaking things on the fly live on video.

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Halion 6 wavetable bass, using a WT extracted from a synth drone. WT index can be randomized via Macros, multi-spread too - tweaking things on the fly in the video, adding filter distortion, filter envelope, applying amp envelope to WT index via the modulation wheel, tweaking the formants and stuff...

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A re-synthesized/wave-tabled euphonium swell with flutter tongue articulation (from a studio recording of one of my compositions), the wavetable markers are synced to host tempo, a tempo-synced, re-triggering LFO (ramp up) modulates various things like formants/filter cutoff/detune.

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Re-syntheszing/wave-tabling a speech recording (2 words -> my wife Andrea->actress) from a recent project with Halion 6, tweaking things on the fly live on video, laying out some chords, getting lost...

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Live on video: re-synthesizing/wave-tabling male overtone singing from my Alchemy library MetaVox in Halion 6, trying various re-synthesis modes, tweaking things on the fly, editing the harmonics in the spectrum editor, manipulating the phases. I'm very impressed by the results I must say...


The only thing I'm really missing are some phase distortion modes.

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Re-synthesizing/wave-tabling a trill texture played on my soprano sax with HALion 6, applying LFO modulation to formant shift, tweaking things on the fly. It's recommended to experiment with the Window Type depending on the source one is re-synthesizing, for this sound the Blackman setting produced the smoothest results, as the "air" included in the sax sample wasn't so pronounced (resulting in high frequency partials which sounded rather synthetic).

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Today was the time to learn the Macro interface design in Halion 6, the learning curve was a bit steep but after a while I got the hang of it.


A custom Halion 6 pad sound with a custom Macro interface with 12 Macros and 2 wavetable displays, the two wavetables involved where extracted from re-synthesized speech samples.

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Video with a fresh Halion 6 patch which combines a re-synthesized/wave-tabled piano string sound with multi-sampled, granular piano strings - (piano strings hit with a pencil, sequence of irregular repetitions on each string) - this patch has a custom Macro interface, the Macros and the modulation wheel were automated in LogicX.

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I just made this little tutorial, as so many folks have asked for it, explaining the basic functions of the wavetable synth, re-synthesizing a violin and a waterphone sample.

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Track with two instances of H6, both patches are using the wavetable synth, some Macro automation, 100% H6.