#6. Synthesizers in Reason - Malström

Before reading this tutorial, I recommend that you look at the “Basic Synth Concepts” and the ‘Subtractor’ ones.

The Malström is the wackiest synth in Reason. It uses the so called by PH “graintable” synthesis which is basically a combination between granular synthesis and wavetable synthesis. Granular synthesis uses samples that are split into short grains with duration between 1 and 50 ms and manipulates them. Wavetable synthesis loops a certain type of waveform – often it has a wavetable with many different waveforms you can sweep through.

The Malström has 2 oscillators which can be switched on and off and contains a huge library of sounds cut in small grains combined in graintables. When you hold a note key it will loop the whole sample or it will loop it forward then backward continuously, depending on the selected sample. You can make it loop faster or slower with the Motion knob (which doesn’t affect the pitch). The Index slider allows you to change the starting point of the sample. If the Motion knob is all the way to the left and you move the Index you can hear the static waveforms from which the graintable is constructed. The Shift knob changes the formant spectre of the sound (tembre).

The Modulators in Malström act like LFOs. They can be switched on and off and can be set to control either one of the oscillators or both with the switch in the right. You can select a waveform of the LFO, set a rate with the Rate knob, Tempo Sync it and use a new option called 1 Shot which plays the LFO effect only once at a given note pressed (similar to an envelope). In order to hear the LFO you need to turn one of the blue knobs (the targets of the LFO modulation) either to the left applying negative effect or to the right applying positive effect. The default mid position is 0 which means that no effect is applied.

If you want to do some filtering you can route the oscillators to the available Filters or the Shaper. The arrows show you the signal flow.

Example routing – we turn on Oscillator 2, route it through Filter B, then through the Shaper and then trough Filter A. Note that apart from the arrows we also need to turn on the Filters or the Shaper if we want them to affect the sound.

The Shaper is used for shape modulation of the sound. It has 5 options – Sine (smoothens the sound), Saturate (adds lush character to the sound), Clip (makes digital distortion), Quant (reduces the bit resolution of the sound), Noise (multiplies the sound with noise). The Amount determines how strongly the effect is affecting the sound.

The new filters here are the Comb +, Comb – and the AM Filter. Comb filters act like fast delays with feedbacks controlled with the Resonance knob causing resonating peaks. The Comb – version cuts the low end of the sound. The AM (amplitude modulator) is actually a ring modulation filter which ring modulates the sound signal with a sinewave. The amount of modulation is determined by the Resonance, You can use a Kbd knob to enable keyboard tracking or Env knob to allow the Filter Envelope above to control the sound with the Amount knob next to it determining the amount of modulation. It also has an inversion option.

The Spread knob in the end controls the panning of Oscillator 1 and Filter A to the left and Oscillator 2 and Filter B to the right.

If we flip the rack we will see that Malström has standard Gate and CV inputs and Modulation inputs with oscillator selection switch. What differs the Main Output from the Oscillator Output is that the latter doesn’t output the Shaper and the Filter effects.

If you want to use Malström`s Shaper or Filter A / B with an external device, use the audio input jacks. The first one is for Filter A and the Shaper and the second is for Filter B. Note that you need to turn on the desired Filter / the Shaper and use the Main Output in order to hear it affecting the sound.