Swarm - Synth sounds for SampleTank

22 dynamically detuned living analog oscillators

Swarm features samples of all 22 oscillators from the Norlander Wall of Doom modular Moog synthesizer with both sawtooth and sine wave outputs, and then dynamically detunes them in equidistant intervals to create the haunting and eerie soundscape of your dreams. Or nightmares.

Swarm sounds

For Swarm, Erik sampled all 22 oscillators of his Modular Moog system. The earliest oscillator modules (901, 901B) go all the way back to 1967, with the latest ones (921, 921B) manufactured in 1974. That’s some serious vintage analog mojo.

Listen to audio demos

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The 22 oscillators are then modulated by SampleTank’s many LFOs and envelopes to “swarm” in various ways. Some presets start in tune and then SWARM out of tune. Others start with the swarm and then gradually come into tune. Still others have freerunning modulation that creates oscillator swarms at random.

The origin of Swarm

Erik’s inspiration for this library came from a rather cool custom synthesizer called the Dewanatron Swarmatron, designed and built the Dewan brothers.

The Swarmatron used 8 freerunning analog oscillators that could be dynamically detuned, the pitch spread out equidistantly for each oscillator, using a leather ribbon on the top panel. The Swarmatron was most famously used by Trent Reznor in his score for the film, The Social Network. We're not creating a virtual Swarmatron here, but the concept is similar using the Modular Moog oscillators.

More tech talk

We've also created polyphonic presets, something that of course would be impossible with the original Swarmatron or even the modular Moog. Okay, maybe if you had 5 of 6 of them, it could be done.

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SampleTank 4

The new SampleTank 4 has been re-designed from the ground up to be every musician’s “go to” workstation for music creation, with a completely new rescalable interface, a massively expanded sample library and a new cutting-edge sound engine with efficient disk streaming, to deliver more powerful music creation tools than you ever imagined. What might usually take dozens of plug-ins can be accomplished right inside SampleTank 4, for lightning-fast workflow that keeps your inspiration going.

Swarm works inside SampleTank 4 CS, offering you all the features of the new SampleTank 4* engine and over 4 GB of fresh sounds to get started.

*SampleTank 4.1.4 or later is required.

About the creator

Erik Norlander is an American musician known for his work in the progressive rock genre with extensive touring and recording credits. He was the co-designer of the legendary Alesis Andromeda analog polysynth among many other hardware synths and drum machines. Erik is IK's resident synth guru and the driving force behind award-winning IK products such as Syntronik software and the UNO line of analog synthesizers.