Outersect Modeler: Trippy Acoustic Modelling born at Burning Man
4,3 / 5,0 | 
Outersect Modeler emerged from classical musician and coder Rob Rayle’s experience at the Burning Man festival. Was it the drugs or something more transcendental?
Outersect Modeler
Without a doubt, software instruments could do with an injection of inspiration. Modeler is a passion project for Rob Rayle (aka Outersect), and the inspiration is evident in the life that pours out of it. Rob’s weapon of choice is the keytar, and Modeler aims to provide a slew of acoustic and electro-acoustic sounds that maximise the performance potential of that interaction. Check out this video, and you’ll get it immediately.
It’s 100% spacey, trippy, otherworldly and yet rooted in natural and organic character. If you’re old like me, then this feels like Ozric Tentacles in a plugin.
So what’s it all about?
Modeler builds sound with acoustic or physical modelling. It takes modelled elements such as bowing and plucking strings, and blowing reeds and brass and couples them with harmonic responses. It incorporates electric guitar-style feedback, overblown growls and string resonance and then buries it in synthesized processes. You have a lot of control over filtering and EQ over the sound before plunging into stereo effects.
Everything is available on a single page. You have multiple controls over things like the Resonator, Pick, Bow, Reed, Brass and Growl. All these things can be rolled together into the sound design, so you don’t have to choose the sort of instrument you want to build.
The modulation engine is very powerful. Everything is modulatable and can be tied into MIDI control. You have individual links from source to destination, or you can use the Meta engine to combine MIDI data and route to numerous destinations. It all results in some pretty nuanced performance control, although there’s no mention of MPE support.
Tracktion
Outersect Modeler is being looked after by Tracktion, the company behind Waveform and a lot of other fascinating and esoteric software instruments. Modeler fits right into all that.
Modeler is available for macOS and Windows at an introductory price of $90.30 and you can use it for free on a 7-day trial. So, download it and check out some of those amazingly out-there sounds.
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4 responses to “Outersect Modeler: Trippy Acoustic Modelling born at Burning Man”
Nothing quite says ‘this will be an dysfunctional hot mess’ than by referencing Burning Man in the sales pitch. I’d rather be immersed up to my neck in the effluvia of the ultra-high-net-worth than use this plugin . Oh, hold on, that is what it is like at Burning Man.
Nothing good can come out of Burning Man.
PR is everything, just like at Burning Man‘s.
Not a wise move to announce it like this.
Also, physical modelling, nothing new.
Sorry for the hate, but this just too bad.
wow, sounds really nice, really expressive. keytar seems like the perfect controller for it. love that everything is on one page like that. I’m going to watch the rest of the in depth video, and i’d live to hear it run through amplitube or whatever.
ha ha, haters get wrecked, lol
“ this feels like Ozric Tentacles in a plugin” …
High praise indeed. Thank you so much.