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Septavox Synth by Critter & Guitari

I was in the local modular synthesizer store when they received delivery of the Septavox from Critter & Guitari and I immediately was taken back by the future organ sounds that came out of the cute little synth. The keys are made of wood and the case is bent metal, giving this synth a very boutique look and feel. I scooped it right away as these are pretty rare to come by.

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Synth Layout

This synth has an integrated speaker as well and can be powered by AA batteries making it a fun bring-along synth for taking out with you. It’s really compact for the number of octaves you get in the keyboard. On the back is midi-in and midi-out, on the side is a DC port and the 1/4″ mono output for DI recording. On the back of the synth is an open slot that takes the AA batteries and a card that is included for reference on the tone and mode options.

There are two preset selectors that indicate their current mode by changing the LED color next to the button. The left button lets you select the tone from Dirty Sine, Sine, Electric Organ, Square, Sawtooth, Dirty Square, and Computer.  The right preset selector changes the mode for the effect knobs. There’s a vibrato, slide, arp, swell, octave cascade, slicer, and pipe glide modes in there.

The two knobs control various parameters depending on the mode. For example, the vibrato mode has rate and depth settings that let you build a range of sounds from the tones from pitch-enveloped kicks to laser and wobbly risers.  The slide and swell modes also give some unique character to the various tones that the synthesizer makes.

Demos

For this demo, I created some simple chords and put them into a drum rack. The demo resembles the organ sounds from Faithless – Insomnia.
This next demo uses the same process and has a few house chords that sound like something that you would hear in a Vengaboys track.

This final demo was produced by modulating a dirty sine in the vibrato mode and sounds similar to the sounds that the talking animals in Animal Crossing make.

Download

I have put together a very simple project with the instruments used in the demos created from the samples I created using the Septavox. Feel free to use them however you want!

Download Septavox Ableton Project

Your Friend Gus’s Casiotone CT 640

Casiotone CT 640

Vintage sounds from a classic Casio keyboard.

Download YFG's Casiotone Bank 1
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This synthesizer was Casio’s first keyboard based on sampled sounds. When I was a young piano student, I had access to one at home and would noodle around on the keys and play my Suzuki method homework on these sweet PCM sampled instruments. I also remember being blown away by the DEMO mode of this keyboard. This is not sampled from my childhood keyboard (I found it at a vintage synth store!) but the sounds still brings back memories like how our cat peed on ours giving it a funny smell.

This bank includes Kontakt instruments as well as Soundfont 2 files (playable in Ableton Sampler, Fruity Soundfont Player, and Reason NN-XT / NN19).

The following programs have been added to the bank:

  • Accordion
  • Bells
  • E Piano
  • Funky Clav
  • Harp
  • Harpsichord
  • Jazz Guitar
  • Marimba
  • Organ
  • Piano
  • Vibraphone

Regardless of how you will be using this, you should first extract the downloaded files to a folder you can easily find. To load the Soundfont2 file in Ableton, drag the SF2 file into a sampler instrument. For Reason, load the SF2 from the NN-XT or NN19 instruments. I’m currently seeing issues loading SF2 files into Live 11; if you load the SF2 into your library in Live 10, it will then appear in your 11 library. For FL Studio, load the Soundfont Player device and load the SF2 file.

For Kontakt, just browse from the file manager to the NKI files. It’s the first time I’ve distributed Kontakt instruments, so you may need to resolve the path to the samples by providing the folder you containing the samples when you load the instrument.

You’re welcome to use the samples from my instrument however you want – I consider them to be attribution-free public domain so long as I’m not unknowingly breaking some other license. If you want to give me something back for giving these away, just follow me on Soundcloud, Instragram, or Twitter and say hello if you see me at a festival! I’ll be giving away more stuff as I make it so check back on https://yourfriendgus.com from time to time.

Mic Check

Hi!

I’m Gus, we’re friends now, I am currently working on the YOURFRIENDGUS (Your Friend Gus) project for which this web site’s been created. I have been making a lot of music over the past few years and can’t wait to show you!

I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I will be writing more about my project work on this site!