Mutagene Xoradora – IRZU INSTITUTE

Xoradora is a sample-based 16-pad drum machine and it is all about resynthesis: taking the input sample, creating some kind of parametric representation of it, with one of 7 different modes deciding how, and then allowing the user to pull at it in ways both subtle and weird with lots of room in between.

It started off just having a ‘Warp’ mode, which might have been kind of familiar if you’d used 2WarpDelay or Anticode back in the day, but it didn’t seem like quite enough, so I dug through some of my unreleased experiments (finally a use for that slightly broken QMF subband code!) and made some new ones while I was at it, bringing the total to 7.

‘Warp’ might at first seem like it’s just subtractive synthesis with a slightly quirky filter, but I think if you play with it, you’ll find the filter to be very differently expressive from your standard LP/BP/HP or formant filters, and unlike the 2WarpDelay/qWarpFilter of old, this time around there’s a bit more control to the pole positioning and also the option to further exaggerate resonances as well as add notches between them.

Other modes are:

Hull : breaks the sound down into decaying sinusoids + residual.
Halo : spectral colour + noise; somewhat similar in intent to “Warp”, but completely different in practice.
Strata : breaks the sound into separable and overlapping layers – a bit like stems, but not so clearly defined – potentially fulfilling the roles of Attack/Body/Ambience/Release.
Strand : Sines + Transients + Tonal + Noise.
Grain : Frequency domain representation prone to digital decay.
Prism : Something like a Subband variant of Halo, though quite different again.

In all cases the idea is the sample starts at a netural setting where reproduction is perfect, and either by planing with parameters yourself, or by using the interactive/guided mutation/evolution to breed sounds, you can slowly pull their timbre into increasingly weird territory.

There’s a modulation matrix with four sources – velocity a global LFO, a per-pad LFO, an envelope follower on an audio input. Note: modulation values are latched at trigger time.

Four choke groups, auto choke, chromatic play, microtonal support, one main ouput, four buses, and still in open beta with features being added.