Over the last year, I've been experimenting with various different software plugins and synths in Logic Pro to get a different kind of sound than my usual three chord rock / guitar - bass - drums kind of sound. The strangest thing I have come across is a weird open source modular soft synth called Bespoke. Calling it a software synth doesn't really do it justice. It's quite unlike anything else out there in that you piece together different software components (oscillators, FM synth, drum machine, effects, code) and arrange the flow of sound visually. 

I had read about how Ambient music inventor Brian Eno created "Music for Airports" from different length tape loops and wanted to do something in Bespoke that captured that experience of creating "happy accidents" between the notes. I've also been listening to french synth artists Jean-Michel Jarre, Air and Mellow, and decided to lean into a chill synth vibe. 

Bespoke is actually quite flexible and can create any kind of music, not just Ambient. That said, it's definitely a low-level approach to music construction. I hope over time there are more synths and tools added. Maybe something with some traditional presets. You can add VST plug-ins, but I really wouldn't mind a few more things built in. 

Here's the first song I created, called Enoesque.

And here's a video that shows Bespoke in action. I will admit, I had little idea what I was doing when I created this thing, and so there was a certain amount of unnecessary knob-twiddling. 

And another Ambient experiment:

Bespoke is open source, free, and available on Mac, PC and Linux platforms. I found it to be remarkably stable, and only encountered one minor bug. Folks on the Discord channel are super helpful. This is a different way of making music, but it is super interesting. 

For those who want to take the plunge, you can download a ZIP file of my Bespoke .bsk files from Box. 

• Bespoke: Official site, Docs, Discord forum, downloadable .bsk files