Best Free and Open Source Drum Machines

Geonkick – percussion synthesizer

Geonkick is a synthesizer that can synthesize elements of percussion. The most basic examples are: kicks, snares, hit-hats, shakers, claps.

Geonkick synthesizes the full percussion length in a buffer in the memory every time the user changes the controls or the envelopes. The generated percussion then is “moved” to a module that plays the percussion. There is no synthesis happening when the user presses a key, i.e if no controls are changed Geonkick acts just like a sampler.

There is also a list of synthesized percussion that make Geonkick to act like a percussion kit with key mappings. Percussion UI (main window) actually is like an “editor” for the selected percussion from the kit list.

Every percussion from the kit list is mono. The percussion can be redirected to audio output to one of 16 stereo audio output channels. Since percussion is mono, left and right of a stereo channel are the same.

“Geon” in the name “Geonkick” refers to a hypothetical particle called “geon”.

This is free and open source software.

Features include:

  • Kit:
    • Supports up to 16 instruments.
    • Save / Load kit in JSON format.
    • Export instrument kit to SFZ.
  • Multitibral:
    • 16 midi key range.
    • User configurable key mapping.
  • Multichannel:
    • 16 stereo audio output channels for plugin (1 stereo for standalone).
    • User configurable mapping of kit instrument to output channels.
  • 3 layers.
  • Layers Mixer.
  • 2 oscillators per layer:
    • Sine, square, triangle, saw-tooth, sample (wav, ogg, flac)
    • Initial phase control
    • Amplitude, frequency and sample pitch shift envelope.
    • Low, band and high pass filter, cutoff envelope.
  • FM synthesis.
    • OSC1->OSC2.
  • One noise generator per layer.
    • White & brownian.
    • Random seed.
    • Amplitude envelope.
    • Low, band and high pass filter, cutoff envelope.
  • General:
    • Amplitude envelope & kick length.
    • Low & high pass filter, cutoff envelope.
    • Limiter.
    • Compression.
    • Distortion.
    • Distortion drive envelope.
    • Distortion volume envelope.
    • Tune percussion option (relative to key A4).
  • Key velocity sensitive for instrument total output amplitude.
  • Jack support.
  • Export:
    • Mono, stereo.
    • WAV: 16, 24, 32 bit.
    • FLAC: 16, 24 bit.
    • Ogg.
  • Open & Save presets in JSON format.
  • Preset browser.
  • Standalone.
  • Pitch to note.
  • LV2 Plugin.
    • “Single” version that supports one instrument and one stereo channel per instance.
    • The default version that supports kits of 16 instruments and 16 output stereo channels per instance.
  • Manually scale the UI by factor of 2 (useful for HiDPI cases).

Website: github.com/Geonkick-Synthesizer/geonkick
Support:
Developer: Geonkick developers
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Geonkick
Click image for full size

Geonkick is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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