Tone Lab could make make synthesis easy by letting you stack up your sounds

Tone Lab is a concept product that’s designed to strip away the complexities of synthesis and help you to create sounds in a modular but relatively simple way. It’s operated by stacking physical component ‘tiles’ - waveforms, effects, filters, arpeggiators etc - and then tweaking them by applying the ‘chord’ units.

The idea is that users retain an understanding of how the process of synth sound generation works but aren’t befuddled by a complex interface. It’s based on feedback from user testing, with the layering approach said to provide “a sequential archive of the track”.

We’d be intrigued to see how Tone Lab might work, though as we say, it looks like it’s very much a concept product at the moment. Find out more about the thinking behind it on creator Colin Hearon’s website.

(Via Yanko Design)

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.