Thump One Manual

Thump One is an easy to use music synthesiser plugin with a fun glitchy 'wavetable' engine and a bank of flexible multi-segment envelopes to shape the sound in any direction you desire. Perfect for powerful kick drums, huge club basses and soaring leads

The synth has two engines that can be layered together for a range of complex sounds and textures. The Kick engine is a great sounding wavetable oscillator built from clean and processed analog kick drums, with saturation, filtering and a buzzy 'broken speaker cone' circuit. The Layer engine is an accurate model of the 'supersaw' oscillator from the Roland JP-8000, with a set of modes for retro synth tones, glitches and noise.

Contents

Version 3 Update

Version 3 adds the MIDI Panel, a workspace for building your own MIDI setups from a big library of triggers and panels, and reworks the old parameter snapshots into full Snapshots that store envelope shapes as well as knob values and can morph smoothly from one to the next. The envelopes and preset menu have been extended to match. Existing presets load and sound exactly as before unless you use the new features.

New in Version 3

  • The MIDI Panel, for building your own MIDI setups, arpeggiators, note repeaters, chord generators, LFOs, CC mappers, snapshot switchers and lots more, from a large factory library of Triggers and Panels
  • Snapshots now store envelope shapes as well as parameters, morph smoothly from one to the next, and go up to 64 slots per preset
  • Envelope editing improvements: lasso selection, a right-click menu, and per-envelope presets with flip and reverse
  • New global controls (Master Pitch, Glide, Stereo Width) and extra options
  • General GUI improvements and bug fixes

Tooltips and Controls

Every control in Thump One has a tooltip explaining what it does. With tooltips enabled, hovering the mouse over any knob, button or menu shows a small pop-up describing that control. Turn tooltips on or off with 'Show Tool Tips' in the Settings menu (the hamburger icon at the top right of the GUI).

  • Hold Shift while dragging a knob for fine adjustment.
  • Hold Control while dragging to snap wide-range knobs (like Pitch) to whole numbers.
  • Double-click a knob's value, its label or the area just below it, to type in an exact value.
  • Where a control offers a list of options (like the Layer engine's Mode), the ‹ › arrows step through the choices one at a time.

The window size is set from 'Set Size' in the Settings menu, and 'Set Current Size As Default' remembers your choice for new instances.

Kick Engine

The Kick engine is built around a wavetable oscillator with a separate Buzz oscillator that simulates a torn speaker cone. The two are mixed together, run through an analog Drive stage and then a high quality low-pass filter.

Its five main knobs (the top row) are:

  • Punch — the amount of pitch modulation from the envelope assigned to this control.
  • Wavetable Position — the playback position within the Kick oscillator's wavetable.
  • Drive — the amount of analog saturation. This affects both engines.
  • Buzz — adds a buzzy, grinding sound on top of the kick.
  • Level — the volume of the Kick engine.

Directly below each main knob is its tweak knob, each marked with an icon:

  • Pitch — the pitch of the Kick engine.
  • Select Wavetable — chooses the wavetable for the Kick oscillator. These are derived from recordings of real analog kick drums run through tape, tube and other processing.
  • Drive Filter — the amount of filtering in the Drive stage. This affects both engines.
  • Buzz Tone — the tone of the buzz sound.
  • FM — modulates the Kick oscillator's frequency with a second oscillator for a richer, more complex tone.

The power button to the left of the engine (Bypass Kick) switches the Kick engine off.

Layer Engine

The Layer engine adds two 'supersaw' oscillators, modelled on the supersaw of the Roland JP-8000. Their output is mixed together and fed into the Kick engine's Drive stage, so the two engines share the same saturation and filtering.

Its three main knobs are:

  • Detune — spreads the supersaw voices apart. In Noise mode this sets the amount of static instead, and in FM mode it sets the amount of feedback in the FM algorithm.
  • Filter — the filter amount for the Layer engine.
  • Level — the volume of the Layer engine.

Mode selects one of twelve modes for the Layer engine. The first ten adjust the intervals between the two supersaw notes and add varying amounts of internal FM modulation from the Kick engine, for extra tone and dirt. The last two are Noise, a simple noise oscillator with a static control, and FM, an FM oscillator with feedback whose frequency is modulated by the output of the Kick engine. In FM mode you can bypass the Kick engine to hear only the modulated FM tone.

The power button to the right of the engine (Bypass Layer) switches the Layer engine off.

Global Section

The Global Section is the row of controls across the top of the front panel. These affect the whole instrument rather than one engine:

  • Master Volume — the overall output level (this slider is in the title bar, next to the preset name).
  • Master Pitch — shifts the pitch of the entire sound, moving both engines together.
  • Attack and Release — set the playback speed of the envelopes (see the Envelopes section).
  • Glide — slides notes smoothly from one pitch to the next instead of jumping.
  • Stereo Width — widens the stereo image by subtly chorusing and detuning the left and right channels. Whether the Kick engine is included is set by Stereo Kick Engine in the Options Panel.

Around the Global Section are the plugin's main buttons: the cog (top left) opens the Options Panel, the keyboard icon (top right) shows or hides the MIDI Panel, and the dice next to the THUMP ONE logo re-applies the last randomisation you used. The preset arrows, undo/redo and the hamburger (Settings) menu are in the title bar.

Envelopes

Thump One has eight multi-segment envelopes (MSEGs), one for each of the eight main knobs across the Kick and Layer engines. Instead of a fixed attack/decay shape, each envelope is a curve you draw yourself from as many segments as you like, so you can shape exactly how its control moves over the course of each note. All eight run at once and are re-triggered by every note, and a small white dot travels along the displayed curve to show the current playback position.

The large display shows one envelope at a time. Click the small triangular button above a knob to show that knob's envelope. Edit the shape straight on the display: double-click to add or delete a node, drag a node to move it, lasso a group to move several at once, and right-click for editing actions like copy, paste, flip and reverse.

The speed of the envelopes is set by the Attack and Release knobs in the Global Section, Attack covering the first 20% of the envelope's path and Release the remaining 80%. Playback isn't linear along the curve, it runs faster at the start and slows towards the end, so you get fine control over the important initial transient while the tail plays out more gradually.

Each envelope can load and save its own shape as a preset from the Envelope Select menu, the small downward triangle just below the envelope display on the left. As well as a library of ready-made shapes, it can randomise, mutate, flip and reverse the current envelope. These envelope actions are also available as MIDI Triggers, so you can reshape envelopes live as you play.

The MIDI Panel

The MIDI Panel is a workspace along the bottom of the plugin where you build your own MIDI setups, arpeggiators, note repeaters, chord generators, LFOs, randomisers, CC mappers, snapshot switchers and lots more, by loading small self-contained modules from a big factory library. None of it changes the Thump One sound engine itself, instead it shapes and generates the MIDI going into the engine, so a single preset can play back patterns, respond to your controller in custom ways, or morph between sounds, all without programming a note in your DAW.

Click the keyboard icon in the top right corner of the plugin to show or hide the MIDI Panel. It has two views, the Keyboard View, which shows the on-screen keyboard and holds the MIDI Triggers, and the Panels View, which holds the Panels. Switch between them with the small round button near the top right corner of the panel.

Two libraries, three kinds of module

Modules load from two factory libraries, the Trigger library (via Add Trigger in the Keyboard View) and the Panel library (via Add Panel in the Panels View). Depending on what it does, a module can appear in one view, the other, or both:

  • Panel only — no on-keyboard trigger, just a Panel in the Panels View. Things like Simple Delay or CC To Command, which run continuously and don't need launching from a key.
  • Trigger only — a Trigger on the keyboard with no Panel, like Undo, which is just an action bound to a key.
  • Both — a Trigger on the keyboard and a Panel in the Panels View, linked together. A lot of the pattern modules work this way, the Panel holds the controls while the Trigger starts and stops it.

When a module has both parts they're treated as one unit, so colouring, deleting or saving either part affects the whole group. Everything you load is saved with the preset, and you can also save the whole setup on its own as a Trigger Bank (see below).

Panels View

A Panel is a small rectangular module with a drag bar and a title along the top, and its controls in columns of three below, each one a single piece of MIDI processing like an Arpeggiator, a CC LFO or a Transpose.

Click an empty area of the Panels View, or a Panel's drag bar, to open the panel menu and choose Add Panel. The submenu follows the folder structure of the library (MIDI CCs, MIDI Effects, Modulation, Patterns And Sequences, Routing, Utilities), and new Panels are given a distinct colour automatically. Panels are laid out left to right in the order they process MIDI, so moving one changes where it sits in the chain, placing a Transpose before or after an Arpeggiator gives very different results. To reorder a Panel, drag its drag bar.

Clicking a Panel's drag bar (or right-clicking it) opens its menu, where you can reset, delete, recolour and add Panels, and pick a preset if the Panel ships with any. Presets can also be cycled by holding Ctrl and clicking the drag bar (add Shift to go backwards), and holding Alt (Option) as you open the menu reveals a hidden Save As… item, which saves the Panel to the library for next time.

Keyboard View — MIDI Triggers

A Trigger is a module bound to a range of keys, play any note in that range and it fires. Triggers cover everything from musical tools like Arpeggiators, Chords and Strum to instant commands like Randomize Preset, Bypass Kick and snapshot selection.

The top strip of the keyboard is the edit zone, where you place and manage Triggers. The rest of each key still plays notes as normal so you can audition sounds while you work, and each Trigger shows up in the edit zone as a coloured, labelled region spanning the keys it responds to.

Click a key in the edit zone (or right-click any key) to open the Trigger menu and choose Add Trigger, whose submenu follows the folder structure of the Trigger library. The key you click becomes the start of the Trigger's range. Once it's placed, drag the body of the region to move it, or either edge to resize the range. The same menu lets you cut, copy, paste, delete and recolour Triggers, and (holding Alt) save them to the library.

Trigger Banks

Everything you've loaded into the MIDI Panel, every Panel and every Trigger, can be saved and recalled together as a Trigger Bank, so you can build a favourite setup once and drop it onto any preset. The Trigger Banks menu is the small downward triangle just above the MIDI Panel on the left. It works like the main preset menu, with the usual copy, load and save options plus an Enable item that turns MIDI Trigger playback on or off. Because a Bank holds the whole MIDI Panel, it's saved separately from the sound preset, so you can keep the same Bank running while you audition different sounds.

Snapshots

Snapshots let you store several complete variations of a sound inside a single preset and switch between them instantly, or morph smoothly from one to the next. They're great for keeping a handful of variations of a kick and flipping between them as you play, or for setting up a 'clean' and a 'dirty' version of a bass a key apart.

A Snapshot stores the whole sound: every parameter and every envelope shape. That's the reason for the name change from 'Parameter Snapshots' in earlier versions, which only stored the knob values.

Creating and recalling Snapshots

Snapshots are managed from the Snapshots submenu in the main Preset menu (the hamburger icon at the top right). They work as live variations rather than as separate 'save' and 'recall' steps: select an empty slot and nothing changes, the sound carries on as it was, but as soon as you start turning knobs that slot captures the current sound and stores any further changes you make. Once a slot has something in it, selecting it recalls those settings. The preset name briefly flashes the Snapshot number as you switch, with a dot (•) next to slots that contain a Snapshot.

The first eight slots have keyboard shortcuts, ⌘1 to ⌘8 on macOS (Ctrl 1 to Ctrl 8 on Windows), and you can also step through Snapshots by holding Option (Alt) while clicking the preset ‹ › arrows. The submenu also has functions to set the maximum number of slots (up to 64), set the morph speed, and clear the current or all Snapshots.

Morphing

Set Morph Speed to anything other than Off and switching Snapshots no longer jumps, the sound slides smoothly from wherever it is to the target Snapshot over the time you set. Both the parameters and the envelope shapes are morphed together, so the knobs sweep and the envelope curves reshape in one continuous move. Short times just take the edge off an abrupt switch, longer ones turn a Snapshot change into a slow evolving transition, great for pads, risers and builds.

Selecting Snapshots over MIDI

Snapshots really come alive alongside the MIDI Panel, which gives you several ways to drive them from your controller or from inside a preset:

  • The Snapshot key range — a range of eight keys on the keyboard that select Snapshots 1 to 8 as you play them. This is loaded by default when you open the plugin, so it works straight away.
  • Snapshot Triggers from the Trigger library, like Next Snapshot, Select Snapshot and Set Morph Speed, assigned to keys of your choice. For example, store five or six variations of a sound and put a Next Snapshot trigger on a key to cycle round them for a 'round-robin' effect as you play.
  • Snapshot Panels from the Panel library, like CC To Snapshot, Knob To Snapshot and CC To Morph Speed. Since these are full MIDI modules you can feed them from other Panels too: connect a slow LFO to Knob To Snapshot to have the sound drift around your Snapshots by itself, or drive CC To Morph Speed from an LFO or envelope so the morph time changes as the track moves.

Preset Manager

The current preset is shown at the top of the GUI. Click the preset name to open the Preset menu, which holds the list of presets (organised into submenus matching the folders on disk) along with the usual save, load and management commands, the randomisation tools, and the Snapshots submenu (see the Snapshots section). The ‹ › arrows either side of the preset name step through presets one at a time, or through Snapshots if you hold Option (Alt).

Randomize Preset completely randomises all parameters of the current preset (the envelope nodes aren't randomised), and Mutate Preset adjusts them by a small amount for a subtle variation. The dice icon next to the THUMP ONE logo repeats whichever you used last, hold Control while clicking it to include the envelope nodes for more extreme results, or Shift to always mutate.

One item worth pointing out is Clear GUI Patches, which strips any custom GUI overrides stored with the preset, an advanced feature for anyone editing the GUI layout.

MIDI Learn

You can assign incoming MIDI CC (Continuous Controller) messages to any of the instrument's knobs by drag and drop:

  1. Enable MIDI Learn mode from the Settings menu.
  2. Turn a knob on your MIDI controller.
  3. Drag and drop the CC number that appears in the top section of the GUI onto any knob to make the assignment.

MIDI CC assignments are saved automatically for all instances of the plugin, and you can clear them with 'Reset MIDI Learn' in the Settings menu.

Settings Menu

The Settings menu (the hamburger icon at the top right of the GUI) covers MIDI Learn and Reset MIDI Learn (see the MIDI Learn section), Enable OSC for Open Sound Control, the GUI Set Size options, Show Keyboard, Show Oscilloscope and Show Tool Tips, plus Open Manual and Go To Website links.

Options Panel

The Options Panel is opened with the cog icon at the top left of the GUI. It holds some extra parameters and sound settings:

  • MIDI Resets Oscillators — incoming MIDI notes reset the phase of the oscillators.
  • Stereo Kick Engine — includes the Kick engine in the Stereo Width control (with it off, the Kick always stays mono).
  • Legato — when playing monophonically, overlapping notes don't re-trigger the envelopes, so notes glide smoothly between pitches. Its Slide setting limits Glide to overlapping notes.
  • Velocity Modulation Destination — a destination to modulate from note velocity, with a Velocity Depth knob for the amount.
  • Smooth Level — a little smoothing on the Level envelopes to remove clicks at the start of the sound.

It also has Velocity To Volume, Parameter Smoothing and Pitchbend Range controls.

iPad Version

The iPad version is identical to the desktop version, apart from how presets are handled and one extra setting: Dynamic Knobs in the iOS Settings menu, which gives a finer adjustment when you move a finger slowly across a knob, the touch equivalent of holding Shift on the desktop.

On the iPad, presets live in a sandboxed folder shared between the standalone app and the AUv3 plugin, which you can't reach through the Files app. So that you can still share and back them up, the app automatically copies every new preset into a folder you can reach at "On My iPad/Thump One/Exported Presets", backing up on each launch of the standalone app. You can import zip folders of presets with 'Import Zip File...', and save into subfolders by typing a folder name and a slash before the preset name, for example "My Kicks/My Big Kick".