cyma forma - ALT

ALT is an analog synthesizer for drones, soundscapes and generative melodies, built around a very immediate way of working. There is no screen and no shift button, and almost every function has its own dedicated control. The panel is divided into three sections — Voices, Alter and Movement — with rows of sliders, mechanical keys, LEDs and a field of tiny pin sockets under hi-gloss transparent plexiglas. Of course this is a particularly great-looking instrument, but this design is highly functional too: the layout keeps everything visible and encourages you to work by ear rather than by programming a patch in ways you perhaps are already way too familiar with.

So how do you operate it? Let's start with the first section, 'Voices'. It holds five oscillators and a noise source. Oscillator 1 is a free-running sine VCO for bass, drones and continuous tones, while oscillators 2 to 5 are DCOs with saw or triangle waves, individual amplitude and frequency sliders and stereo placement. Each of those four oscillators can either move freely or snap to the selected scale, so one voice can drift while another stays firmly quantised. ALT also includes editable scales and detuning, but the important part is how these ideas are presented: tuning becomes something you shape directly with the front panel rather than a separate setup task.

The 'Alter' sections keeps things simple with two stereo filters in series and a stereo delay. Both filters move between low-pass and high-pass response and can self-oscillate, while the onboard delay adds space and feedback.

Next up is the 'Movement' section which is where ALT really comes into its own. Two LFOs, Random, plus the 'Outline' envelope follower can be routed to nineteen destinations through a 4×19 pin matrix using small 2 mm banana pins. The whole modulation structure stays visible in front of you, and sources can also modulate one another, so there's quite a lot of ways to make things move.

ALT's Outline follows the built-in microphone, the oscillator triggers or an external audio/CV signal, and external audio can also be sent through ALT’s filters and delay. There's also a "Leon" mode This adds two light sensors for theremin-style control of volume and pitch, while MIDI, CV and clock sync make it easy to bring ALT into a more conventional setup if needed. The building blocks themselves are familiar — oscillators, filters, LFOs, random modulation — but ALT arranges them in a way that makes you approach them differently. Move a slider, listen, add a pin, change something else and follow whatever happens next. That exploratory quality is really where the instrument is at its best. How to summarize it all? Switch it on for ten minutes and look up two hours later. That seems to be how it goes…!

Features:

• Analogue engine: 1 VCO (sine) and 4 DCOs (saw or triangle), plus a white noise generator
• Oscillator 1: free-running sine, 8 Hz to 8372 Hz, 8-octave coarse and 1.5-octave fine control
• Oscillators 2 to 5: two-octave frequency range, individual stereo panning, 16 Hz to 9000 Hz with matrix modulation
• Scale on/off switch per oscillator for free or quantised pitch
• Five mechanical keys, one amplitude trigger per voice
• Five-voice polyphony from the keys and sliders, four-voice voice splitting over MIDI
• 14 editable scale presets
• Microtuning of ±50 cents per note, detune of ±50 cents per oscillator
• Tonic mode with three-octave range and linear transpose
• Two stereo Sallen-Key filters in series
• Self-oscillating resonance on both filters
• Ripples buttons for momentary cutoff modulation
• Stereo delay with feedback and More button
• 4 × 19 modulation pin matrix, 2 mm banana pins included
• Two LFOs with square-to-triangle morph
• Random sample & hold with slew and offset
• Outline envelope follower with built-in microphone and external audio/CV input
• Arp destination for modulation-driven triggering of oscillators 2 to 5
• Leon mode with two light sensors for theremin-style control
• External audio can be routed through the filters and delay
• MIDI over USB-C and 3.5 mm TRS Type A
• CV pitch and CV level inputs
• Stereo outputs plus headphone output
• Hi-gloss transparent plexiglas and powder-coated steel
• 404 × 227 × 57 mm, 3.8 kg