Expressive E and Kilohearts have teamed up for a collection of MPE-compatible preset banks that unlock the expressive potential of Kilohearts' Phase Plant soft synth.
Divided into four banks named Delicious, Stripes and Onirica Vol. 1 and 2, the Phase Plant Expressive Suite offers a total of 400 presets that are said to "bring a no-compromise MPE experience to Phase Plant" and are compatible with any MPE controller, such as Expressive E's own Osmose and Ableton's Push 3.
MPE, or MIDI Polyphonic Expression, is an extension to the MIDI protocol that allows for more sophisticated control of electronic instruments via additional control messages transmitted with each note. In Phase Plant, these can be mapped to various parameters of the synth, allowing a performer to control multiple dimensions of its sound at once.
Expressive E has released a series of videos demonstrating how a handful of presets found in the Phase Plant Expressive Suite operate. In the video above, the company's sound designers show off a convincing saxophone preset that makes use of Osmose's expressive capabilities to control Phase Plant's gain, saturation, filter, EQ and convolver, lending additional realism to the patch.
In the video embedded below, we're given a guided tour of another preset's architecture, a complex and multitimbral ambient pad in which Osmose's polyphonic aftertouch is mapped to the patch's comb filter, resonator and phase distortion.
Phase Plant Expressive Suite is priced at $99.