Free software SYNTHWAVE KEYS

Beatskillz are relatively new software developers that specialise in instruments and plugins designed to be ‘great sounding, great looking and inspiring audio tools’. They also have a philosophy to make each one simple, effective and intuitive which is certainly the case with their amazing-sounding synth ROMpler that we are giving away with this issue of Computer Music. Synthwave Keys is designed for synthwave, vaporwave and nuwave, genres that take 80s synth music and add an up-to-date twist. It’s packed with sounds for these genres.

Synthwave Keys is what we call a ROMpler; that is, it’s sample-based and packed with sounds (over 3GB of them across 100 presets). The definitions of what makes a ROMpler and what makes a synth have been challenged over the last decade or more as sample-based instruments increasingly add controls to manipulate their sounds. Indeed in our recent review of Beatskillz’s own RetroVOLT, we met a ROMpler with huge synth ambitions, so much so that Beatskillz call it a Samplesizer!

RetroVOLT is very much the big brother of Synthwave Keys, packed with extra controls so Synthwave