I got a Strega for Christmas from my spouse! I was very, very surprised and have spent the last few days digging into it, sometimes for hours at a time. This is the most boutique and weird synth that I have currently. The build quality is top-notch - all the knobs feel silky-smooth and it’s a solid little thing.
At first, I found it a little frustrating. I think there’s a kind of tension between wanting to surrender to the mysterious aspects of it, while also wanting to understand it really well so you’re getting the most out of it. Also, it’s good to be able to reproduce a cool sound you made later on if you weren’t recording then. What I ended up doing was to print out a blank patch sheet, go through the manual, and write in the function of each knob, input, and output on it. I don’t have the 0-Coast so I wasn’t as familiar with MN’s UI conventions, but taking the time to do this helped a lot.
Without the Time and Filter sections applied to the output, you can definitely hear a similarity with the wavefolding to sounds you can get from the Music Easel (my experience is with the Arturia VST of it). One interesting way to experience what the Time section is doing is to feed a vocal sample through it. I used the Microfreak Speech engine and got some cool results. You can come to grips with it by taking each section on one at a time and seeing what it does.
I did most of my monitoring through my computer and Ableton, which allowed me to casually toss in some additional effects. In particular, plate-type reverb plugins are great for making a lot of noise with it. But it never sounds too ‘raw’ without external effects.
The Strega, piece-by-piece, covers areas of synthesis and effects that I can replicate elsewhere (sometimes with a lot of work), but puts them all together in a really unique total package that’s compelling to play around with. I probably put about 12 hours into it over the holidays.
I’m looking forward to cross-patching it with the Minibrute so I’ll have some more LFOs and other things to add to the mix. Also I didn’t manage to get CV pitch control from the Microfreak working yet (wanted to spend more time playing and less debugging) but that should make a fine pretend 0-Ctrl for me.
I feel like a good gift for someone is something they wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for themselves that is really satisfying and delightful to them. I am not sure I would have put the Strega on my Christmas list because I usually choose more general-purpose gear that I can push in an experimental direction if I’d like. (Sometimes I am too thrifty and sensible in this direction.) However, it’s fitting in really well with my current interests in sound design and my spouse was very happy to listen to hours of experimentation, so it was an awesome gift.
Yes, it does have a signature sound but this album shows the variety of ways you can incorporate it. Beautiful stuff!
