NEST Review
Sugar Bytes Nest is quite a strange synth, it’s a strange choice in general for such a fun and accessible company to create this instrument/ sequencer. I really appreciate Sugar Bytes for taking this risk on such a plugin, because it really adds something unique to the market. I’ll put this up front, Nest is not for everyone, if you don’t enjoy experimenting and making strange melodic content with math and algorithms, you might want to pass on this one. However, if you’re tired of straight forward sequencing, and want to create patterns based on series of logic and math, Nest will be a playground of generative melody creation.
Nest is a two part instrument and sequencer, it is mostly a sequencer, as the instrument is really there just to be sequenced. The sequencer is based on logic circuits and breadboards, I wont go into details of how it works, but there are many various sections that give you input and output values that can be routed from one location to another. Demux, shift registers, and/xor, Geiger random, clock, counters and more, these can all be used to create a sort of “Rube Goldberg machine” of various signals that lead to unconventional patterns. I think for many this will be overly complex, you may just want to learn the basics and patch around randomly to see what comes out. But if you really take the time to learn each section, you’ll end up creating formulas that lead to interesting melodies.
For example, the clock sends pulses at various clock divisions, each pulse is just a single value, you can send these pulses into a counter to increment the counters output by one. You send this into a pitch controller, and each clock tick will raise the pitch 1 semitone. You can quantize this to a scale to keep things musical. Now this doesn’t sound like much, we can easily make this melody in a piano roll, but there’s a lot more we can do from here. For one, the counter is wrapped, so once it hits it’s ceiling, it goes back to 0. also you can stack clock signals, and even decrement the counter, so you could have the counter increase by 5 values every quarter note, but decrease by 3 every 8th note. This alone will create an interesting melody that leaps up, then steps down, until it wraps back around. Once you get into adding the other modules the logic can get quite wild.
For playing around with the sequencer, Nest has some built in synths, two are subtractive, one is physical modeling, and the last is for drums. The synths are very simple, mostly there to played by the sequencer. The subtractive synths are basic, with one having a chorus and the other phaser. The physical modeling synth is a bit more interesting you have three partials and a resonator, it also has wavefolding and delay. The drums are bare bones, kick, snare, and noise, they get the job done. You do get a few control inputs, meaning various parameters can be controlled by their own sequencer signals. Being that you can break out from any point in the sequencer modulation, this means you can easily achieve different patterns for the modulated controls. You can also send midi out from any part, and even load up to 4 plugins inside of Nest. I have not tried it with loaded plugins, so I can’t speak to how smoothly this operates, but it is quite a nifty feature.
Nest is somewhat tedious to program, it’s worth it when you really get into the details though. It’s oddly rewarding when you finally get the right set of logic and counting going to create these continuous and evolving melodic patterns. Whats nice is that these patterns aren’t chaotic, they have a formula behind them, they “make sense” and feel right on an intuitive level. It’s a different way to approach melody creation, and this is why I like it. I love that Sugar Bytes makes stuff like this and Obscurium, creative tools that aren’t for everyone, but really give some creative options to those who are looking for something new. I’ve had some surprisingly lovely results with Nest, results that play for quite some time without repeating and reach into compositional ideas I’d never accomplish on my own. I’ve also had a lot of silly results so your milage may vary, I do suggest this one for the adventurous, but be warned that it can be a lot to wrap your head around.
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NEST: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/24-Sequencer/8135-Nest?a_aid=61c378ab215d5