Pipa is a singing vocal synth with a unique and different sound. It is inspired by the expression and flexibility of the human voice, but does not aim to cover all the aspects of an actual voice. Instead, it focuses on an organic and musical sound where the user has the possibility to control formants and dynamics seamlessly.
The synth engine is a crossover between a wavetable- and a granulating synthesizer, which results in a very expressive and playable instrument. Instead of using ordinary samples or processing oscillators with formant filters, Pipa uses a large database of thousands of wavetables extracted from real vocal samples. The advantage of the technique being used is that it’s possible to seamlessly morph between wavetables with proper phase alignment. This enables Pipa to continuously make transitions between pitch, formants and dynamics, which is very useful in a musical context.