## Transcript ### Intro and sound examples **0:00** · Hi, meet coastline. ### What is Coastline? **0:43** · So what is coastline? Coastline is a complimentary texture generator. But what does that mean? It means that coastline generates sound that is related to its input. It might be tonal. **0:55** · It might be noisy. But all of that sound originates from the input source and cosine generates something to complement it. It can introduce new sound alongside your input similar to a reverb or a delay or it can affect the input sound as well similar to a filter or a distortion. The main mechanism that Coastline uses here are called sustainers. What is a sustainer? ### What is a sustainer? **1:22** · Basically, it's a reynthesized version of a recording which can run infinitely. **1:29** · It's basically a uniform version of the input that maintains the familiar characteristics and qualities of the input while being stretched forever. A sustainer is kind of analogous to a loop in a looper. It's a short snapshot of incoming audio. But a sustainer takes this one step further and reynthesizes that loop. So how do we create a sustainer? We do this by recording audio which automatically becomes a sustainer. ### Recording into Coastline **2:00** · The primary way for doing this is with the threshold control. When this volume threshold is met, a recording starts and a sustainer is made. Here's my input signal. **2:16** · You can see the volume of it is shown on the threshold knob. If we turn the threshold down, you'll see that once the volume meets the threshold, a recording is made. And now we have one sustainer running as shown by this mountain that appeared. **2:38** · You can also click this recording button to make a recording at any time. And if you want to disable the threshold in order to keep the sustainers that you currently have, you can turn it off right here. In the sustainers menu, we find some options for managing them. You can change how many there are total. ### Managing Sustainers **3:00** · You can change how long of a recording they're based on. And you can change how long they take to fade in and fade out. **3:12** · If you want to have a different fade in and fade out time, you can just enable this second knob down here. In addition, we have the hold time control, which controls how long a sustainer will run before automatically fading out. By default, this is infinite. So, if you make a recording, it'll run forever. **3:33** · But if you want to create something more momentary, you can turn this down and the sustainer will only run for that amount of time. **3:54** · Sustainers can also be played and paused. If we record a sustainer, Right now it's playing. If we want to pause playback, we can just hit pause here. To resume playback, hit play. **4:15** · The speed and the difference between the two states is defined by the fade in and the fade out time. **4:26** · And again, if you actually want to clear the sustainers, you use the X. If all of the sustainers are currently in use and a new one is recorded, the oldest one will get faded out and replaced. **4:42** · If you want to clear all of the sustainers immediately, you can just press this X button up here. **4:50** · And you'll see we also have a little mixer down here. where you can balance the volumes and the pan position of all of the sustainers. **5:01** · And you can also lock them or solo them. **5:05** · Locking is really helpful if there's a recording that you don't want to be replaced. If a recording is locked, that means that a new recording will never replace it and it will never fade out due to the hold time. This can be really nice if you want to create one drone that kind of runs underneath everything. **5:31** · And you can also use the solo option to figure out which of those sustainers is which. Okay, so we know what a sustainer is now, but how does it actually reynthesize the audio? There are two channels that accomplish this. They have different roles and they produce different results, but they work together very well. They're called Tide and Glade. Let's start with Tide in this menu. ### Tide (Ebb mode) **6:00** · Tide analyzes the strongest frequencies in the signal and creates an additive synthesizer based on those frequencies. **6:10** · By default, it's going to reynthesize using sine waves for very pure recomposition of the sound. Let's hear what that sounds like soloed. **6:29** · So you can hear that tide has taken the input signal and it's assigned a bunch of sine waves to match the primary frequencies in it. We have three main controls here. Partials is going to change how many oscillators are played in recomposing the signal. These oscillators are ordered by significance or volume. **6:55** · So, the first one is going to be the loudest signal that was detected in the original recording. And as you add more, we're going to bring in the fainter signals that were in that recording. **7:16** · Wave shaping changes the shape of the oscillator. Like I said, by default, they're sine waves at 0%. **7:26** · If we turn this down, we're going to start morphing towards a saw wave. **7:34** · And you can see kind of a mini oscilloscope on our volume knob here. **7:42** · If we turn this up, we're going to wavefold those sine waves. **7:53** · I think these are two really nice options because with the saw wave we can kind of add new harmonics into the signal and with the wavefold you can start to kind of imply a different octave of the output. **8:15** · And finally, we also have this chorus setting, which is a stereo chorus that can add a little bit of lushness to the sound. **8:27** · By default, there's a little bit of that. And I should note that over here on the main panel, there is a pitch control for Tide as well. **8:41** · In addition, Tide has two modes. The first one is called EB. This one attempts to reynthesize the input by ordering the partials by their significance and replaying them. This is kind of a pure mode that's the most transparent and representative of the input signal. **9:02** · There are two main controls here. Offset is going to change kind of what the loudest partial is. It's kind of going to take the set of partials that we're hearing and it's going to shift it such that we're removing the most significant partials. So right now we're hearing 15 partials. You can think of that as hearing 1 through 15. **9:28** · If we change the offset we might hear 2 through 16 or 3 through 17. So, we're kind of shifting what part of the set we're hearing. **9:52** · This is a really fun effect because it kind of lets you bring out the weirder parts of the signal. And I think it's also really fun once you kind of remove the most significant frequencies. It really changes the context of what you hear. **10:15** · So this can be a really fun control to play around with. In addition, we have this harmonics control. This is basically going to change the proportion of the frequencies that are identified to be harmonic or inharmonic. **10:31** · At higher values, we're going to hear those harmonic frequencies which are going to be more pleasant and kind of more consonant with each other. **10:46** · If we reduce this, we start to bring out the inharmonic frequencies, which are going to be the ones that kind of stand out as unique. I think it's really cool because it brings out these frequencies that we might not have really noticed in the input signal. **11:19** · I think with these two controls combined, they're kind of where you can go to change how consonant or how weird the output of coastline is. I think it's really fun to just kind of dial these in and think about exactly how strange you want coastline to sound. ### Tide (Flow mode) **11:51** · The second mode in tide is called flow. **11:56** · This one is going to be a bit more characterful and it's going to introduce more unique tones and harmonics compared to the original signal. In this mode, Tide is going to identify the notes played in a recording, and it's going to create a harmonic series of partials for each one. As a result, it's going to add new harmonics that might not have been present in the original signal. **12:32** · Partials controls how many harmonics are played for each fundamental. **12:42** · It's almost like opening or closing a filter. **12:55** · There are two main controls here called chroma and shift. Chroma is going to change the balance of the partials. Sort of like a formant filter. To the left, the output tends to be a little darker and to the right, it tends to be a little brighter. **13:25** · Shift changes how chroma behaves. **13:28** · At 100% chroma operates totally relative to the pitch of the fundamental frequency. **13:37** · Meaning at a certain setting for chroma the third harmonic is always boosted. **13:43** · The fifth harmonic might always be cut etc. **13:53** · When shift is at 0%. **13:56** · It operates on absolute frequencies. **13:59** · So that might mean that at a certain setting chroma is always boosting 500 htz and is always cutting 800 htz. **14:25** · together. These can be really fun just for kind of dialing in that proportion. **14:30** · And they're also fun just to move around and kind of create these constantly unique textures. ### Glade **14:37** · Now, let's take a look at Coastline's second engine that it uses in the sustainers. This is called Glade and it's a granular synthesis algorithm that sustains the input with a semi-random cloud of grains. The signal is analyzed to reduce any harsh transients or clicks in the signal and the grains randomly wander around the sample to explore different parts of the signal. **15:19** · This channel really maintains the tambber of the signal, which makes it a nice counterpart to tide, which kind of distills the signal down into its purest form. Between the two channels, you can decide how much you want to mirror the original signal or how much you want to create something that's a bit more abstract and new. **15:44** · The main controls for Glade are size, which changes the length of grains. **15:54** · You can make them really short and percussive or you can use longer grains to really get them blurring together a bit more. **16:06** · Spread changes the random stereo spread of the grains. **16:19** · Blur softens the volume contour of each grain for a more consistent volume without dips or spikes. At 0%, no volume compensation is applied. **16:43** · Churn changes how quickly grains wander around the recording. **16:50** · At smaller values, the grains will move very slowly and really emphasize different parts of the sample for long periods of time. At higher values, they'll move very quickly, and you'll start to kind of hear the entire recording at once. **17:14** · Finally, we have erode which reduces the sample rate of playback. **17:26** · This is a smooth control, so changing it or modulating it can produce nice little tapeike warbles. **17:42** · In addition, Glades pitch is over here on the main panel as well. **17:54** · I also want to note that both Tide and Glade will always run even if you mute them. **18:04** · This is so they're available for some of the audio effects that we'll talk about in a bit. But if you want to fully disable a channel because you're not using it, you just click this enabled button up here. This might be if you want to save CPU or you're just not using it. Next, let's talk about the filter. The filter is a multiode filter that all of the uh audio in Coastline can run through. It's got three modes, low pass, band pass, and high pass. ### Filter **18:33** · And it probably has controls that are pretty familiar. It's got a cut off frequency and resonance for adding a bit of resonance at the cutff frequency. **19:02** · In addition, this visual over here is interactive. **19:09** · Next, we have a feedback control. If you're familiar with my plug-in, Outgrowth, you might know this already, but feedback adds a bit of audio rate modulation at the cutff frequency. It basically feeds the input signal into the cutff frequency of the filter to add a little bit of drive and a little bit of hair. **19:43** · This is the first of many ways in coastline to add a little bit of distortion to the signal. **19:52** · And furthermore, we have this stereo spread option which changes the cutff of the filter in the left and right channel. **20:24** · I really like using the spread just to get a little bit of motion and movement in the signal. In addition, there are independent filter settings for each channel. By default, the filter only runs on tide and glade, but you can enable it on the input signal as well as the reverb if you want. Furthermore, we can change the offset of the filter frequency for each of the channels. **20:52** · For example, if you have one of the channels pitched up an octave, you might want the frequency of that channel to be reduced a little bit. **21:25** · I also like using the filter on the input because you can totally just use coastline as a nice little filter if you want. ### Audio Matrix **21:56** · Next, let's talk about the audio matrix. **21:59** · The audio matrix is where cosine becomes a completely modular and configurable effect. This is where we can start having different channels affect each other and talk to each other to create something really unique. The audio matrix allows one channel to amplitude modulate another or itself producing something similar to West Coast synthesis where we have two oscillators working together to create a really unique sound. **22:31** · This can be used very subtly such as here. Tide is modulating itself just a bit to create a little bit of grit on the signal. **22:46** · Or you can use it in the extreme to create a full-on distortion. **22:52** · Let's hear what it sounds like to turn up the amount on tide. **23:24** · We can also dial in the tambber of that modulation using these two controls that affect a wide band pass filter. **23:36** · We can change the center of that band pass filter and the width of it. **24:05** · Critically, everything that happens in the audio matrix happens prefader and before any volume adjustments. As a result, you can mute the output of a channel from the main output, but you can still use that channel as a source or destination in the audio matrix. **24:28** · One of my favorite things to do with Coastline is to kind of use Tide as a utility. Often times I will mute tide, but I'll use it as a modulation source in the audio matrix. Here I'll use tide to modulate glade while tide is muted. **25:05** · And as a proof of concept, we can go into tide settings and change them and hear the result. **25:28** · This can be really subtle or it can just be kind of total audio destruction. **25:37** · I think this is where Coastline extends itself beyond a traditional looper or atmosphere generator and lets you create something completely new with this as well. You can also use this concept to modulate the input signal and we can create really unique distortion. **26:13** · You can turn tide down to just one partial, maybe just a couple of sustainers. **26:37** · In addition, the audio matrix supports sample loading as well. There are also a number of builtin field samples provided as part of coastline. **26:50** · Let's listen to one of those modulate tide. **27:16** · Any sample loaded into coastline kind of gets turned into this infinite random loop so it can be used as a noise source. **27:28** · This can be a really nice way just to mix in a little bit of unique texture into your sound. ### Reverb **27:42** · And finally, let's take a look at Coastline's reverb. **27:47** · The reverb is applied to all of the channels equally by default, including the input. **27:58** · We can change the reverb decay and the damping to suppress some of the higher frequencies. **28:05** · In addition, we have this lowfi control which kind of downsamples the tail of the reverb and makes it grittier. **28:24** · We also have three controls for how much modulation is applied to the reverb tail. **28:33** · We have a chorus for changing how much modulation there is overall. **28:38** · We have a rate for changing a slow LFO that modulates the reverb. **28:47** · And we also have this chaos control which changes how much random fluctuations there are in the reverb tail. If you just want a traditional LFO chorus sound, you can turn that all the way down. **29:07** · But if you want to get more of that chorus sound without it being completely synchronized, you can turn this up. **29:20** · Finally, we have two options down here which change the balance of what's running through the reverb. By default, all three of the channels, input, tide, and glade, are going to run through the reverb with the same volume that you've set in the mixer. Or you can override this and treat it more like a send effect. And you can configure exactly how much of each channel is going to the reverb. **29:49** · This is also pre-fader, so you can mute the actual output and still send it to the reverb. **29:59** · This is also how you can remove signal from the reverb if you prefer. ### Modulation **30:07** · Now, let's talk about modulation in Coastline. We have a modulation menu off to the right where we can modulate pretty much anything in Coastline. If you want to make an assignment, you can click the add destination button under any of the modulation sources, or you can simply drag this button to whatever you want to modulate. **30:31** · When something is being modulated, you'll see this kind of ghostly second value on it indicating what it's modulated value is on top of the base value. When we have a modulation destination set up, we can change the intensity of that modulation here. And we can also change whether or not the effect just adds to the value or adds and subtracts for a bipolar response. **31:04** · Now, let's take a look at all of the different modulation sources we have available to us. ### Modulation - LFOs **31:10** · First up, we have four independent LFOs. **31:14** · Each LFO can have a different speed, which can be synced to the BPM of your DAW, and it has a different shape. We can see all of the shapes here. By default, it's a triangle, but we could use a sign. Ramp down, ramp up, a square, a stepped random source, and binary, which is randomly low or high. **31:44** · In addition, each shape has a morph option which changes the shape even further. For triangle, we can kind of go from a completely symmetrical triangle to one that spends more time ramping down or more time ramping up. **32:10** · For the sine wave, we can change whether the LFO tends to stay higher or lower. **32:20** · For the ramps, we can change if they have more of an exponential decay or more of a logarithmic decay. **32:30** · For the square, we can change the phase. **32:36** · And for stepped random and binary, we can change the slooh. And like I said, we have four independent LFOs as well. ### Modulation - Jitter **32:48** · Next, let's take a look at jitter. We have two jitter sources, which are kind of a smooth continuous random as opposed to the stepped random LFO, which kind of goes from value to value totally independently. **33:06** · jitter, as you can see, kind of smoothly wanders around up and down. We can change the speed of that to get something really slow and really gradual, or we can crank this up to get something a bit more frenetic, but it's always smooth and it always kind of stays continuous. ### Modulation - Sequencers **33:28** · Next, we have two sequencers. **33:31** · You can see that these are the stages in our sequencers and we can click them to turn them on and off or we can drag them to change the amplitude of that stage. **33:42** · To demonstrate the different kinds of sequencers, I'm going to assign it to this filter knob here. **33:51** · First, we have a stepped option which is basically just going to go from one value to the next. **34:00** · We can add some slow if we want that to be a bit more gradual. **34:06** · But we also have a rhythmic option which is basically going to kind of pulse. **34:14** · It's going to go up to the value of that stage and then it's going to fall back down to zero. **34:23** · You can have a configurable attack and decay to control kind of how plucky that is or how gradual it is. **34:33** · You can see that in this option bumps up to the full volume and then kind of falls back down to zero. So depending on whether you want to get this uh target kind of jumping up and down or if you just want it to kind of immediately go from value to value, you can choose from stepped or rhythmic sequencers. We have two of those and each one can have an individual speed and it can have an independent length as well. **35:04** · Next we have a performance slider. When this gets assigned, we get this new slider here in the UI. ### Modulation - Performance slider **35:16** · This basically gives you kind of one big control and it's especially designed with performance in mind. You might want to assign this to a number of things and then you can kind of use it as um kind of a way to create macro transitions or um just kind of change a bunch of things at the same time. For example, we can increase the volume of tide while decreasing the volume of the input. But you can really assign this to anything. **35:51** · I should also note that there are a couple of destinations available in the UI as a dedicated knob. So this performance slider can be really useful for those. For example, we have a global dry wet amount which is just going to kind of uh create a proportion between the dry input running into coastline and all of the affected output that comes out of it. **36:20** · So if you want to, for example, just kind of completely mute the output of coastline, you could assign the dry wet to the performance slider, then really dial it up and kind of use it performatively, and that'll kind of enable or disable the entire output of Coastline at once. Next, we have an envelope follower. This is going to create a modulation source from the input signal. ### Modulation - Envelope follower **36:54** · You can see as I play a note, we see the history on the envelope follower start moving around. **37:03** · We can trim this and that's basically going to change what volume we consider to be the max. **37:16** · In addition, we have an attack and release time. So we can kind of slo that value and make sure that it's not very jagged. ### Modulation - Per-Sustainer sources **37:29** · Next we have random per sustainer. This is basically just going to be a static random value each time a sustainer is created. So that can be nice for variations. You could have slightly different settings every time a recording is made. Um, and that can just be a nice way to kind of just create a variety of outputs really. Next, we have sustainer H. **37:56** · This is a modulation source that's basically going to ramp up as a sustainer runs. **38:08** · It basically is going to be zero at this minimum time and it's going to be the maximum output this maximum time. This might make the most sense just to show you. So we're going to have the sustainer H modulate the filter frequency. **38:32** · As the sustainer runs, it is going to accumulate this value. And then once it's been running for 10 seconds, it's going to stop accumulating. **38:58** · So, I think this is kind of nice because you can use it to create a sound that kind of grows over time or you can use it to create a sound that kind of decays over time. So, for example, you could map the age to the erode and you can reduce the erode over time. **39:38** · And finally, we have a sustainer pitch modulation source, which is basically just a value that's based on the pitch of uh kind of the central pitch that's identified in Tide. Um, this could be nice. Maybe you want some sort of key tracking, like a filter that kind of opens and moves around based on the pitch of the sustainer. Um, maybe you want there to be less reverb. **40:07** · Um, you know, if a pitch is lower or maybe in tide you want to have less chorus if a pitch is lower. Uh, so that's available to you as well. Additionally, I want to point out that you can modulate the amount of other modulation assignments. **40:31** · So, for example, I've created a modulation target here. We have the LFO changing the uh input volume. **40:45** · I'm going to come down to the performance slider and I'm going to assign that to change modulation depth. **40:53** · of LFO1 modulating the input. **40:58** · So right now the performance slider is at zero. So it is basically completely attenuating that depth. But as we turn it up, we start to reveal it. **41:16** · By default, we're going to multiply these two values together. So, we're basically attenuating or boosting the signal. But we could also add to it if we want to increase the intensity of that modulation depth. So, for example, rather than attenuating that, now we're going to boost the effects of it and make it hang out higher or lower. ### Additional settings **41:50** · Next, let's take a look at Coastline's settings menu. This is where we can find the more advanced settings that you might need a little less frequently than all of the rest of them. **42:02** · At the top, we have a simple threeband equalizer where we can change the proportion of lows, mids, and highs. We can set how much we're boosting or cutting each of them and their crossover points. In addition, we can turn bands on or off in order to create kind of a broad lowass or a broad band pass or even a scoop. Uh you can use this for a fun creative effect as well if you want. **42:33** · Next we have some settings for massaging the input and output of coastline. **42:39** · First we have an input highpass and lowass filter which you can use to cut frequencies from the input signal. **42:48** · Coastline is very sensitive to the input signal. So this can give you some basic ability to knock out any problem frequencies that you might be experiencing. **42:58** · For example, in my studio, sometimes I'll experience a hum or a whine with certain instruments. So, this can be nice to just knock out a signal, especially before it ends up in tide. **43:13** · Next, we have input and output volume adjustment. You can boost or cut the signal before it reaches coastline, and then you can boost or cut all of the output to coastline. Next, we have some per project settings that you might find helpful. **43:32** · The first is called instant playback, and it basically controls whether or not Coastline will start playing and sustaining a sound as soon as possible, or whether it's going to wait until a recording has fully completed in order to start playing. **43:54** · By default, with instant playback, we're going to start playing as soon as possible. **44:04** · What this means, however, is that the uh analysis for tide and for glade is going to improve over time as the recording is made. **44:18** · If we turn this off, we are going to fully complete a recording and then we are going to sustain that sound with a one-time analysis. **44:35** · So, the trade-off is whether you want to hear the sound as quickly as possible or if you want the analysis to be as stable as possible. Next, we can control whether or not audio is stored in the project. By default, if you save a project that has Coastline in it, it's going to save and reopen the sustainers as well. If you want to start fresh each session, kind of like a delay or reverb, then you can turn this off. **45:07** · And that means that you're not going to save any of the audio in Coastline. Next, we have some options for how the sustainers and modulators react to your DAW's transport, meaning whether your doll is playing or paused. **45:27** · By default, our sustainers are going to pause when your DAW pauses. This can be nice just to kind of make sure that there's no sound when your DAW is stopped. **45:42** · If you want the more extreme version of this, you can set your sustainers to actually stop, meaning that when your DAW is paused, the sustainers are going to clear and be deleted. **45:55** · If you want the sustainers to just completely ignore your DAW setting, you can set them to ignore and they will just keep running forever. If you're doing a lot of bounces and kind of renders and stuff like that, um, you might want to set it to stop just to ensure that, you know, if you render one thing, the sustainers are going to be stopped when you're done. And then if you were to make another render, you can start fresh. **46:26** · Uh, the modulators react similarly. This is going to control how the LFOs and the sequencers react to the transport. By default, they're going to reset when you start playback in your DAW just to kind of keep everything synchronized. **46:44** · You can also set them to stop and reset. **46:48** · So, they're going to stop running when your uh transport is stopped or they can just ignore that. Next, we have continuous recording. **46:58** · This basically changes how the threshold is going to behave. **47:04** · By default, your sound has to go over the threshold to create a recording, but then it has to come back down under the threshold to reenable another recording. **47:18** · This is so you know one held note or held chord won't continue to create more recordings. **47:29** · So typically I would recommend that you set your threshold kind of right at the peak volume of your sound so it eclipses that and then it comes back below and then recording will reenable once it comes below. But if you want coastline to function more like a delay or a reverb and just kind of run more continuously, you can turn continuous recording on. **47:53** · In this mode, Coastline will just continue to record whenever you're over the threshold. **48:04** · So, you don't have to come back down below the threshold to reenable recording. It's just if there's input that's over the threshold, we're going to record. Next, we have an option for just intonation. This is going to change what ratios Coastline uses when repitching tide and glade. Personally, I think just inonation sounds a little bit better. So, that's the default. Um, but if you want to go into equal temperament, you can just turn that off. **48:33** · And finally, we have pitch quantization. **48:39** · This is going to restrict the pitch of tide and glade to um certain musical intervals if you want. So by default they can be repitched to anything but we can enable pitch quantization for example to restrict them to just octaves or octaves and fifths. **49:22** · This can be nice for something like uh performance if you want to move that around but kind of have confidence that it's going to stay at uh a nice pitch. **49:33** · And finally, we have some global settings that get persisted across different sessions and different instances of coastline. The first is uh we have some motion settings. If you want to disable the background animation, you can do that. Or if you want to have a completely optimized graphical experience, uh you can also turn that on. **49:58** · That's going to remove all of the kind of superfluous animations and it's going to make all of the menus non-transparent just to help out your GPU a little bit. **50:11** · And finally, we have tool tips. If you want some helper text when you mouse over certain controls, you can turn on tool tips. But if you want to get rid of them, they're right here. And then at the bottom, we have links to Coastline's manual and this video manual. I want to take a brief moment to talk about the sidechain input for Coastline as well. **50:35** · Coastline accepts a side chain input in a couple places, which can be nice to just kind of expand the functionality a little bit. In the sustainers menu, we can set whether or not the main input or the side chain input is used for recording. You should be aware that the actual input channel that runs through Coastline is always the main input to the plugin. **51:04** · However, you can set the side chain input to be what's recorded via the threshold. So the side chain is never actually heard in the output, but it can be what is recorded and persisted with sustainers. So you can get a fun kind of interplay between some dry signal and a kind of unrelated side chain input if you want. In addition, you can use the side chain as a source in the audio matrix. **51:36** · This could be interesting because you can use a totally different sound, totally unrelated sound as a modulation source. **51:48** · You could have the side chain modulate the input or you could have the side chain modulate the tide or glade or whatever you want to hear. Um, this can be nice just to get a little bit of interaction and to get these two unrelated sources kind of playing off of one another. And finally, you can use the side chain for the envelope follower in the modulation matrix as well. **52:09** · That can be fun if you would like to, for example, use the volume of some different channel kind of as a a modulation source that changes something within Coastline. Now, let's take a look at the presets menu, which can be found up top here. Coastline ships with a bunch of factory presets, and we have some tags for the different uh types of presets here. We can sort by atmosphere, texture, distortion, or reverb. ### Presets **52:43** · And furthermore, we have a favorites option as well. If you want to set up a favorites option, so if you want to load one of these presets, you can just load right there. And furthermore, those settings will be applied without getting rid of the current sustainers that are running. **53:20** · So you can just kind of flip through these sustainers and hear different options. We have these buttons up top as well just for moving through them quickly if you want. **53:29** · There's an init patch which will just restore all of the settings back to the default. **53:35** · If you want to save a preset, you can go to any folder besides factory and then save a preset. You can give it a name, give it a category, and then when you save it, it'll be in that folder. If you want to create a new folder, just hit add folder, and then you can create that. **53:57** · Furthermore, at the bottom of your presets list, you can either open them in your file browser or you can export them as a zip. **54:10** · You might want to send these to a friend or if you uh create presets and sell them, you can export as a zip right here and another user will be able to install them with this button here. So you just export as a zip and then as another user you just click install presets and you can install that zip and that will give you that folder right here in the list. ### Sound example - Instant atmosphere **54:37** · All right, let's dive into some audio examples and hear how coastline really sounds. **54:43** · I want to start by using Coastline as an atmosphere generator which creates a kind of pleasant synth and kind of surrounding ambience for any sound that you send it. **55:05** · To me, this is kind of the default mode of Coastline. It sustains sounds infinitely, and you can just kind of float here for as long as you want. **55:18** · There's a couple of sound design tricks that I want to point out here when you're using a patch like this. **55:24** · The first is stereo spread. You can see here that we already have an LFO assigned to it. If you position this kind of around the top of your content, you get this nice motion and get that stereo image kind of swimming around. **55:42** · You can make this a bit more pronounced with resonance and feedback. **55:50** · Another thing I like to play around with is the different pitches for the two channels. And to explore this, I'm just going to turn on pitch quantization. **56:01** · You'll see right now tide is at the original pitch while glade is an octave up. This can be nice for just a little bit of a shimmer effect. Maybe you want them at the same pitch, though. **56:16** · Or maybe for a little bit of complexity, you want one of them a fifth away. **56:25** · I also like to put tide down an octave a lot of the time for just a really rich and deeper tone. **56:38** · And the last thing I want to recommend is you can mute the input of Coastline and really just kind of hear this morphing atmosphere. ### Sound example - Call and response **57:30** · The next sound design thing with Coastline that I want to point out is whether or not you're using an infinite hold time or a temporary hold time. You can kind of change the behavior of coastline from being this infinite wash of sound or something momentary that kind of chimes in as a response to anything you play. **58:14** · And one thing you might want to think about here is whether you want a sound to kind of grow or whether you want it to kind of start strong and fade away. **58:24** · One of the things I like using for this is the sustainer age modulator. **58:30** · For example, we could turn our filter cut off down and use the sustainer age to open it up and kind of make our sound grow over time. **59:04** · Or we could do the opposite. We could kind of start with the filter open and clamp it down throughout the lifetime of a note. **59:25** · So, it kind of depends on what effect you're looking for, whether you want to get these echoes that kind of die out and fade off into the distance, or if you want something that grows and really swells and responds to what you're playing. This next example uses coastline as a kind of harmonic distortion. ### Sound example - Harmonic intermodulation **59:46** · With the audio matrix, I'm routing tide to modulate the input signal. But you'll notice down here that tide is muted. So we're not actually going to hear the output of tide except for its effect on the input signal. The result of this is going to be a kind of harmonic distortion. **1:00:09** · You can see that tide settings are very simple. Just one partial, a little bit of chorus, and a basic wave shape. **1:00:19** · To start, I'm going to make one recording. **1:00:25** · And now I'm going to turn the threshold off. And as I play more, we're going to hear this one partial in tide start to modulate everything else. **1:00:54** · Now we can reenable the threshold and get this harmonic distortion that kind of keeps up with what we're playing and follows along. **1:01:20** · You can also add more sustainers in if you want this effect to be a little bit more complex. **1:01:38** · You can also play around with the wave shape and tide to add even more complexity in harmonics. **1:01:57** · I also like to add chorus which kind of creates a stereo image to the modulator. ### Sound example - Flavors of distortion **1:02:27** · The last thing I want to show are all the different ways we can create distortion in coastline. **1:02:35** · This is kind of a really interesting effect to stack on top of the atmospheric washes that cosign likes to create. If you're familiar with genres like post rock or shoe gaze, a lot of times you'll stack a reverb with a distortion and create a really interesting complex result. This patch out of rope uses a very low erode setting on Glade. **1:03:03** · So, this is one of the ways we can add some grit to our sound. **1:03:16** · And not only that, but we have this jitter affecting erode. If we were to speed this up, we'd even get some kind of warbles. **1:03:37** · So, this is one way we can introduce some grit to our sound. **1:03:43** · Another way that's a favorite of mine is the filter feedback. **1:03:49** · This adds a bit of drive that is specifically centered around the cutff frequency. **1:03:59** · So you can kind of dial in exactly where you want to hear that drive. **1:04:08** · It can be brighter or it can be really murky. **1:04:16** · You can compound this effect with resonance to really pronounce it. **1:04:29** · You can also enable the filter on the reverb, which is going to create even more drive because we're already filtering our sound. And then we're running it into the reverb to be filtered again. So, I'm going to start with no feedback, no resonance to show this. **1:05:11** · And finally, we can use this lowfi setting in the reverb to make that tail even grittier. **1:05:32** · You can push this to total destruction if you want. **1:05:52** · Okay, that's it from me. This has been a demo of Coastline, and I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that it becomes a new musical partner for you and helps both inspire great new compositions as well as complement the ones that you already have. Take care.