Full Bucket Music: The Deputy Mark II

German programmer and software engineer Björn Arlt began building VST plugins under the name Full Bucket Effects in 2010. Being a musician, and a synth enthusiast from a young age, he was drawn to analysing and building software synths. He now offers both synth emulations and effects as freeware through his website.

The Deputy Mark II is a software-based polyphonic ensemble synthesizer, designed in the tradition of classic string machines and early ‘polyphonic’ synthesizers. It attempts to emulate an instrument that could have been built in the 1970s — in an era where technical and economical restrictions may well have have impacted the overall architecture. Production choices appeared as a compromise between which features musicians expected, what they were willing to pay, and what fitted in a single box. The result is the Deputy, which by today’s standards is a fairly limited instrument — but not without character.

The Deputy consists of three major blocks: the polyphonic Poly synthesizer section; the monophonic Mono synthesizer section; and the Main section hosting global effects, the mixer, and keyboard-related controls. On top of these, the Deputy Mark II has an additional section containing controls for program management and ‘tweak’ parameters.

Tweaked Parameters:

• Number of Poly voices (12, 32, 61) to reduce computational load
• Split point between the keyboard zones
• Ensemble mode (mono or stereo)

Poly section:

• Up to 61 voices polyphony
• Two band-limited frequency divider-driven oscillator banks
• Sawtooth and PWM waveforms
• 2-pole multi-mode filter and ADS envelope per voice
• Global ADSR envelope for paraphonic modulation
• Resonator bank (3 zero-delay feedback filters)

Mono section:

• Single VCO plus sub-oscillator and noise
• 4-pole zero-delay feedback lowpass filter
• ADSR envelope and LFO
• Output of Poly section can be send to filter input

Features:

• Polyphonic string/synthesizer (Poly) section and monophonic synthesizer (Mono) section
• Built-in Ensemble and Phaser effects
• Flexible keyboard assignment for Poly and Mono section
• Resizable user interface (not N version)
• All parameters can be controlled by MIDI controllers
• Plugin supports Windows and macOS (32 bit and 64 bit)