I like surprises. In general I buy anything made by u-he, their output is phenomenal. However, I’d never got round to getting the original Filterscape. I wasn’t sure I’d ever use a filter plug-in that was that detailed.

That changed when last year’s 1.5 update of Filterscape apeared. For a start, the new GUI very much appealed to my kind of aesthetic. It looked much more contemporary and also looked easier to understand and use. So far, so good. But then… then I discovered that Filterscape had always included a virtual analogue synthesizer.

I had no idea.

A u-he synth I didn’t own? I couldn’t let that happen!

So, I bought Filterscape and started playing around with the Filterscape VA synth. Immediately it struck me how easy it was to programme nice sounds. There aren’t a huge amount of options, it’s no Zebra or Hive, but it is anything but limited.

A day or so of fiddling around with all the parameters to see what they did and how they interacted (trying to find those sweet spots) and I was well on my way to having quite a nice collection of virtual analogue synth electronic sounds. A general style seemed to be evolving – rich and dynamic, modern synth sounds – which I figured meant I was half way to having created a soundset for release.

Regen’s sound will appeal to those who have enjoyed my Zebra Lazarus series, and enjoy the electronic scoring of artists like Michael McCann, Sascha Dikiciyan and Pawel Blaszczak.

One thing I’m looking at doing in 2024 and beyond is to release a few extra, smaller soundsets. Either more niche inspirations, or for synths that don’t have so many soundsets for them – wherever the mod may take me, I guess!

Filterscape VA Regen feels like the first in this series and I hope you dig it and it inspires you to use Filterscape more, or maybe even inspires you to buy it, if you don’t already have it!