Arturia Pigments 7 review: “Almost a no-brainer at $199”

$199 ($99 introductory price)
Free upgrade for existing users
arturia.com

Pigments has become a crucial synthesizer for Arturia since its release in 2018. Although the French manufacturer had built such a stellar reputation with its analogue modelling technology and plugin recreations of classic synths, Pigments represented a move away from this comfort zone, and is now essential to Arturia’s identity.

• READ MORE: Korg Collection 6 is immensely powerful — but it’s also inconsistent

Rather than an exclusive focus on one type of synthesis, Pigments is a platform that lets you combine a wide range of sound generation and shaping tools. It offers virtual-analogue, wavetable, granular, harmonic, and modal synthesis as well as complex modulation shaping, while remaining musical to the touch and never feeling too technical or too sound design-y.

For that reason, Pigments is a go-to production tool for music producers. Its strength lies in the combination of a diverse but not intimidating sound library and a visually orientated interface that allows you to quickly familiarise yourself with the inner workings of each patch. Meanwhile, although there is some feature overlap with competitors like Serum and Falcon, there is no doubt that Pigments has its own sonic identity and unique workflow characteristics.

Pigments 7 brings creative immediacy through its intuitive workflow and sonic potential, which allows you to approach it with a specific idea or goal in mind or collaborate with the different areas of the platform to discover something new and unexpected. The combination of seamless UX design and an extensive sound palette makes Pigments 7 a worthy choice for almost any application.

Pigments basics

At 1.9 GB, Pigments 7 couldn’t be easier to install with the help of Arturia Software Center. However, like many flagship softs synths, Pigments’ recommended specs are exaggerated. Due to the load put on your CPU when running even basic patches, I’d recommend at least 16 GB RAM instead of the 4 GB stated by Arturia. When you open Pigments, the first thing you’ll notice is the Play View, offering access to essential synth controls, macros, and effects. This provides an intuitive way to interact with sounds on a basic level without having to navigate the complexity of the Synth View.

When you do decide to brave the unknown, the helpful Sound Design Tips provide info about each control you interact with, and the Edit Tips even suggest the optimum parameter range for getting the most expressive sound in a particular patch. What’s more, if you open the Settings tab, you can access tutorials to guide you through the various sections and new features of Pigments 7, and a cleverly curated list of sound design tutorials.

This immediately makes me look at Pigments through a different lens. With these well-written descriptions and guides, there is no excuse for treating Pigments like a glorified sound library, no matter your previous experience level. Admittedly, I find the patch browser a little fiddly when it comes to filtering sound categories. However, once I get more comfortable, it’s easy to cherry-pick through the 1,800 included patches (with 150 new additions for Pigments 7), and the algorithmic Similar Presets feature is useful for narrowing down search results.

Furthermore, if you’re looking for sounds for a specific application, such as motion picture score or game sound design, the Arturia Sound Store opens up a world of creative options from top artists and sound designers. While the detailed descriptions help you contextualise each sound, each collection becomes an investment in your journey towards specialisation in a particular music production discipline or genre.

Deeper shades of Pigments

When you want to dive deeper into sound creation, the Synth View’s intuitive layout with drag-and-drop modulation routing makes it easy to animate almost any parameter. As most parts of Pigments can be bypassed individually, fact-finding missions are straightforward when you want to know exactly how each section is affecting the sound.

The basic workflow moves from the sound generation section on the top left with engine-specific controls and processors, to the dual filter section on the top right with an array of analogue and digital filter types. From the bottom left of the interface, you can access the shapers and modulation sources, including the basics like envelopes and LFOs, as well as functions for advanced time-based control, random generators, and combinators for adding complex modifiers to mod paths.

If you use an MPE controller, Pigments can harness its expression parameters and elevate your sounds with performance-based control and macros. Although modulation assignment is straightforward, the more advanced modulation features require a little more technical understanding. However, if you have an idea or a sonic goal in mind, you are more likely to learn on the go by working towards it rather than noodling fruitlessly in the interface without any particular direction. In addition, aspects like modulation functions have presets that you can flip through quickly to gauge the type of sounds possible with the different types of graphs and function modes.

As Arturia expands Pigments’ capabilities in the future, I can certainly see the development team creating a dedicated Modulation View tab, as this would give you a complete overview of your routing matrix and more space to dive into the various modulation features in greater detail. Once you’ve put Pigments through its paces, you’ll notice that the sequencer is without a doubt one of its not-so-secret weapons and the reason it slips so seamlessly into electronic music production workflows.

For starters, the sequencer has its own little preset library for loading a range of sequences and storing your own. Then, you can also choose from a selection of scales, modes, and generative patterns before diving into the sequencer lanes to tweak your pattern. It’s overwhelming at first, but once you take a closer look, you’ll find yourself stumbling upon patterns that simply can’t be created by traditional keyboard playing or MIDI programming.

Why is Pigments such an essential production tool?

With its depth of features, Pigments provides a range of different sound creation methods. If you’re building sounds exclusively with a click-mouse, the fluency of its workflow makes it a sound designer’s dream. For those with keyboard skills and/or fancy MPE controllers, Pigments becomes an expressive traditional instrument and a platform for creating sounds you can play.

On the other end of the spectrum, the powerful generative sequencer has a definite allure for electronic music producers, because it offers an unpredictable source of ideas and patterns that can be shaped to fit in almost any musical context. This means you’ll never run out of ways to use it in your music. Regardless of the kind of synthesis platform you’re used to, you’re bound to get impressive results with Pigments.

When compared to the competition, such as Serum 2 ($249) and UVI Falcon 2026 ($299), Pigments 7 is almost a no-brainer at $199. With its integrated tips and tutorials, it gives you the incentive to gain insight into the different aspects of synthesis and sound design, and with the easy access you have to advanced creative tools, effects, and an endless library of patches in the Arturia Sound Store, it adds a ton of value.

Key features

• Standalone, VST, AU, AAX, NKS
• Multi-engine architecture
• 6 synth engine types
• 2 oscillators
• Dual filter section with 19 filter types and 68 filter modes
• Complex modulation System

The post Arturia Pigments 7 review: “Almost a no-brainer at $199” appeared first on MusicTech.