Mutations

At the click of a button, instantly create variations of any patch – from Subtle to Extreme. Every mutation you generate is automatically saved, and you can easily come back to them later. Mutations is a feature only present in the Mini Patch Browser.

Using Mutations

When you load a sound and click “Mutate,” a new Patch is created by changing the wavetables or Soundsources that were originally used. Each new “mutation” is automatically saved with a new name in a date-stamped folder inside the “Mutations” directory. New mutations are instantly selected, and you can keep clicking on “Mutate” to take those sounds even further. The more you mutate a Patch, the more complex and different the resulting sound will be from the original. You can create as many mutations as you want—it’s fun and can be addictive!

NOTE: Whenever the Mutate button is pressed, the description, along with any tags from the original Patch, are automatically cleared except for the Author tag. A “Mutation” tag is added as a Co-Author. You can edit these tags by clicking the “Edit Tags” Button in the Full Browser Footer and opening the Tag Editor.

If you want to return to the original sound to compare with the mutations, or to start again and see which new direction it will take, simply click the Back button to load the original.

To return to the mutated patches, select the Mutations directory to listen to sounds from previous Mutation sessions.

*You can edit the mutations as you create them, so every new mutation gets closer to the sound you are after. For example, as you are mutating an ARP+BPM patch, you may find that a sparser Arpeggiator pattern may work better with the sonic changes introduced with the most recent mutation, so before clicking “Mutate” again, adjust the pattern accordingly.

Organizing the Mutations Directory

After creating many mutations, you may want to remove the ones you won’t use or reorganize the Mutations directory. You can do that by navigating to:

• STEAM / Omnisphere / Settings Library / Patches / Mutations.

Using the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, you can delete, move, and rename patches. Then, use the Refresh for Omnisphere to display your changes.

*You can also use the Hide Patches feature to manage Patch visibility in the Mutations list, by hiding or unhiding Patches from the Browser.

How are Mutations created?

The main method Omnisphere uses to create mutations is to intelligently swap the wavetables and Soundsources used in a Patch.

From the pull-down menu next to the Mutate button, you can select two mutation levels— Default and Extreme.

• Default is a perfect way to quickly spice up a Patch by using a smaller pool of sources that are related to the original sounds used.
• Extreme takes the mutations much further by expanding the pool of sources it will randomize.
• Core Library Only limits Mutate to select Soundsources that appear only in the Omnisphere Core Library. When unchecked, Mutate will search through any Soundsources in your STEAM folder, including those from Satellite Instruments, Sonic Extensions, and your own audio.

NOTE: The PHRASES Category of Soundsources is excluded except when “Extreme” is selected in the pull-down menu.

*“Core Library Only” is also useful when sharing Patches with other Omnisphere users who do not own any Satellite instruments or Sonic Extensions.

The more mutations you create for a single patch, the more complex it gets, as Omniphsere starts to gradually add layers until all four layers of a patch are used.