Plugins and VST synths may have perks, but nothing can match hardware gear regarding warmth, character, and spontaneity. And no other synth offers more of this than the timeless Access Virus TI Desktop synth.
This synthesizer is their go-to weapon for the melodic techno group Agents of Time. Utilizing it for anything from soaring leads in their productions to fast-and-easy sounds in their live sets, these guys know this synth like the back of their hand.
So to celebrate the release of their album, we decided to bring these guys on and chat about how they get the most out of this timeless piece of hardware.
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Stream Agents Of Time’s Universo Below
Universo is a sonic representation of the world the Italian-techno duo has made for themselves. It is a world of dynamic hardware and fluid instrumentation that can only be best experienced through listening to the album.
Spanning a wide range of genres and styles, this album runs the gamut of what’s possible in dance music today and truly represents these guys’ mastery over their craft.
Universo is a fiercely beautiful album, brave in its spirit, a perfectly poised meeting point of pop melody, and stylish, lush techno: Agents Of Time in perfect form.
What makes the Virus TI Desktop your favorite tool for producing music?
The size of the musical instrument, combined with the countless functions and the many knobs on it, make this gear very unique.
We have used Virus TI Desktop for all the top melodies of our tracks for many years, and we cannot give it up. It’s also a reference point for our live show.
Which parameters on the Virus TI Desktop are your favorite to modulate to create complex synth patches fast?
The way you can combine different oscillators to create more complex sounds is simply great.
During the sound design in the studio for sure the interaction between the three oscillators (we mostly like saw waves combined with sine waves) with the addition of the sub-oscillator and the noise modulation gives us a vibrant and defined sound we can easily use for our melodic parts.
The most interesting parameter in recent times is the portamento, which makes the sound more eventful. We also like to exasperate this knob during the live act, especially during the drop!
When do you most often reach for your Virus TI Desktop compared to other studio tools?
We are very selective in purchasing our tools, so we buy musical instruments that we are sure can offer us what we want.
While making music, we used our Virus for the main melody of the track 9 times out of 10 because, over the years, we made a catalog of our sound (initial patch modified that became part of the entire recognizable AOT sound).
It’s hard to say how often we use the Virus compared to other studio gears because it depends more on which part we are searching for (pads instead of leads or bassline), but for sure, when we need a top melody, we immediately switch on our baby to help manifest what we have in our minds!
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Which plugins are your favorite for processing sounds from the Virus TI Desktop?
We are pretty satisfied with all the effects included in the hardware. The reverb and the delay are incredibly detailed, and we like to have them active during the recording session.
After that, we give extra warmth to the sound using plug-ins like Tantra (mostly when we have sequences) or Thermal to add more distortion to the sound.
We also use plug-ins like Echoboy (for an extra delay combined with the one from the Virus) and Crystallizer (this one to transform our sound through the use of different pitches), and to bring our melody or pads or sound in general from the Virus to another dimension we add Portal to make a more granular sound!
Tell me about a feature of the Virus TI Desktop that you wish you had started using sooner in your career.
Well, it’s hard to say. Every time we buy a synth, we try to spend at least one week reading the manual and watching YouTube videos to get the most out of it.
The reason is that when we started incorporating the Virus into our productions, we already understood the gear inside and out. Perhaps the thing we could have done sooner in our career was to start creating our personal sound from the initial patch instead of using the existing patch saved in the synth’s internal memory.
Even though it is a longer process, it is more satisfying this way, and every sound is modeled and created with a specific imprint…your imprint! We only started doing this in the last 2-3 years when we could have done it sooner.
Of course, this can apply to every synth, but we think the Virus has incredible potential for creating compelling sounds.
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Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
