A light hits the gloom on the grey
The year is 1996. At the 38th Annual Grammy Awards, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill pulls away as the biggest winner of the year with four awards. Outside of the singer's awards, the success story of the night belonged to UK artist Seal and his wins of the coveted Record of the Year and Song of the Year titles. The singer, established on the UK Singles chart but a relative newcomer to the North American market, broke through with his song "Kiss from a Rose," a pop classic today first gaining mainstream popularity from its appearances in the films Batman: Forever and The NeverEnding Story III.
What is a "kiss from a rose," though, really? Famously elusive regarding the meaning of its metaphor, the singer has since only alluded to a passionate relationship as inspirational to the song.
"Kiss from a Rose" is a famously theatrical pop ballad. While the specific meaning of its namesake has yet to be defined, its impassioned musicality and performance surely must inform what a kiss from a rose feels like. What does it mean? Not sure. But this is how it feels.
On the docket today, we're talking about a similar kind of phenomenon. What is resonant string synthesis? Well, we'll get there. Moreover, this is how it feels.
This is the Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer.
By Any Other Name
Introducing the Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer
If you're seeking out musical devices that have got that element of je ne sais quoi like Seal's "Kiss from a Rose," you're sure to be pleased with Oakland, California's Vongon. Homing in on a specific era in music gear where digital designs were first on the scene and analog designs were becoming all the more complex and robust, Vongon flourishes. The late '70s and early '80s were a pretty pivotal time for music gear, and that's the niche Vongon slots into with vintage-inspired designs loaded with truly unique sounds.
The Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer is Vongon's latest matte-black, walnut-block creation. After a couple exciting releases like the Solarfaze Multi-Band Saturation and Paragraphs II Resonant Low Pass Filter, Vongon sets out on resonant string synthesis with the Rosetones. This unique synthesizer effect summons intriguing harmonic gusts of colorful, resonating string tones with deep playability and customization. Putting forward a hard-to-define yet unmistakable sound, the Rosetones is an expressive, captivating, and lush effect pedal readymade to check plenty of musical boxes.
Let's talk about it.
Rose-Colored World
Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer Design and Controls
The central experience of the Rosetones bases itself around resonant string synthesis wherein a bank of twelve synthesized strings reactively produce resonating synthesizer tones. This kind of synthesizing inspires bold, bright washes of synth tones that leap off the page, so to say, for a different of a synth sound that is all but promised to make a musical statement. Let's talk about these strings and how we can tune them.
Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer Controls
The Rosetones shapes its twelve-string synth bank pretty easily for an experience quickly inspirational. Here's how.
- Sens – With the Rosetones, we're dealing with a pretty simple equation for stoking our synthetic flame. Plug in any instrument and roll through its Sensitivity control to make your bank of twelve synthesized strings more or less reactive to your input. This plays right into its matching control...
- Feedback – Directly related to the Sensitivity dial, the Rosetones' Feedback control harnesses the amount of resonant feedback in the effect – clockwise for more, counterclockwise for less. Turn this up to welcome louder, more drastic bursts of resonant synthesis and roll it back for a more humble glow. Sensitivity and Feedback being independent controls make for an effect level control scheme that mixes and melds with instrument input, playability style, and more. Especially when considering...
- Mix – That's right. On top of individual controls for the pedal's input sensitivity and output feedback, a wet mix control mixes in the resonant string synthesis alongside your unaffected clean signal. This third element means that, once again, the Rosetones is a very playable and versatile effect for any number of use cases – no matter the instrument, playing style, or place for the effect in a mix.
Beyond our basic level-shaping controls, the Rosetones continues on with some equally intuitive controls for bringing the effect to new musical conclusions altogether.
- Tone – A pretty large part of the Rosetones is its control over its higher, brighter frequencies. Our Tone dial keys in right there to spike or smooth top-end frequencies to make for sharper synth notes or duller, cloudier resonations.
- Octave – In addition to this simple frequency control, a slider Octave control shifts the voicing of the string back towards octave-up or octave-down tones. More on this shortly.
- Modulation – Topping off this tonal shaping, the Rosetones lands with a dedicated Modulation control that swaps between a doubling chorus effect, a pitch vibrato effect, or both at once for an added element of harmonic movement throughout the pedal's twelve synthesized strings.
With all that, let's talk about some sounds and what playing the Rosetones is really like.
La Vie En Rose
Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer Tones and Playability
The Vongon Rosetones is an incredibly unique synthesizer effect. While it may seem imposing from its unconventional design and less-than-traditional baseline tone, the Rosetones blooms quickly into something effortlessly musical.
At the heart of the Rosetones is, again, a twelve-string resonator bank. Visually translated by the pedal's twelve-LED light display on its front plate, these strings sing interactively on a per-string basis with a deeply expressive voices all adding up to a robust symphony of synthesis. The Rosetones quickly presents something of a fork in the road, where two of its main tonal paths include a full-on synthesized chorus ensemble and a fiercely unique string lead line.
A Billowing BouquetPart of the Rosetones' allure is the utility of playing its twelve strings altogether with full, breathy chords. Take a dramatic strum and hear the Rosetones respond with a bold, resonant response. This angle of attack makes quick work of the Rosetones as a soundscaping tool, where formidable synthesized pads create whistling, interweaving sheets or rumbling, grumbling undercurrents in relation to your octave positions. Take to the pedal's Tone and Octave controls to fully explore this hemisphere of the Rosetones and get symphonic with it.
A Phantom ThreadToward another side of the Rosetones, the pedal makes for an exceptionally expressive synthesizer to infuse your lead lines with harrowing, ghostly character. This is where the Rosetones comes into its own as a unique instrument, where its string bank sings with animated, vivacious musicality landing somewhere in a realm crossed between a vintage synthesizer and a cinematic string section.
Either one of these paths become all the more inspiring with the pedal's onboard Modulation and Tone controls. Smoothing over the Rosetones' strings with its Tone dial slips it right into any ambient soundscape track* while infusing distinct chorus effects lands it in a shimmery, doubletracked sphere that can play along to jangling strums responsively. No matter where you turn with the Rosetones, Vongon presents a lively synth experience full of character with no wrong answers.
Additionally made so easy with its wet/dry Mix control
Simply Rosy
Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer Further Functions
As is with every Vongon design it seems, we have a few bells and whistles to run down that put the Rosetones over the top.
- Selectable Gain Modes – Like Vongon's other pedals, the Rosetones is friendly to so many different types of instrument. Plug in a guitar, bass, synth, drum machine, you name it, and it plays swimmingly. To accommodate this, the Rosetones features selectable gain modes to match the input gain of different common sources for different instrument and line level-type sources.
- Selectable True or Buffered Bypass – For all the studio rats constantly building out their motherboard rig, the Rosetones features selectable true or buffered bypass switching that allows it to play right into whatever switching scheme fits your fancy.
- MIDI Control and Presets – Always so technologically sharp, the Rosetones includes a pretty standard offering in Vongon pedals: 1/8" MIDI control connection. Again for those studio rats and MIDI fiends, the Rosetones can be controlled via 1/8" MIDI input. Bonus points for an onboard preset bank available via this MIDI access.
- Standard Power Requirements – Finally, putting the power certainly in the players' hands, the Rosetones features standard nine-volt center negative power requirements at a reasonable 200mA minimum. Whether you're a pedalboard warrior or a MIDI mad scientist, the Rosetones is ready.
Vongon Rosetones Resonant String Synthesizer Final Thoughts
Once again, Vongon proves they've got the stuff in terms of retro-style musicality, unique design, and intuitive, inspirational musicality. The Rosetones does so much to make for a resonant string synth experience that is easy to pick up and hard to put down. Easily operable through a quick control interface that inspires captivating sweet spots and long jam sessions, the Rosetones bridges big gaps for guitar players looking for a synth pedal and synth players looking for that special kind of musical immediacy. Vongon checks so many boxes with the Rosetones. A cinematic string synthesizer, a luscious, off-kilter chorus, a Pandora's Box of otherworldly resonations? Check, check, check.
Maybe we'll never know what a kiss from a rose means. But like Bastian and Batman, we certainly have an idea of how it feels.
