TC WORKS Mercury-1

May 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By Randy Alberts

Mercury-1's all-too-brief user manual leaves plenty to the imagination, but maybe that's exactly what TC Works intended. The software's virtual front panel (which begs comparison to the Roland SH-1's) is loaded with enough sliders, buttons, and knobs — 41, but who's counting? — to turn even first-time synth tweakers into satisfied patch programmers. Even the tweak-phobic will find it easy and fun to dial up and play the bass, lead, percussion, and space-sound presets provided with this dual-oscillator, monophonic, analog-modeled synth.

Mercury-1 works on both Macs and PCs (minimum requirements, respectively: G3, 64 MB of RAM, and Mac OS 8.6; Pentium II, 64 MB of RAM, and Windows 95 or NT) and provides the same basic analog building blocks that countless vintage monophonic synths have used over the years. If you can't get what you want out of its two synchable oscillators, filter section with cutoff and resonance, two ADSR envelopes, synchable LFO, portamento, and pair of kick-ass pitch-bend and mod wheels, maybe you should try origami as a hobby instead.

Once you're past Mercury-1's mandatory registration and challenge-response process, you can access the plug-in from within the VST instruments panel. When you select the plug-in, it pops up with its all-business dark gray front panel, large vertical sliders, and compact three-octave keyboard and pitch-mod wheels. Moving the faders and adjusting the four silver waveform-selector knobs is easy on a 17-inch monitor. Mercury-1's handy file-tab interface along the display's top edge provides access to the synth's four multitimbral parts. Simple controls make it a breeze to audition, mute, solo, transpose, and pan parts on four MIDI channels or stack all four on one channel for some of the thickest synth tones around — especially wild for bass lines. Triggering each of the latter voices according to velocity and/or key range is easy, too — so much so that you could momentarily forget that Mercury-1 is actually monophonic.

Mercury-1's patch list provides many noteworthy presets. If you're checking out the 21-day demo version, go straight to SQ Filterl, a snappy one-finger sequence generator; the wicked drum machine patches like Dr. C Kik 2; and the bowel-massaging, inappropriately titled Subtle Sub, which produces low-end rumbles I didn't know my small monitors were capable of reproducing.

Even though Mercury-1 is monophonic, it allows you to dedicate four plug-ins to four MIDI channels to play a multitimbral bass line; an electro kick, snare, or tom; and a Moogish lead line all at once. Mercury-1 provides a great foundation for creating your own songs — use it along with a polyphonic virtual synthesizer and you'll have everything you need to make full and rich-sounding tracks.

Whether you're a seasoned synth nut or just getting into synthesis for the first time, Mercury-1 provides a knockout sonic punch that uses the same essential synth building blocks that taught and inspired the likes of Joe Zawinul, Rick Wakeman, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, and the Orb.

Randy Alberts is a musician, writer, and audio engineer exploring music and recording technology in his studio in Pacifica, California.

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