“Not an instrument for the impatient and unforgiving”: Soma Laboratory’s Lyra-4 is a feral, affordable, drone monster£362 / $450 / €360, somasynths.com 
Who doesn’t love a good drone?
It’s incredible how much can be contained in the simple ringing-out of a few notes, or even just one. The exact timbre, gentle movement or how much dissonance there is between notes can communicate so much about the emotion, intention and style of a composition. Arguably, the company at the forefront of drone instruments is Soma Laboratory. You may have even spotted the company’s Lyra-8 in an Apple promo video a few years back.

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But niche, bespoke instruments like this can be pricey, with Lyra-8 clocking in at $800. Now, Soma has introduced a little sibling, Lyra-4 which, as you might have guessed, has half the voices, but also only costs $450.
Lyra-4 has four voices but, unlike your typical synthesizer, there’s no traditional keyboard. In fact, it’s not even pre-tuned to the Western equal temperament scale you’re probably accustomed to. Each voice is tuned manually using an unquantised knob, allowing you to explore microtonality and dissonance. But you can also just tune everything to octaves and fifths and play it safe, too.
The trick here is, of course, that you have to tune it yourself and it can be pretty fickle. If you plan to use Lyra-4 in combination with other melodic instruments, you’re gonna need a precise ear to ensure they’re in tune with each other. And even then, you’ll want to be aware that the oscillators on the Lyra can interact in unpredictable ways and have a tendency to drift. This is not an instrument for the impatient and unforgiving.
Our audio demos below should give you a strong idea of how gnarly this synth can get within a matter of seconds.

Taming the untamable
The raw sound of the oscillators is rich, but not in a way that might feel familiar. It has more in common with the unstable tones of early electronic music experiments than it does with the thick analogue titans we’re used to. Almost everything about this instrument feels like it was inspired more by the test equipment-equipped studios of the 50s and 60s, like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, rather than a Moog or a Buchla.
Most modern synth conventions are simply thrown out the window. There’s no ADSR envelope (only a fast and slow switch), no filter cutoff, and even familiar modules like the LFO are presented in near-inscrutable ways. There are countless opportunities for feedback loops and self-oscillation, and the entire sound design philosophy here is about exploring the unpredictable results of smashing two barely-contained analogue signals into each other. The Lyra series is Soma Laboratory fully embracing the ‘labs’ part of its name.
What elevates Lyra from a simple noise maker to a future classic space drone machine is how all the individual pieces come together. It’s the way the effects of the modulator decrease in FM mode as the envelope decays. It’s the way two voices rub against each other creating new harmonic (and inharmonic) tones due to the inability for them to be accurately in tune with each other. It’s the tortured howls you get from cranking the distortion and delay. And it’s the sci-fi sound effects you get from pitting the various modulation sources against each other.
Image: Terrence O’Brien
All of these parts are meant to be played, to be interactive. Lyra isn’t the sort of instrument where you dial in a patch, pick your modulation settings, set your delay levels and play a melody. The movement and musicality come as much from turning the knobs and flipping the switches as it does from triggering notes.
With multiple modulation sources, a brutal distortion circuit and lo-fi delay, Lyra-4 has an ample array of sound shaping processes built in. But if you want to try and tame some of its more barbed qualities, external effects are a must. On its own Lyra doesn’t really do gentle particularly well, but with some fully-wet reverb and creamy chorus you can create atmospheres that are destined for the next instalment in the Alien franchise.
Visceral hardware
The hardware is also an integral part of the Lyra-4 experience. For one, it is a substantial instrument that matches its heavyweight sound. It’s all metal, with sturdy knobs and switches that deliver a satisfying thunk when flipped. But just as important are the four sensors for triggering the voices. They consist of a pair of contacts and you have to physically close the circuit between them by touching them (or laying something conductive on top of them like a coin). Because you’re literally closing an electrical circuit, the way you touch those contacts, and even the moisture on your skin, impacts how the note sounds. This is the closest a synthesizer gets to recreating the interaction you get with a stringed instrument like a guitar or violin.
Image: Terrence O’Brien
Add to this the fact that Lyra-4 is a noisy beast and you have one of the most visceral instruments available today. It crackles with life even when you’re not touching it. Lower voices bleed in when you trigger the higher-pitched ones. Soma Labs describes both Lyras as ‘organismic’ synthesizers, their design inspired by the nervous systems of living things. Inside is a chaotic network of interconnected parts that, on their own, might seem familiar to your average synth enthusiast, but the final product is something uncontrollable.
Sure, you can try to shepherd the Lyra-4 to where you want it, but ultimately it’s going to do what it wants to do. You can’t even use the CV input on the back to play specific notes, and instead, it simply replaces the LFO as a modulation source for your voices.
For some of you, this will sound like an absolute nightmare. Less like an instrument, and more like a failed assemblage of components that has aspirations to synthdom. Lyra undoubtedly won’t be for everyone, and if it’s not for you there’s no shame in that. For others, though, the allure will be undeniable.
Lyra-4 is feral and physical in a way that other synths can only dream of being. And, unlike its bigger sibling, it’s priced so that even drone fiends on a budget can indulge their wild side.

Key features

4 freely-tunable analogue oscillators
Organ and FM synthesis modes
Complex dual LFO
Hold / drone mode
Digital delay with modulation
Analogue distortion
Vibrato
2 CV inputs
Dimensions: 241 х 203 х 62 mm
Weight: 1.2 kg

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