flux wrote:
Yeah. Most of the time I just make patches without any plan in mind. Most of the stuff never ends up in a song, but it's fun to play with my toys. I used VSTs for ages but it wasn't until I got a hardware synth that I really learned about sound synthesis and design.
Bar analogue synthesis most of the time I'm just twiddling knobs at random until I hear something I like. Much prefer hardware (apart from on my SY22, much easier to use SY Edit) and have had a fair few hardware synths in the past, but always have to sell them to fund getting another one. Would there be any advantage in getting a hardware FM synth over software? I've looked at a couple but the button menus and tiny LCDs make me think no.
Thanks, downloaded. From a quick look I'm still as clueless, but I downloaded the tutorial video too.
louisg wrote:
It's not too bad, but it takes a little practice. Start with a pair of operators first, and then slowly add more to get a feel for it. Just a quickie run-down: when one operator is at 1x frequency ("modulation") and the operator feeding into it is at 1x, you get sawish sounds. If the operator feeding into it is at 2x frequency, you get squareish sounds. Adding feedback makes the sound "sharper"-- you can get almost a pure saw, or almost a pure square, or noise, out of that. I think a common beginner mistake though is to make the operator that feeds into the other (the 'modulator') too high of a volume.. this makes it very tinny and hard to hear what you're doing.
BTW if you need a few FM VST, try VOPM
Thanks for explaining it. My problem with FM might be because a few of the introductions and tutorial's language on it baffle me a bit too, perhaps because I'm so used to using analogue emulations. Yours I can understand though
I downloaded VOPM a while back actually, but not given it much of a go yet. Reason being as I've been without monitors for several months now - the crappy PC speakers I have now drive me nuts, especially as having a mobile anywhere near them causes them to go doolah. Not handy when my PC is on a mobile broadband dongle. Mentioned I ordered some new monitors, buggers still haven't come nearly a month after paying so I've asked for a refund. I'm thinking I'm going to put my budget at a bit over £100 this time and get some slightly better (second hand) ones. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would need to be active and near-field as my pc room has a terrible shape.