When do you turn to fm synthesis?

deadly_habit · Post by **deadly_habit** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:45 am

yea i'm snagging the kawai pop synth module for cheap
has some real nice sounding pad and string tones and electronic piano ones
the actual piano emulation patches sound so offbase they def can be used in edm which is great
same with the drum kits

the dub lemon · Post by **the dub lemon** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:48 am

Deadly Habit wrote:bell tones, digital sounding harshness, hell my bassline in pusherman is a mod an fm8 patch

I just check the tune, nice. I'm wandering though are the wobble done by oscillating the the filter (operator Z) or did you use an external filter or did you do it using fm alone?

deadly_habit · Post by **deadly_habit** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:51 am

external filter
simplon i think
all hand drawn automation using cubase tools and my wacom

deadly_habit · Post by **deadly_habit** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:55 am

yep def an essential for us automation junkies

abZ · Post by **abZ** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 2:00 am

This thread is too cack for me I am going to go make a sine wave

grooki · Post by **grooki** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:35 am

innnttteeeeerrssstttting

grooki · Post by **grooki** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:36 am

oops

Brisance · Post by **Brisance** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:18 am

Where might I find the aforementioned cack, Mr Dreadly Hobbit?

Genevieve · Post by **Genevieve** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:31 am

Genevieve wrote:Been wanting to try FM for months now. I suck at sound design and basic subtractive synthesis... I can't make anything sound good (though I can dissect things by ear). =/ Which is something I've been struggling with for a bit more than 6 months now... ..but FM seems to be an entirely different animal. I just wanna give it a shot, see what I can accomplish with it.

What's a good VST that has lots of tutorials available? I know of FM8, but is it recommended?

Hotdamn, I got the FM8 demo and it sounds goooooooood. You can do all sorts of shits with it. I'm just improvising, mostly. It's more intricate than FAW Circle and shit, of course (my main synth, I guess).

I was wondering.. how important is knowing the math behind FM synthesis? Any good step-by-step tutorials for FM newbies?

hurlingdervish · Post by **hurlingdervish** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Genevieve wrote:
Hotdamn, I got the FM8 demo and it sounds goooooooood. You can do all sorts of shits with it. I'm just improvising, mostly. It's more intricate than FAW Circle and shit, of course (my main synth, I guess).

I was wondering.. how important is knowing the math behind FM synthesis? Any good step-by-step tutorials for FM newbies?

alright so you have a chain of OSC A to B to C to D

Imagine that A is just a normal sound but B,C, and D are like LFO's affecting that sound

the higher the volume on the latter parts of the chain, the more it affects A

however they arent low frequency oscillators, they are high frequency

if you tune the B oscillator down to .01 multi you can get a pitch wobble on A, if you experiment turning this up you can see the effect it has

Genevieve · Post by **Genevieve** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 2:34 pm

hurlingdervish wrote:
Genevieve wrote:
Hotdamn, I got the FM8 demo and it sounds goooooooood. You can do all sorts of shits with it. I'm just improvising, mostly. It's more intricate than FAW Circle and shit, of course (my main synth, I guess).

I was wondering.. how important is knowing the math behind FM synthesis? Any good step-by-step tutorials for FM newbies?
alright so you have a chain of OSC A to B to C to D

Imagine that A is just a normal sound but B,C, and D are like LFO's affecting that sound

the higher the volume on the latter parts of the chain, the more it affects A

however they arent low frequency oscillators, they are high frequency

if you tune the B oscillator down to .01 multi you can get a pitch wobble on A, if you experiment turning this up you can see the effect it has

Yeaaah, thanks, but I totally got that. I know that.... one oscillators affects the other, when you have one oscillator with a sine routed into another, you're multiplying sine waves with each other, the rate of which increases when you increase the volume of the oscillator that affects the other.

My point was more like.. there's some math involved and I'm curious how much the theory (the math in this case) is of importance when it comes to understanding FM synthesis.

deadly_habit · Post by **deadly_habit** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:45 am

nowaysj wrote:There are likely many paths to understanding FM. How necessary the math is... I don't know? I'd wager that you can do it w/o the math.

good luck with that

gravity · Post by **gravity** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:48 am

nowaysj wrote:There are likely many paths to understanding FM. How necessary the math is... I don't know? I'd wager that you can do it w/o the math.

the maths behind fm is fucking complex. you dont really need to know it, its mostly baffling tbh. look here if you're really interested though: http://cnx.org/content/m15482/latest/

rekall · Post by **rekall** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:56 am

good luck finding a used fs1r -- anyone who's got one isn't letting it go.

there isn't really a bad time to use fm synthesis.
once you add filters into the mix it's the same as anything else, imho.
oscillator(s) + filter = subtractive.
even a monosynth using a ring mod is a 2-osc fm synth
(ring mod = fancy for 'multiplier' in fm)

deadly_habit · Post by **deadly_habit** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 11:12 pm

maybe it's because i'm an ex comp sci and programming geek but if you want total control and understanding of fm some basic math knowledge is key and the formulas behind it all

rekall · Post by **rekall** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:32 am

fm in a nutshell (for 'visual' fm synths i.e. employing a multi-point envelope)...

- you can have 1 or more oscillators
- each oscillator has an initial setting for frequency, volume, wave shape (sine, sawtooth, triangle, noise)
- each oscillator is modified by a volume envelope and a pitch envelope
- (additionally a low-frequency oscillator, lfo, may further modify volume and/or pitch)
- the intensity/volume of an oscillator at any given time is its base volume multiplied by the current position in the volume envelope
- the tone/pitch of an oscillator works similarly, based on the initial frequency setting
- based on the carrier/modulator model, an oscillator's output is either mixed with a neighboring oscillator or multiplied by the output that came before it

and that's actually about it, really.
(and here's the obligatory wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_synthesis )

When do you turn to fm synthesis?

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