Korg Forums

[Megakazbek]

[McHale]

[BillW]

[peter_schwartz]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the kind words about my sounds. At the moment I don't have plans for creating sound libraries for the Kronos, but I've got some other plans in mind...

As far as your difficulty in understanding how FM works, my bestest advice is to try what I suggested in my previous post: start off with an initialized patch (or one that's pared down to the bare bones), start with one carrier and one modulator, and start listening to the effect of the different ratios of modulator frequencies with a carrier frequency remaining at "1". You don't even have to know the science of how FM works so much as just using your ears. So...

If your carrier is at a frequency of "1" and your modulator is also set to "1", increase the output of the modulator gradually. You'll hear the sound change from a sine wave (the carrier's "native" sound) to something more complex. Then slowly turn the output down to zero. Now you're back to hearing a sine wave. Next, set the modulator's frequency to "2" and repeat the exercise. You'll start out hearing a sine wave but as you increase the modulator's output the sound will become more complex, and with a very different timbre to what you heard previously.

Repeat the experiment with modulator frequencies of 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on.
That exercise should give you a good head-start.

Cheers,

Peter

[synthguy]

Among the many reasons I wanted to get a PC3 - late Kronos, wanting something with better sound than my aging K2000R, PC3 looking increasingly discontinued, wanting something powerful NOW - is to explore the FM-ish side of VAST. It's been somewhat very gratifying, but mostly an exercise in floundering and frustration. Rather than discreet Yamaha-style FM, you have to jump through hoops and use DIST(ortion) and (wave)SHAPER objects on some sort of raw wave sample, and boy, every step is a shot in the dark, and God only knows what you'll end up with. I often have to tweak an existing patch to end up anywhere near my target sound.

If some of you guys have bad dreams about programming FM parches, you haven't seen a true living nightmare... Good grief, sometimes assigning controllers to do something as simple as a footswitch to toggle Leslie speed is a migraine inducing struggle.

Fortunately, I'm slowly - very slowly - coming to terms with this monster, but I am SO looking forward to something as simple and straightforward as MOD 7! And AL-1. And... heck, everything!

I do love (hate) the PC3... no, seriously, I do love it, but summer can't get here fast enough. I need me a KRONOS!

As for the SOS article, I'm kind of in-between Peter and Kevin on it. I can sot of understand Kev's side. Poking through the OASYS tutorials, the thing is insanely deep, and considering that there are still keyboard players who couldn't come to terms with a Prophet 5, I have no doubt that AL-1 seems as obscure as FM to many. However, I'm a Peter, Thomas Dolby kind of guy. I'm a tweaker, a sound maker and mangler. The Kronos looks like tweaker heaven to me. I can hardly wait to dive into that screen head first - OUCH!
_________________
PRAY FOR THIS PLANET!!

[peter_schwartz]

Some advice regarding how "deep" a synthesizer can be.

Synthesizers are only as deep as you want them to be.

I'm dead nuts serious about that. Not being smarmy here or, as Kevin very kindly suggested, taking my own expertise for granted. Here's an analogy:

Ever see a 96-input (or more) SSL console? (See this link for a picture). Looks intimidating, right? Well, would it make it any easier for you to know that pretty much every channel is exactly the same? So if you focus on learning how one channel works, you've now learned how all of them work.

If you take the same approach with analog synthesizers you'll have the same luck learning how they work. Forgetting about MOD-7 or STR-1 for a second and just looking at analog synthesizers like AL-1, MS-20, and P6, here's a secret...

They're ALL the same.

OK, I'll be a little less cryptic, but equally as truthful: they all share the same fundamental subtractive synthesis architecture with Moog, Oberheim, ARP, Dave Smith Instruments, the John Bowen Solaris, CS-80, and... well, the list is endless. In short, when you come right down to it...

They're ALL the same.

They just sound different from one another. Some have a greater or fewer number of bells and whistles than others. But they all operate on exactly the same principle, and architecture:

OSCILLATOR--->FILTER--->AMPLIFIER

Now you know the fundamentals of ANY analog synth on the planet. Any one, including AL-1, MS-20, P6, and even HD-1 because it follows the subtractive synthesis principle too. It's just that its oscillators are PCM playback of sampled waveforms and not the simple geometrically shaped waveforms of synthesizers.

And... to a certain extent, now you know a bit more about STR-1 and MOD-7 too, because aside from the unique way in which they produce sound (which is very different from analog synths), they each have a filter and an amplifier too.

Hope that gets some of you to be a little closer to understanding how these things work, especially analog synths, because (repeat after me):

"They're all the same".

Regards,

PS

[EXer]

Yes, they're all the same. You know one, you know them all.

That's what my ex-wife used to say.

What? Wasn't she talking about synths?

[ozy]

[jimknopf]

I would add modulation to the basic picture (meaning anything from LFO to Mod Matrix)

OSCILLATOR--->FILTER--->MODULATION --->AMPLIFIER

You can easily find that basic layout on the surface of anything from a Minimoog to an Access Virus TI2, including subtractive synthesis softsynths.

[peter_schwartz]

[jimknopf]

Peter, I didn't think of the right place in the chain technically, but I wanted the complete picture as you use in on all subtractive synth surfaces.

So I stay corrected and you put it where you want it.

[EvilDragon]

It would likely be something like this:

[peter_schwartz]

Yup! Exactly!

[EvilDragon]

My fav would actually be:

[peter_schwartz]

You're limited only by your imagination and the ability to draw diagrams using ASCII characters!