For most musicians, FM Synthesis is a blessing because the sounds are simply sensational. It all started with the Yamaha DX7, which was a milestone and today has a cult status like the Minimoog. FM sounds are great for all kinds of genres. They can be incredibly dynamic and often have an enormous presence and, above all, character. On the other hand, FM is almost a curse for some people, because creating your own sounds seems quite complicated to them.
So, what to do? Well, you can simply use the presets and only play with them as they are made. That’s a very practical way of dealing with it. So leave the fingers out of the editing? Sure, why not. After all, the manufacturers of FM synthesizers have usually hired people who understand preset making. You can do quite well with it. Especially when there is a range of controllers such as the modulation wheel, aftertouch, control slider or knobs that can be used to modulate a sound in realtime so that you can use it expressively and express your music. Many musicians get on very well with this and you can say: End of story. But what if you are not satisfied despite the many presets in the instrument? Is there something about every sound that bothers you? What can you do? Perhaps you have at least read the operating instructions in full. But it hasn’t made you much smarter. It just talks about so many different terms that you’re not familiar with and you don’t know exactly what to do with them. So this question still remains: What to do now?
Well, there are basically three successive gates you can go through to conquer the FM Synthesis for yourself. I will introduce you to these three in turn. Once you have read through the following text with these three gates, you can think about what you find symphatic and how far you want to go. But one thing is important: In order to get to the Third Gate, you must first go through the First and the Second. Now, do you want to try this and find your way? No, rather not? Ok, then you can stop reading at this point and just work with the presets as usual and as they are. As I said, that’s also great and you can make your music with it, no question. Or, are you ready to open the Gates and use what you find behind them for yourself? Ok, then read the following text through to the very end. And maybe you’ll get so excited that you’ll want to get to The Third Gate and go through that. Alright, in this cass: Let’s get started.
The First Gate
Behind this Gate lies the field of the simple and also quite fast method type “Strong and beautiful in 5 minutes”. This is particularly suitable for people with only a little time on their hands who want or even need to concentrate on the music. Writing songs or rehearsing them for a cover band can be time-consuming enough. There is little opportunity to study any manuals in between, let alone to familiarize yourself with the complex user interface of an FM synthesizer and be able to operate it quickly. Just to customize a few sounds. So there’s the simple method where you just change things in existing presets so that they fit a song better. In this case, all you have to do is pick out the preset that comes pretty close to the sound you need. Then you look at what simply doesn’t fit. These are usually things like Attack or Release time. Maybe just the duration of the Sustain, because the sound should actually decay by itself a while after the key is hitted. Or the vVelocity is not as good as it should be. Or it is even simpler and only the Reverb or Chorus effect is too intense or too low.
In such cases, you usually have to deal with a manageable number of parameters that are more or less always the same and need to be adjusted. So you first look for these parameters in the operating manual, read the explanatory text and then look where you can find them on the synthesizer panel, in the display or in the software on the computer monitor. As soon as this is localized, you try to remember their places on the user interface. So that you can find them as quickly as possible when you need them. There’s nothing worse than not knowing where they are. You don’t want to waste time on such small sound changes, because that kills creativity. You’ll notice that over time it becomes quicker and quicker and you’ll be pleased with your success. This in turn motivates you to do it again and again when it’s required, because it starts to require no particular effort on your part. In short: The First Gate and that goal achieved.
The Second Gate
This is for someone who has either already gone through The First Gate or wants to understand something properly right away. Someone who is prepared to invest a considerable amount of time to explore a complex system with countless parameters and menu branches. To do this efficiently, you first need to familiarize yourself with the existing conditions. The first step is to try out and play all the presets thoroughly to find out everything you can do with the sounds. It is possible that a synthbass played in the middle register is a wonderful percussive sound that can be used to play grooving chords or single notes. Or it can really pack a punch in the top register and can also be used as a solo sound. Or you realize that a percussive sound that sounds great in all registers only needs a long sustain phase and a gentle attack to deliver a great pad.
It will certainly take you a good while to try it out with all the available presets. But that’s the way it is. After all, you’re probably having a lot of fun just playing and maybe you’ll even come up with some new musical ideas, such as a completely different bassline or a cool chord progression that inspires a new song. Just because you didn’t always want to play the same thing during the preset test. Once you’ve tried out the presets, pick up the manual and read through it if you haven’t already done so. But even if you have already read the manual, just do it again, because you will certainly read some passages with a different perspective now that you know what the author of the manual described there sounds like. You’ll also be able to memorize the terms better. Once you’ve done that, perhaps you’ve marked a few key points in the manual with a pencil for future reference, then it’s time to go to the synthesizer’s Edit page. Or to the user interface of a software. As described in The First Gate, you now look for the locations of the parameters. This should be done thoroughly so that you know where the individual sections such as Envelopes, LFOs, Pitch etc. are located. After all, you want to be able to find everything you want to access as quickly as possible. In contrast to The First Gate, you are now in a position to really create a sound from scratch. The best way to do this is to work systematically and build up the sound in the same way as you would when studying an acoustic instrument.
Like a fFlute, for example. There are always several sound components. You have an attack phase, which is perhaps a kind of air noise. Then comes the sustain phase, when the sound resounds for a longer period of time. And there is a decay or release phase. Sometimes there isn’t, in which case the sound simply stops abruptly after the key is released. Then come the modulations, which means that you can modulate the sound with a vibrato or tremolo, for example, in addition to the volume and overtone dynamics. Either dynamically as required while playing, or automatically by programming a fixed vibrato effect, which only starts to resonate automatically a moment after the key is pressed. These dynamics can be expanded several times so that you can use all of the keyboard’s controllers. Perhaps increase the Volume using Aftertouch, call up the Vibrato using the Modulation Wheel, extend the Decay time using the Damper pPedal and so on. If you do this often now, you’ll find that quickly over time, you’ll know the ins and outs of the instrument more or less inside out and you can easily and quickly create a new sound, completely programmed from scratch. Adjusting an existing one quickly will work in an extremely short time, for example during a recording session or a band rehearsal.
And another thing: If you discover a preset with this knowledge that you really like the way it is made, you can look at the data thanks to the knowledge you have now and use it to recognize how the programmer did it. And add it to your wealth of experience. Because a wealth of experience is fundamentally important in FM. So, that was the way thtough The Second Gate.
The Third Gate
Let’s move on to FM magic. Excuse me, what does FM have to do with magic? Well, in this blog post we are moving from the primitive to the complicated to the simple. And with The Third Gate, we’ve landed on the simple. The core of the FM universe. And that’s where the magic of FM synthesis lies, and it really is simple. Let’s take a look at how the story began.
The inventor John Chowning has said in his interviews that he was actually looking for Vibrato effects because the simple sine waveform sounded too sterile and lifeless for his needs. So he thought, how about simply combining two such sine waves and trying to set them in motion to create the desired Vibrato effect. The computer he was using at the time couldn’t do anything in realtime, you had to wait until the calculation time had elapsed and the audio result was ready to listen to. And he was amazed at what he suddenly heard. By simply changing the Pitch of the second sine waveform, a completely different waveform emerged.
He once said that the moment he found out what these two connected sine waves could do was a magical moment. Ok, so what does that have to do with us? Well, we can experience such a moment too. That’s when the penny drops. I see. And how does such a moment come about? Well, it’s a matter of luck. It happens to you, or it doesn’t. And how do I know? Because I experienced it. It was some years ago and until then I thought that after all those years of studying FM, I had understood the whole thing. Yes, I certainly did. But it was an intellectual understanding. One that goes hand in hand with formulas and math. With knowledge about acoustics and how acoustic instruments are made and how sounds are created. How sound waves work and what role the room in which a sound wave is generated and produced is.
Now, back to Chowning. He once recommended in an interview that, firstly, you are pretty well served with six operators like the DX7. And he added that you can really do an incredible amount with them and get a lot of great sounds out of them. He concluded by saying that you should try working with just two operators and see what you can do with them alone. And use operator feedback to generate potentiating resonance fields. So, you have a key now in your hand and it’s up to you what you do with it. Because you can use it to try and give your luck a little boost. You can also read my blog post FM Synthesis: It’s all about Vibration. And maybe it will happen to you too: that magical moment when you know, yay, that’s how it works? Yes, that’s exactly how FM works. Good luck!
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