Lessons
Course Introduction
04:57 2The FM Concept
09:50 3Operator Fundamentals
10:16 4FM Pro Tips
11:14 5Classic Subtractive Techniques
08:15 6FM Monophonic Bass
11:32 7FM Polyphonic Leads
18:49 8Drum and Percussion Overview
11:26Lesson Info
Drum and Percussion Overview
All right, Welcome back. Now we're here at level three. This is gonna be really exciting one, cause we're gonna take all the things we've learned so far about the concepts of FM synthesis. We're gonna start to apply them towards producing our own drums and percussion sounds using the operator. So this to me, is ah, really powerful sword to wield, if you will, during the pursuit of creating your own unique and individualized content. Uh, not too many of us probably want to have music that sounds like other people's music. You know, samples they've downloaded from some sample pack or whatever. While there's a time and place for that definitely, especially with percussion and a lot of our more like humanized and articulated sounds in the rhythm section, It could be really prosperous creatively to be working with sounds. There you synthesized from the ground up not only for the sake of having an intimate relationship with them, but even more so to be able to evoke gestural, complex city, y...
ou know, like if take, for instance, a shaker sound to you know, the way the Shakers is mono phonic. What interacts every time a new shaker happens, it cuts off the old shaker, but also they kind of fold and blend into each other. Also, the way the stereo images evoking a cool recording session to record like stereo shakers with your hands is a trick, you know, but working with a synthesizer, you've got a lot of creative control. In fact, you can take it places, um, insensitive or aggressive ways that a normal, even recorded Shaker, played by a professional percussionist is can't really ever touch. So this is a shaker right through down. I just created this with the operator. In fact, this whole groove I created just with mano drum sounds, um, a kick snare club, a high hat shaker and Tom. So I click through these, and then what we'll do is we'll deconstruct them and maybe build some new drum sounds from scratch. Um, for this first video here for the beginning of level three, I want to make sure we understand all the key components required to create a nice FM synthesized drum kit that's in the realms of percussion or a regular hardware kit, etcetera. So we owe a source of modulation of motion going on in here and all of these patches and for three of the same primary fundamental concepts. So let's take a second just to bust through them. It's just a simple sketch, but I feel like, um, if you like a NATO, a kick drum or a 909 kick drum, they're two different kind of shapes. If you like a really sloppy organic shaker or something that's really tight and mechanical, you know, these are all different things you can analyze with your mind and through employing these few basic concepts that, but to cover your probably able to start painting your own drum sounds and help your rhythm section kind of stand out and not just sound like it's made with the same like vengeance drum loops that everyone else uses. So, um so first of all primary concepts like it back to the Shaker cause that's the one we're using as our example. So much. First of all, first thing I really like to do is employ fixed mode. Remember when we're talking about our pitched patches like our baselines and leads, we used course tuning that multiplies the incoming notes. Fundamental frequency, therefore, adhering to a exponential tuning across the log arrhythmic nature of the audible spectrum. In this case, when you engage fixed mode, you just get a frequency now, but you can turn it to wherever you like. The next thing I like to do once I've engaged fixed mode and dialed up that fundamental pitch the way I like it right into the kind of pitches his own that I want to work in is I put the envelope in to trigger mowed down in this loop drop down section of defaults with none, and not means this is an attack DK sustain and release envelope when you put it in trigger mode essentially becomes a drum envelope. It becomes a a de envelope, and it at that point, the amplitude of the that particular operators signal is attacked at a certain time, indicate a certain time, and then it stops it no longer. The instrument is no longer listening for your sustained time or you when you release the note so you can sustain or not sustained as long as you want, and it's gonna be inconsequential. And for me again, like digging deeply into the nature of drum synthesis, I don't want to have to worry about how. Pardon me how long my notes are. I want to just be able to go ahead and trigger them, mostly because when you play a real drum, you can't sustain it. What happens if you hold a drumstick against the snare drum or a kick kick and hold your foot against the kick drum pedal? And just you know you're not supposed to pull the sound out. You wanna be triggering these things. So without further ado about that, throw that Lupin to trigger mode, put the operators pitch in to fix mode, and now you have a tone generator at a certain frequency that follows its attack and decay time. And then it's done. So in this case, it's eight milliseconds plus 4 47 So we have a little less than 1/2 of a second long shaker period. No matter how long we tune, no matter what we do with the rest is envelope parameters. That's the whole roll shape. Okay, the third and final element that I want to incorporate with almost all of my drum sounds as incorporating annoys us a noise generator, um, noise generator, and the operator has a specific kind of function. Specific attributes, if you will. There's two different noise generators. White noises, algorithmic Lee generated random frequencies. So by nature, with white noise you can't pitch it. You can't tune white noise. It's just is white. In other words, it's random frequencies at a fixed amplitude for fixed amount of time. It's essentially smearing paint without having any distinct color or pitch. Because of that, when you taken operator or an oscillator and you put it into white noise mode, you notice that fixed mode gets great out. It's just making this kind of generic white noise sound, so I'm willing to bet it was Robert Hanky. But it could have been anyone in the able to development team who said, You know, that's kind of weak. Let's get back, Teoh, using white noise in a more creative way than just having generated white noise. Let's actually sample and record that white noise and put it into the operator under the hood as a recording. So this is actually an audio sample of white noise. The cool thing is that you can transpose audio, so when you adjust this frequency, you're actually time you're stretching the white noise recording, especially in the interest of making darker, noisy sounds like, say, you want a snare drum. That's not like like, you know, popular sound like less of an 808 snare and more of a 707 snare. For those of you from the with the vintage rolling library, 707 scenarios. Poignant in the way that it was really dark and nice and thick and had a lot of body. So I like using the noise loop and pitching that thing to the rage colored or darkness that I want to be looking for. So that's the third element I often incorporate. There's others as well as you can see. Now I'm using a filter in an LFO to find the right sound. Another thing I'm doing is I'm putting it, usually in only one or two voice mode, depending on the sound. If it's a kick drum and doing one voice mode, snare drum, one voice mode, something like a shaker, I'll do to voice mode. Why? Because shakers can overlap a little and often times you have a shaker in each hand. That being said, it's really common as well for me to use the global modulation matrix to time to give that velocity contour, some opening and closing of the high hat or maybe tighter snare drum versus more ringing when I hit the stick down harder. Also the pan. Now I've got a stereo shaker. Let's listen to that thing. You can even see that nice stereo image. If I go nine year, it's a static, right? So I really loved being able to give myself some stereo shake. I think that opens the dimension up of the percussion quite a bit. So now basically, my velocity columns here, but I'm playing with are not only affecting the global time, any kind of opening and closing the shaker, if you will, but also panning so much longer. Hits are more panda. One side, my closed ones to the right, however, ends up being programmed. As far as this polarity is concerned, he's going negative too. So now my longer shakers are left and shorter ones right. However it works out have been nice ability to use these in the bipolar fashion as well. Fact, while we're at play with negative, remember, you always have global controls down here too nice, huh? So that's a little bit about how to synthesize some shakers and stuff. The next video I want to get into is gonna take us into kicks and Tom's where we're gonna start to use a pitch envelope, start toe experiment with some more kind of tonal elements and get them to really bounce popped loose in that groove up even further. All right, Thanks for diluted in with us drum synthesis Level three with the FM operator at Slam Academy.
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
People complain about Abletons "uninspiring" synth presets, and Operators businesslike interface doesn't scream "fun". It is however, an insanely fun and powerful instrument once you get your head around it. This class is perfectly formulated to turn anyone into an FM super-ninja in no time. It starts with the basics - perfectly explained, and delves deeper at a nice pace. I've been using Operator for years but still picked up a few tips in the later lessons. Taking this class will empower you to stop worrying about having the latest, greatest third party VST. Operator is a beastly synth. I rarely use any other synth because of the sheer sonic capability, and tight integration with Live.