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
Kicks and Tom Drum Techniques
here we go. Class to this is when this one's about drum synthesis as well. But we're gonna be covering out of do kick drums, Tom drums, other things that have a membrane. You know, snares, kicks Tom's. These guys all require an additional element that we didn't cover in a previous shaker. Lessen the Shakers. I feel like, really just lean on velocity sensitivity and, ah, white noise and some filters and also trigger mode. Um, in this case for these kick drums, let's take a look at our kick drum first, we'll listen to it. One of my favorite things about synthesizing kicks is that you can synthesise them to taste, you know, like sometimes you're in the mood for a 909 Sometimes you're in the mood for a NATO. Wait sometimes during mood for, you know, car crash have depends on what you're feeling. Like. You can really dial these in with a little bit of awareness for these parameters. Take a look at our kick drum settings and see what we can glean from this. So, first of all, um, you'll notic...
e that I'm still keeping my way of forms and fixed mode and I'm sticking with sine waves for the primary aspects of the instrument. That's a general rule of thumb with drum synthesis, because when you're getting into square saw triangle ways, you usually more working with, like, distinctly pitched sounds that are going to sustain. But we know that we're in trigger mode. We're not doing a lot of sustained and check this out. This envelope here is 61 milliseconds long, and it's done just the beater head. We've got the body of the kick drum and trigger mode. That's about a second long, which we can make longer or shorter the beater head, which is about 60 50 60 milliseconds. Again, you're gonna just this to taste and that this is just kind of the top part of noise and notice. You can tell it's noise, right, because those that course tuning is great out. It's like I pointed out earlier with Shaker. We'll start from the very beginning. It's a sine wave, about 100 hertz, but if you look at the spectral analysis, it's turned out 100 Hertz, 100 hertz is right here. All the action is down here, and it's all because of Hello I would actually turn off our filter to because we've got a little distortion happening here by by choice. No, we just continue with signed by itself. There's no kitchen below 100 years. Zero this out. What happens is when you hit a kick drum or hit anything with a membrane. The pitch goes up really fast cause that stick or that beater, if it's that membrane and makes the pitch go boom up right really fast and then it when it let's go, it goes down further boo. That's how you get the deep sound from the member. In resonating. I find that if it's ah sound that has two membranes, like a kick drum or us or a snare or Tom pitch goes up and down. So we'll turn this on and make a shape going quickly up and then coming down quickly, and I just this to taste. If I have this guy way down here, I have to have less of this. Also, make sure my release time goes all the way down. Unless, like my audio envelopes, I can take this pitch under look and putting trigger mode to. So now all my envelopes air sink together. Get that trigger. They do their thing and they let go. This is way too low, right? So I could push this sustained level up, keep it Loans back up on the step. Generally a kick from the attack E transient stuff is 100 on intent on 20 tops quickly dips down low range. So now with this in this case, I could increase my DK time more ate away if I pulled down my pitch envelope. Decrease my fundamental pitch. I'm really getting into eight await territory. All right, What's at the Peter? Had to hear that Ate away Pop in your punch saying with this with eight away soft on the peter Pretty much ate away Tick from right on the money. Good reason to have this in a drum rack those Because since this is fixed now, But I can't pitch this if you're making, like, a trap or footwork, you want to have that 8086 So six kick drum with pitch happening. That's awesome. You're not gonna wanna use fix mode. In that case, we want to keep it in regular course to So anyway, so I got my nice Peter had here, I could crank this up, make it really tight, super tight punch, five milliseconds. Or maybe for a little more of a 909 vibe. I can push that out, make this longer move my fundamental up to maybe even 100 make a pitcher on plummet hard. I pulled the decay time down. I'm getting more in the 99 territory. And again, I'm using this to taste of adjusting it to taste. One thing I usually like to do is I not only use my years first, but I also if I'm gonna have a baseline in the track, I usually stay away from these big, heavy ate away checks to try and let this thing t k a little faster. It's gonna punch. This is gonna punch plenty hard on a big sound system. It's gonna leave enough space still just barely watching this Mutar trying to get us a dip out. You have no space for that. Baseline spends that what you're trying to do, you know? Well, I have a baseline of the mixing housing with bring said my fundamental pitch up to get pitch bend. Listen closely, make sure I'm not going much below, like 40 hurts because you're gonna lose it in mastering on the sound system. Anyway, there's the kick drum to top it off. I had a little Peter. This is white noise. We can experiment with our looped noise. This is just straight up. White noise could trigger it. Let's try Luke noise. Well, knock 24 hertz White. No. Is a little knock. We could try up high for a little more modern, more future kids from action. I really like having little tinkly crust on top. Been enjoying that. So we'd like it is pay attention to those envelopes. Bang it. All right, So the next thing that I do for my kick drums, I go to my filter keeping it low past mode, and I turned it all the way up. So it's not actually coloring signal at all turns Turn it down. So it's not affecting the sound at all. And then I choose one or both of the shaper. Sorry, which is right here. Four different modes I usually use soft all the way up, close or hard turned all the way down for a really heavy like analog son and kick from. Also. Now, in live 9.9, I could dial up one of these solid state distortion models. They're all cool. Play around with them once you grab when you won't hear it until you're driving. Nothing is cutting through the mix, starting this off just to hear the regular shape about itself. More of a heavier kind of vintage techno sounding kid. Let's go ahead and put it on all the way down. Negative, Hard slam. This is a setting I really like for like, really more primetime sounding jams have a little shame. Let's turn on the drive here. This is the Oscar filter filter between 20 Prodigy, which is filled with love mode. Filter for baselines leads like in this hospital filter the way it sounds, you can hear it enough. Nice body while we're at it. Now, let's go ahead and make one more member and sound. I have this one that's done, but this one's pretty Sai sai. Listen to take a look out, but I want to make a little time. Tom Bro. Similar principles. I got a high pass. Do that 78 Hers sine wave. There's a higher frequency sign modulating that 78 hertz myself. Wilmore, Remember any robbery vibe? Start the sun with well, by higher E I don't want to click here. I got my own little bitch up here. That envelope. Anorexic. Create this nice bounce. Once I've done that again and make sure in the amount of panic mode come over here and check out my velocity modulation elasticity. It is critical for percussion because once someone person is banging on something, FM drives gonna go a long way. Let's try that panorama. Uh, last but not least, I've got LFO modulating my global time Steady time now, getting old man, but all the time staying the same But this most all right My global time modulation I love sinking this with percussion but we're in times like a sense the note certain note love it from the end of our love to wait tracks. So this thing is now delivering a really articulated and sensitive and kind of wild, gestural, controllable sound. Just using what we know about operators. It's when you have a filter on here through the filter on, just to kind of clean up the bottom and give us more space for the kick back off on his pan. I like Pan, but I don't 100% once a little bit. Try adding a filter really replaces almost missing tones. Yeah, that's that's a little percussions. The last. Lastly, let's go ahead and make precaution. Sign. Maybe solo this kid. So this to cool clipping here started at Middle C 16. Remember, maybe in the 203 100 range trigger mode 16 all the way down. Can't sustain a concussion sound pitch envelope. Make a shape. Let's go down enough like a bongo. Well, that fundamental of higher. That's not so you get the idea. A couple of simple sine waves, fixed tuned, pitch enveloped. Easy does it. So I think it's pretty salad you cannot distortion. You can add modulation. You can have it global velocity sensitivity or discreet, velocity sensitive things like time. But that's gonna bust you through a lot of the fundamental principles of creating good percussion sounds. Um, last but not least, we're gonna be heading on in for less and three to making sneered rounds and high hat sounds, and so that's gonna be less than three for the drum since level. Um I know that for sure. There's plenty of more room to uncover. I'm moving as quickly as I can through all these details, and hopefully you're taking notes and applying some of these nuggets and gyms to your own productions. Maybe you'll send me an email. GPS slam academy dot com. I can check out what you're working on. Maybe even lean a few pro tips off of you. Thanks for your time.
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.