Ed,
>So, Bruce, don't you think the vast collective of the keyboardist community
>sound a collective "duh" when discussing true FM synthesis? It awfully
>complicated, and you've done a nice job of overviewing it, and at I do
>appreciate the discussion.
The complexity was clearly FM's downfall. Very few players mastered the
art of programming, and in fact, a cottage industry arose just to take care
of the need to program instruments. I, for one, would never seriously
consider purchasing subtractive synthesis patches, but FM was another story
altogether! I was always on the lookout for useful raw material.
>You said that you had access to old mono synths that you'd patch up from
>scratch. I did too - you old dog. ;-) Imagine trying to do that with an
>FM synth! With subtractive synthesis an instinct develops as to what works
>(and Yamaha has even given us the sound templates in the AN). With FM it's
>pretty hard to guess how to set up a sound. I would suppose that the
>majority of patches for the DX series that were musically useful may have
>been stumbled upon at first, rather than thought out.
Actually, I suspect that it was the other way around, to a great
degree. The quickest way that I found to create FM sounds was to be as
methodical and analytic as possible. I tried "prospecting" -- just
twiddling settings to see what happens -- on both my DX9 and TX81z, and I
only ended up with 2-3 useable sounds for hours of effort. It's extremely
easy to arrive at an approximation of white noise on an FM synth; most of
my forays ended up in just such a mess.
Nevertheless, it was possible to arrive at a very useful set of sounds,
with enough programming and dissecting of others' programs. I eventually
learned how to do a sawtooth and PWM on the DX9 (no small feat), and for a
while I even played live with nothing other than FOUR TX81z's!
>One classic "sync" (another term for analog FM) sound that I can recall is
>the lead line at the beginning of The Cars' "Let's Go", or the synth line
>from "I'm Just a Girl" by No Doubt. They've got a vocal quality to them
>as the filter closes down.
Sync leads are terrific for cutting though a mix, and for their vocal-like
timbres. I don't know if I would call oscillator sync "analog FM,"
though. Their end results are similar, but the actual approaches are
different.
Regards,
-BW
--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions"
www.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group moderator
978.386.7389 voice
978.776.0096 fax
bruce@...