The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

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@...