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"Basking in the insanity" just about sums it up. It's remarkably difficult to craft a good sound with FM synthesis (or phase modulation, for the pedants). My e

"Basking in the insanity" just about sums it up. It's remarkably difficult to craft a good sound with FM synthesis (or phase modulation, for the pedants). My experience with FM sound design tells me that 2 operators is quite primitive, 3 operators opens up a larger set of non-insane possibilities, and 6 operators (like the DX 7) is, surprisingly, the minimum I would personally want to use for FM synthesis! So if you are going to go 100% FM, and you're going the eurorack route, I'd personally want nothing short of two ALM011s. You obviously don't need two if you're mixing it with other modules, it's just that if you want to do FM synthesis, four operators is surprisingly limiting.

rotexo 5y ago
Oh for sure. An additional advantage of the modular approach is: if you don’t like the raw FM tone, you can try running it through an MS-20 filter, or a Moog filter, or a wavefolder, or a ring modulator, or… One of my favorite custom SuperCollider synths that I wrote was a simple 2-op phase modulation generator run through a wavefolder and filter. I probably could have arrived at a similar sound with more operators, but it wouldn’t have felt as intuitive to write! Edit: these darn mobile keyboards
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  When Garageband got some FM synths, I was pleasantly surprised by them ... the first FM that didn't immediately need an EQ. (Talented staff then.) I started reading the article without noting the author's name. When I got through 2/3 of it, the thought was who the hell is this?. After seeing the name, it was of course, who else?!
gilmore606 5y ago
What is your thought process when doing sound design with FM? I've been doing this for years and while I can easily wrap my head around subtractive synths and go from sound-in-head to sound-on-tape pretty well, FM is just impenetrable to me. Are there any good tutorials on how to approach this?
- kens 5y ago
  Here's an article on how to program the DX7 that might help: https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/pages/dx7/manuals/prgrmdx7.pdf https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/pages/dx7/manuals/pr...
- smnc 5y ago
  This guy explains the process of creating a basic bass sound quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbrTC0NndM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbrTC0NndM
- martyvis 5y ago
  I've just started getting interested in FM and DX7. Power DX7 has some good insight. Here he is talking about algorithm choice and how it can affect sound. https://youtu.be/s4oMnCCUb8w https://youtu.be/s4oMnCCUb8w
- klodolph 5y ago
  I have never seen a tutorial. I've scoured a lot of forums, and read about how the team at Yamaha made the original presets. Most people never bother to design sounds. It's more tedious and frustrating than subtractive synth sounds. First step is finding a capable FM synth you like with a decent user interface. Dexed, NI FM8, Arturia DX7 V, or maybe even Reaktor. (Edit: It’s obvious to me that you shouldn’t buy a Yamaha DX-something to do sound design, but just to make it clear, don’t do that. The user interface is abominable. Just get Dexed if you don’t know what you want.) Build your sound up by adding "partials" or "tones", or whatever you want to call them. Start with two operators, with one chained to the next. Explore the space of ratios (start with 1:1) and modulation levels. Once you get a handle on some part of the sonic space, consider adding a third operator at the back, i.e. if your operators are A -> B -> C, and C is the output, then A is the one you're adding. Experiment with ratios and modulation levels, and consider this a way to expand the space you've already explored. You'll find that most of the modulation values are either too subtle to notice or noise that you just can't stand. If you're at a point where the middle ground between subtlety and noise doesn't have the sound you want, that's when you might add the third operator. With these partials, you can build up the sustain and attack of your sound separately. Experiment with using different timing for all of the envelopes. You can tell that a lot of sounds are made from a smaller set of partials that have been recombined. For example, the classic DX7 rhodes sound is made up of an attack and sustain partial, and these partials have been reused and recombined with tons of other partials to make sound variations. This is why I'm not fond of the DX-11, Ad Lib, or other 4-operator systems. They have the "FM sound" but you're really quite limited building your sounds. If you have a partial made with three operators, and you want to add something to it, you have to share operators or use a pure sine wave.

rotexo 5y ago

Oh for sure. An additional advantage of the modular approach is: if you don’t like the raw FM tone, you can try running it through an MS-20 filter, or a Moog filter, or a wavefolder, or a ring modulator, or… One of my favorite custom SuperCollider synths that I wrote was a simple 2-op phase modulation generator run through a wavefolder and filter. I probably could have arrived at a similar sound with more operators, but it wouldn’t have felt as intuitive to write! Edit: these darn mobile keyboards

8bitsrule 5y ago
When Garageband got some FM synths, I was pleasantly surprised by them ... the first FM that didn't immediately need an EQ. (Talented staff then.) I started reading the article without noting the author's name. When I got through 2/3 of it, the thought was who the hell is this?. After seeing the name, it was of course, who else?!

gilmore606 5y ago

What is your thought process when doing sound design with FM? I've been doing this for years and while I can easily wrap my head around subtractive synths and go from sound-in-head to sound-on-tape pretty well, FM is just impenetrable to me. Are there any good tutorials on how to approach this?

kens 5y ago
Here's an article on how to program the DX7 that might help: https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/pages/dx7/manuals/prgrmdx7.pdf https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/pages/dx7/manuals/pr...
smnc 5y ago
This guy explains the process of creating a basic bass sound quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbrTC0NndM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbrTC0NndM
martyvis 5y ago
I've just started getting interested in FM and DX7. Power DX7 has some good insight. Here he is talking about algorithm choice and how it can affect sound. https://youtu.be/s4oMnCCUb8w https://youtu.be/s4oMnCCUb8w
klodolph 5y ago
I have never seen a tutorial. I've scoured a lot of forums, and read about how the team at Yamaha made the original presets. Most people never bother to design sounds. It's more tedious and frustrating than subtractive synth sounds. First step is finding a capable FM synth you like with a decent user interface. Dexed, NI FM8, Arturia DX7 V, or maybe even Reaktor. (Edit: It’s obvious to me that you shouldn’t buy a Yamaha DX-something to do sound design, but just to make it clear, don’t do that. The user interface is abominable. Just get Dexed if you don’t know what you want.) Build your sound up by adding "partials" or "tones", or whatever you want to call them. Start with two operators, with one chained to the next. Explore the space of ratios (start with 1:1) and modulation levels. Once you get a handle on some part of the sonic space, consider adding a third operator at the back, i.e. if your operators are A -> B -> C, and C is the output, then A is the one you're adding. Experiment with ratios and modulation levels, and consider this a way to expand the space you've already explored. You'll find that most of the modulation values are either too subtle to notice or noise that you just can't stand. If you're at a point where the middle ground between subtlety and noise doesn't have the sound you want, that's when you might add the third operator. With these partials, you can build up the sustain and attack of your sound separately. Experiment with using different timing for all of the envelopes. You can tell that a lot of sounds are made from a smaller set of partials that have been recombined. For example, the classic DX7 rhodes sound is made up of an attack and sustain partial, and these partials have been reused and recombined with tons of other partials to make sound variations. This is why I'm not fond of the DX-11, Ad Lib, or other 4-operator systems. They have the "FM sound" but you're really quite limited building your sounds. If you have a partial made with three operators, and you want to add something to it, you have to share operators or use a pure sine wave.