This will be our main sound source and it will act as our carrier operator. At the moment there is only F operator active. Now you are looking at oscillator matrix. Go into the Osc tab found under the pitch and modulation wheel. That modulation is producing additional harmonics in our tone from which we sculpt our sounds. Modulators aren’t normally connected to audio output so we don’t hear them directly instead they are only frequency modulating carrier oscillator. The main operator which is producing tone we hear is called carrier and the ones modulating our carrier operator are called modulators. Oscillators in fm synths are usually referred as operators. We do that by either modulating our oscillator by another oscillator or we can modulate oscillator by itself. So how do we introduce some harmonics in a sound without changing the waveform from default sine wave? We will create leads, bass sounds, fxs from a scratch and hopefully after that you will be able to see how powerful technique fm synthesis can be.Īlthough FM8 offers a wide range of different waveforms the original FM synthesizer works only with sine oscillators.
I also believe that fm synthesis is considered to be complicated because it offers such an immense world of possibilities and nuances in sound that makes it appear so difficult.Īlso, f you do not understand the very basic principles behind it can be very confusing so the aim of this first tutorial is to teach you those very basics.Īfter this tutorial I will concentrate on more practical examples on how to create certain sounds, also sound design for dance music. It sure requires a bit of a different mindset from that needed for subtractive synthesis and the main difference would be that in subtractive synthesis you build sounds from combining different individual elements (like oscillators, filters, vcas, etc) while the fm synthesis works trough interaction of basic building blocks called operators.Īs one element changes in relation to the other, the changes in timbre are produced. Fm synthesis is believed to be hard to grasp but I assure you that with basic understanding of the principles behind it, it’s not that different from normal subtractive synthesis. Understanding the fm synthesis in theory would require quite complex math so I will instead concentrate on more practical approach. This is short fm8 beginner tutorial to FM synthesis with NI FM8. This is not all and steps are definitely missing it is just what I know so far.In this FM8 Beginner Tutorial we explain although it was heavily used through the history of electronic music, FM Synthesis still hides potential which is further expanded by modern implementations such as the one in FM8. Once you have a phatt modulating sound, load into kontakt and use the wave editor to play the nice bits and loop. Use camel phatt to distort the sound and eq to correct the frequency balance do not be afraid to go a little nuts (good speakers and room are required to learn this).
Use distortion to taste and map to the filters (again google if unsure of the massive routing tab) add chorus.
Use a lowpass and a band pass in series but have both filters in the mix.Įxperiment with this to find the right frequencies to sweep through with your modulation source.
Add a very small amount of vibrato for randomness in the pitch (this helps when filtering and distorting the sound). Add an extra oscillator to taste for character, experiment with volume and modulation till you like the sound. This will add movement I recommend to synch this modulation.
Modulate the wavetables in bend+/- or bend plus or bend - if you don't know what this is, read the manual or google it. I recommend you start with massive but serum is better if you have it. I would recommend using square and saw waves detuned with some unison.