Chapter 11 Advanced Sound Shaping Controls
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44
Controlling the FM Decay
Decay is a simple EG-like control (remember Chapter 10?) that lets you control how quickly the volume of
the Modulators dies out. This gives you additional control over the tone or timbre of the sound.
Keep in mind that the Modulators’ level is controlled by FM Depth, so make sure that FM Depth is set to an
appropriately high value. Otherwise Decay will have little effect on the sound.
1 Press the MODULATOR [SELECT] button to select one of the Modulator
settings: “
3
”, “
2
”, “
1
”, or “
ALL
.”
2 Set FM Depth to around 2:00 or 3:00.
3 Play with the [DECAY] knob as you play the keyboard.
45
Noise Level
Here’s another nifty little knob. This one’s great for throwing some grunge and
bite into the basic wave — letting you dirty up the Voice with some noise.
Why add noise? Why not use the Distortion effect? And what good is “dirt” in
the sound, anyway? (We could hear those questions coming...)
Well, besides the obvious Lo-fi and Industrial music applications — such as
making noise percussion — noise is great for adding harmonic content all
along the frequency spectrum. And that harmonic content added at the begin-
ning of the signal flow makes the sound more interesting when you work with
the filter (VCF) section later on. Much more interesting, in fact.
Use it judiciously, however — too much noise can mask the basic pitch and
character of the sound.
Try selecting a Pattern with a relatively “pure” and soft Voice. Then, work the
[NOISE LEVEL] knob to hear how different degrees of noise affect the sound.
And go on to Tip 46 below, to see how you can use different types of noise, too.
• Percussive sounds
Decay is great for instantly programming percussive attacks, such as hammer-like clangs or
breath noises at the beginning of a Voice. Try experimenting with this example setting: Set
MODULATOR [SELECT] to “
ALL
,” [HARMONIC] to around 10:00 and [FM DEPTH] to around
2:00. Then, play with the [DECAY] knob — especially around 10:00 or 11:00 — to create
some “noisy” attacks. Try other Harmonic and FM Depth settings, too.
Decay
Determines the decay time for the selected
Modulator group’s level, or how quickly the
level dies down to zero. Keep in mind that
this primarily affects the timbre of the Voice,
not its volume.
First, select the desired group of Modulators
(in Modulator Select above), and set the [FM
DEPTH] knob to a suitable value. (If FM
Depth is set too low, Decay will have little to
no effect.) Then, tweak the [DECAY] knob.
Range
-64 — 63
Noise Level
Determines the level of the noise signal
added to the sounds.
Range
0 — 127
