Patch Challenge: FM Bass

I wanted to have both presets, and live controls, with a seamless transition so that I can call up a sound I like, then twesk on it. A plausible choice would be touch controls, but touch sensors have a habit of being unreliable / sluggish / laggy, mostly due to sensitivity to electrical noise. You can see obvious lag in the NAMM video of the Yudo Neuman Synthesizer, for example. I solved the noise problem in a way that allows fast response times and much better reliability.

So I built a touch control panel concept prototype, just to see how it would handle. Ten seconds on that thing, and I’ll refuse to use menus ever again. It makes it simple; pull up a preset, there’s the settings. Want to tinker with the sound, just touch it where you want it to be. It works so well that it actually feels natural to use.

I use a laptop computer for the brains of it, a few kilobytes of code is all it takes. I have a patch library in the software, so I can pull up a preset, run with it, if I get a sound I really like, it can be saved as another preset.

I chose the DX7 for testing the touch controls on, due to it’s reputation for being hard to understand & program. This made it one of the easiest. When I first got it up & running, I quickly got to the point where I was getting dynamics in the sound that I’d always drewamed of doing, but never thought I could do.

It’s such a game-changer that I wish I could get it out on the market, but don’t have the resources to do so. It could be made with many more sensors (in the same space), touch buttons, etc. The display could be cheap old-style monochrome low-res LCD. about anything that could be controlled by midi / computer would work with it.

Here’s a video that also shows the insides of the controller:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/GIE3WfrEEX0?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent

This is pretty amazing!

Joe Hanley wrote:

ryios wrote:

So I built a touch control panel concept prototype

What a great idea! You’ve un-menu’d a menu’d synth. I honestly feel that the DX7 would not be considered so hard to program with something like this. Awesome.

Thanks! It probably makes it one of the easiest to understand & program. I was able to show a drummer in 15 minutes the basics of it, and he had fun learning it. The beauty of it is that along with full manual control, you've still got all the advantages of presets, and can still have menus if you want them for any reason.

When you're doing music, any time you deal with a menu you have to mentally task-switch from a music frame of mind, to a more analytical frame of mind. You don't realize how much it throws you off until you no longer have to do it.

So I built a touch control panel concept prototype

What a great idea! You've un-menu'd a menu'd synth. I honestly feel that the DX7 would not be considered so hard to program with something like this. Awesome.

What is that board/controller you’re using to tweak the DX7’s parameters?

I wanted to have both presets, and live controls, with a seamless transition so that I can call up a sound I like, then tweak on it. A plausible choice would be touch controls, but touch sensors have a habit of being unreliable / sluggish / laggy, mostly due to sensitivity to electrical noise. You can see obvious lag in the NAMM video of the Yudo Neuman Synthesizer, for example. I solved the noise problem in a way that allows fast response times and much better reliability.

So I built a touch control panel concept prototype, just to see how it would handle. Ten seconds on that thing, and I'll refuse to use menus ever again. It makes it simple; pull up a preset, there's the settings. Want to tinker with the sound, just touch it where you want it to be. It works so well that it actually feels natural to use.

I use a laptop computer for the brains of it, a few kilobytes of code is all it takes. I have a patch library in the software, so I can pull up a preset, run with it, if I get a sound I really like, it can be saved as another preset.

I chose the DX7 for testing the touch controls on, due to its reputation for being hard to understand & program. This made it one of the easiest. When I first got it up & running, I quickly got to the point where I was getting dynamics in the sound that I'd always dreamed of doing, but never thought I could do.

It's such a game-changer that I wish I could get it out on the market, but don't have the resources to do so. It could be made with many more sensors (in the same space), touch buttons, etc. The display could be cheap old-style monochrome low-res LCD. about anything that could be controlled by midi / computer would work with it.

Here's a video that also shows the insides of the controller:

Here’s a bit of DX7IID bass that I’ve been having fun working on.

That's a nice balance of low end and unison-y drone. Still has a solid bass feel while also providing interesting movement. Very nice.

What is that board/controller you're using to tweak the DX7's parameters?

Here's a bit of DX7IID bass that I've been having fun working on. Algorithm 22 (op 2 modulating 1, op 6 modulating 3,4 & 5, with op 1,3,4,5 audible. feedback mostly around 4 or 5, coarse frequency on 1-6 starting at at freq. 0,2,1,2,1,0 , unison on. This gives a not very punchy, industrial drone type sound to it.

You’ll have to excuse the “echo” or “delay” from the internal mic. I’ll do a better video:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8hYBDoIC4Pk?feature=oembed&start=0

Sounds familiar indeed!

By the way if you don't like the watermark, OBS Studio is open source screen capturing software. Settings might be not self-explanatory, but there are youtube vids on how to ged vids with sound.

Joe Hanley wrote:

Danny wrote:
For this sound I’ve used a replica of the Yamaha DX7, named the PX7.

Very nice! I love that second gritty layer. Is the grit coming mostly from the feedback?

Most of the gritty sound comes from operator 6 having the feedback loop. The feedback amount (bottom right of the synth) adds a bit more brightness to the grit, makes it more crackling

You’ll have to excuse the “echo” or “delay” from the internal mic. I’ll do a better video:

Aaaah Top Gun. The Chorus really 80s-fied it. Sounds nice. I didn't realize Omnisphere had an FM component to it, but apparently it has a dedicated FM oscillator in each layer:

https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Omnisphere2/25/en/topic/layer-page-oscillator-page15

For this sound I’ve used a replica of the Yamaha DX7, named the PX7.

Very nice! I love that second gritty layer. Is the grit coming mostly from the feedback?

You'll have to excuse the "echo" or "delay" from the internal mic. I'll do a better video:

For this sound I've used a replica of the Yamaha DX7, named the PX7. Created a bass-ic ( 😉 ) sound using one carrier and one modulator with low octave settings, then adjusted the level knobs to get a good balance between sub and low-mids. Fiddled around with the Env Level until somewhat of an attack transient was noticable (These doesn't seem to work like a normal envelope, have to look in to that again, all I know it is like a double envelope with 8 sliders so you can apply 2 attacks in one note, for example) Used LFO on the pitch and amp level to create some movement, and used the LFO delay to make it slide into that movement. Pushed the volume up a bit to make it audible. Enabled Mono and Legato to enable clean and smooth playing. Then chose an algorithm which used a second pair of carrier-modulators Used this part for the grit and brightness and again used low octaves for a dark sound. Enabled frequency mode for operator 6 which allowed me to select a frequency. Adjusted the levels again until I was satisfied with the grittiness. Played with "Attack Rate" to keep the initial punch of the bass and create a small delay between the bass and grit part, which dramatises the heaviness imo Adjusted the LFO amt of operator 6 to match that of operator 1. Used the feedback loop of operator 6 to emphasize/brighten up the grit, ended up reajusting it to create a more cohesive sound. Last step was carefully readjusting operator 5 to make the sound brighter without ruining the bassy part. Started screen capturing and played around with the settings for this video 😀 I am not that good of a player by the way 😀

I’ll try to post a video later – I tried to do a tutorial but QuickTime wouldn’t let me play through omnisphere while I screen recorded.

Would love to hear it. Try installing Soundflower:

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/tag/2.0b2

I can’t believe this was the topic this week! Before I watched the video I spent some time researching the bass patch from “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin. Most people agree it was an FM Bass and particularly one from the Yamaha DX7.

I would love to hear a recreation of that.

I tried to see if anyone had done this in omnisphere but nobody had posted anything, so taking what I learned from other posts I got pretty close starting with a patch called...”Classic FM Bass”. I’ll try to post a video later - I tried to do a tutorial but QuickTime wouldn’t let me play through omnisphere while I screen recorded.

Thanks for doing these.