Though the original DX7 was limited exclusively to sine waves, FM8 offers 32 different waveforms - as a result, its sonic palette is considerably wider. Remember to shoot us a message before you leave if you have a tutorial request, or would like to share one of your own with the community.For those few who don't know, Native Instruments' take on Yamaha's flexible but flummoxing form of FM is based on a sextet of operators, each of which has a selectable waveform. These two sounds are pretty darn close for the time we had to work with.) And once you’ve finished over there, we hope to see you in our new forums! (It should be noted that the differences between FM Synthesis and Subtractive Synthesis, as well as differences in feature sets and their configurations, mean that truly identical sounds are very difficult to come by when using two very different synths like this. But you will need to follow the link to our NI Massive tutorial to see how it compares to the original.
That wraps up our quick wobble synth tutorial, and we hope you hurry on over to the NI Massive version of this tutorial to see how the original sound was made.Īs you will hear in the audio sample below, the synth turned out alright. And finally, a touch of Reverb is added to give the sound a little more room to move around in. A Peak EQ and a Shelving EQ unit are used to finish shaping the sound. Overdrive and a Tube Amp unit are used to add drive and distortion to our synth. Lastly, a total of five effects are added to the mix. Electing to use these four parameters adds depth, width and character to our sound. Also, some Detuning and Panning are added, as well as both Analog and Digital Quality. And to make this one glide, we need to turn on the Portamento feature. This allows only one to be played at a time and is much better (usually) for synths that glide. Here the total number of unison voices is increased to three, and the synth is set to run in mono polyphonic mode.
This is sure to provide some pretty cool results for you.Īs we progress through this wobble synth tutorial, the next step is to set up the Master window. If you want to change things up a little, try adding some Tremolo on the Effects window. This keeps them all moving at the same rate, which is incredibly important.
#FM8 VS SERUM FREE#
Of course, you can feel free to change this up a bit to make the development of this sound more interesting or carry more character forward.Īgain, keeping things simple here, I simply assigned the same basic LFO to modulate each of the operators. I decided to just keep all of the envelopes identical to ensure an even and consistent delivery. It is always a little tougher to replicate a sound using a different set pf tools, let alone an entirely different approach to synthesis and sound design! The next time we pit these two synths against each other the sound will originate from FM8 and be recreated in NI Massive.
#FM8 VS SERUM FULL#
Now in the interest of full disclosure, this sound was first made in NI Massive and then replicated here in FM8.
We start at the FM Matrix, and as you can see in the image below there is a lot going on to make this sound. So after you have finished this tutorial, check out the one on our sister site to see how this same sound was made using NI Massive and then meet us in the forums! And without further ado, let’s get started on this wobble synth tutorial! We have recently launched a new synth tutorials forum, which is where we will be. This should be a very interesting series, and I hope that it is as much fun for all of you to follow along with as it is for me to make them! We also hope that you will be taking part in our ongoing conversation about these great synths, different approaches to sound design and synthesis, new ideas in music and audio production, and general good ol’ fashioned banter about synths. Today we create a dirty metallic wobble synth!
#FM8 VS SERUM SERIES#
Welcome to a cool new series that will be popping up from time to time, as we explore the differences between the Native Instruments flagship synths by designing the same sounds in at least two of them.