Enraptured 2 [The Pre-Release LFO Edition]

OK, we're going to put that same .jpg up again. Why? Because it's all I've got! No PowerMac, no manual, no Rapture; nothing but this pic that I'm starting to get real sick of. And that's because I can't tweak it! I've tried! Sorry. I'm better now. Let's think about this LFO thing again. I'm really going out on a limb this time around.



Alright, let's get our heads around this LFO section. First off, that number 1. It could be an indicator for the Sync setting below. Nah. And because it's a sine wave, it could also be the designated number of the preset LFO choice. Sine's the first one in Dimension, (or is it the last one? Triangle being first ...?). Man, who cares? What I really think the 'one' stands for the new One-Shot mode.

It simply means that now in Rapture, your LFO can be Off, cycle & loop back (as normal) with the On status, or play through only once. It doesn't sound like anything usable at first glance, does it? Au contraire. You can sync it to tempo, and it becomes a triggerable envelope generator of sorts. Set up a Delay time of a second or so, and sweep in late with an amplitude 'envelope'. Or set a Fade time, and imprint a linear fade in over the top of that same One-Shot LFO shape.

So, why would you use this, when you have perfectly good EGs and StepGens that'll do the same thing? Options, my friends. Some of which are unique to LFOs. Some things are just going to be easier to accomplish this way, and you still have the other three sections of the Modulators to use. Maybe an overall set of filter envelopes, a StepGen triggered from your KB, and a One-Shot coming in late to the party with sustained (held) notes. This is crazy good. Of course, you don't have to use everything, but it's there if you need it.

Let's talk about the advantages of using the new Rapture LFO approach. Hey, you already got 20 or so LFO shapes in Dimension, and it's tough to find something that isn't close to what you'd want as a One-Shot 'EG'. Linear, jagged, smooth curves, combinations: there a lot in there. But while you can slow down the sync, say to one cycle to 4 measures, it'll still repeat after that. With a Rapture one-shot, you can sync it to an eighth, let 'er fire, and still sustain through with some held chords without the LFO doing its magic.

OK, so the 'attack' of the LFO shape isn't where you want it. Hold Shift, click on the graphical LFO shape, and drag it where you want it. By changing the Phase of a one-shot LFO, you're in effect reshaping an envelope is a very rapid manner. Scroll through the selections with your mouse wheel, click+Shift and reshape to taste. Boom! You're done. For example: you want a quick linear drop from a maximum to a minimum (negative maximum) value. Triangle waveshape, drag the leading edge to the left, and set the Freq to .25 Hz.

But there's something else. LFO's by nature go above and below the zero line. So they're going to easily swing in a positive and negative direction at a set Depth of 'effect'. This is something to keep in mind when you just can't get the StepGens/EGs to act the way you want. If you want something to vary around a particular pitch or base parameter, LFO is the way to go. And the fine-tuning shortcuts allow you to get as precise as you'd ever want to, or flick a switch and click in your sync.

So imagine a scenario where one of the preset LFO shapes doesn't fit what you envision your LFO to look like. Just draw one. Yes, LFO fans, you can now bring in and store over 80 user-definable [UD-LFO] waveforms, and stockpile up all of the custom effects that you want. See if that doesn't separate you from the crowd in terms of sound production. Take any old audio editor, and you've got an application that'll customize your LFOs into anything that you can dream up. Grab a noise sample. Splice it to the front of a square wave. Increase the square wave's frequency towards the end. You've just made yourself one crazy LFO shape that will changes speeds within itself. And yet, the LFO cycle as a whole will still sync' to tempo when it's brought into Rapture.

So, how is this possible? Rene mentioned to me that ANY .wav file can be loaded into Rapture's user-definable LFO, and the application will interpolate that down to 4096 steps (samples). I'm inclined to believe him, because, well ... he's Rene. But I'm going to take that tidbit and run with it. So, what's to stop me from taking a clip of a drum loop, loading it as an LFO, and imparting the characteristics of that loop into the LFO? So, now your filter cutoffs could be sync'ed to the rhythms of your background drums. Take a measure of drums, set the LFO Sync to 4 beats, and it sounds like it grew there. Or some nutty rapid drum break suddenly sends your Rapture patch into a panning tailspin. Don't get me wrong, folks: this is audio interpolated into a control source. But the similarities will remain.

This is nuts. Take it further to side-chaining applications for gating your rhythm section together, or simply just having the ability to draw in whatever shape you want with Sound Forge (or even free Audacity) and a cheapo Wacom tablet. That alone is worth the price of admission. Not only do you have the ultimate in control, but it's fast, too. Just start cutting and pasting together any kind of samples, load it as a UD-LFO, and see what pops up. You want to talk about 'happy accidents'?



Whew! This is running long. Just enough time left for a few practical examples:

Draw in the LFO shape of your choosing, and load it. Call it up in Rapture in a Pitch Modulator, and fine-tune the settings. Copy the LFO, and drop it into the other 5 Elements. As you do, Shift the Phase of each one slightly forward in time, and set the Shot and/or Delay mode. Result: each 'envelope' of the LFO with be staggered in rapid-fire fashion, and you'll get a cluster of pitch shifts. But only once at the start of your Note-On. Combine this with the Ring Mod capability, and you'll be able to create the sharpest & most complex attacks that you've ever heard.

Load a shape in Cutoff 1, Copy it, and Paste it in Filter 2. Two different filter types. Drag the Phase of Filter 2's LFO out 180 degrees. Then load the same in the Pan/Amp LFOs. Instant automatic crossfades between filters. See the Rapture Signal Flow - Part 2 tutorial for how many different variations you can get from just changing up chaining combinations.

Load another Pitch LFO, and stagger them across Elements by a quarter note. Simulated portamento that's presented in a the manner of a musical round.

Use an audio editor's toolset to create any type of waveshape that comes to mind. Got a cool one? Copy it, Paste after the original, and Reverse it. Now it's symmetrical. Scale it with Volume and Normalize processes. Repeat the waveform by adding a plugin echo to your app, and let it slowly decrease in level with each repetition. Impress the shape of a convolution reverb over your waveshape, and mimic that. Edit your LFO with a pencil tool. And it's all so easy to do.



Man, somebody stop me, before I hurt myself. As this is (once again) part-fact and part-speculation, let me end with the usual disclaimer. But it's very safe to assert the the new LFO structure in Rapture offers a lot more than meets the eye. Especially while you're still just staring at a .jpg, like I am. Well, at least I'm pining away while I'm in the Keys, with a lawn chair, good sun, and a Pina Colada. [sigh!]

did everyone get the e-mail from Cakewalk today with a link to the gearwire.com video?

No, I didn't notice until you just told me here. Sure would've been nice to see that before I wrote this little novella.

With this thing hard work will yield the types of sounds I'm looking for

With your kind of background, I think that Rapture is going to be easier to program than you think. All synthesizer knowledge is transferable to some degree. And this thing is made to tweak. Everything's right there. All you have to do is pull the knobs and flick the switches, and see what comes out. I'm sure it'll have the variety-pack of good presets to choose from, and just use those as a starting point for exploration.

Like a Retro-Chic-Rapture patch, for example.

What's really sad is that I'm so lazy that I won't take the time to learn Sonar 4 Home Studio enough to even send MIDI data to and from it so I can record MIDI tracks, and thus use a synth like Rapture from within it. I've got Garigus' book "Sonar 4 Power", and it's great, but I just can't make myself sit and learn it everyday.

What I really think the 'one' stands for the new One-Shot mode.

Nah. I reckon it's just the number for the current LFO ‘slot’ your using… How many user shapes did René say this sucker would how? As you said, it would make sense for LFO shape #1 to be a sine…

So, why would you use this, when you have perfectly good EGs and StepGens that'll do the same thing?

Apart from more options, I'm thinking that punching in 4096 entries into the Step Gen wouldn't be as easy as loading a custom LFO shape!

Copy it, Paste after the original, and Reverse it.

Slick idea. Add ‘invert’ into the list of steps if you're sampling half a cycle…

Man, somebody stop me, before I hurt myself.

Remember how I said Rapture's LFO section had your name written on the attached swing tag? Just relax, guy. You've done all the mental preparation & practised tweaking on the .jpg simulation, you're gonna be a smooth operator once you lay hands on Rapture in the flesh.

Tom, thanks for this lucid post. It's got me thinking even broader than I already was…

Of course, you know that now I'm still going to ask some questions as a result of your generosity. Do the file names appear under the User-defined 'slots'? For easy organizational purposes? And with all those preset choices, you're going to make me wonder if I can export them for further tweaking, and re-import the results back as a UD-LFO. I suppose that's being a little greedy, and there's ways around that. Never mind.

The user LFO waveforms need to be called 'Lfowaveform43.wav' like, where 43 is the number. There's a compromise here: while we could've done it as in the Scala microtuning (where each element remembers the scala file loaded and reloads it on patch/song reload), for resource saving purposes all LFO waveform slots are shared amongs instances. Therefore they're not loadable from the user interface. You just save the wav file in the \Lfowaveforms folder, and Rapture will load those on startup.

Now back to the presets: I'm sure that you highlighted the clipped arc tangent waveshape for a reason. There's a subliminal message in there somewhere. Am I to assume that the 'powered' LFO shapes have to do with exponential deformation of a base waveshape? Almost like a waveshaper, when additional harmonics are added to, say, a sine wave, so that the overall waveshape is changed as a result. You know: like sine to the fifth?

Certainly. The 20 first waveforms (factory) are identical to Dimension Pro. It's just that we didn't use the real name in DP, as we don't have a menu over there.

I'm going to have to grab myself one of those Powerbooks, though. Evidently, it comes bundled with some cool synths that haven't been released yet. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but I still can't seem to tweak this latest .jpg image.

I bet you beers for a week (and I won't forge I have one in credit) that you will be amazed with Macs. Why PCvsMac when we can PC+Mac


-René

The user LFO waveforms need to be called 'Lfowaveform43.wav' like, where 43 is the number. There's a compromise here.

Not a problem, Rene. I'm all for resource conservation, because I need every spare CPU cycle that I can salvage. Besides, there's an easy workaround:

Comment out a chart of user-defined LFO equivalents in an .sfz text file. Then equate that numeric line with a user-friendly file name. Like this, for example:
// LFOwaveform43.wav = CrazyAssSquare4.wav
// LFOwaveform44.wav = JetPlanePanner1.wav
// LFOwaveform45.wav = BRocketLauncher.wav
...

Then, once you're all pre-organized, you save the .sfz in a place of easy access in the Waveform (???) folder (where the Multisamples folder would be in DP). Click on the slot in Rapture, call up the Load dialog, but instead of loading anything, right-click on your LFOWaveformStructure.sfz, and choose Edit or Open. Notepad (or equivalent) pops up with a handy reference chart.

bet you beers for a week ... that you will be amazed with Macs.

You'd get off cheap on that bet. How about a week's worth of good ... uh, cigars instead? Yeah, I used to use Macs for graphics. Begrudgingly. I know that they're much improved, and have always been de facto for serious audio. If you believe the hype. But do you know how much crow that I'd have to eat if I bought one now? If I do, I'm sure not going to tell any of you guys.

Hmm ... so now that's 42 preset LFO waveforms, and "80+" user-defined slots. I wonder if the two randoms count as presets. So that's 84-86 user-defined slots (you had to base it on 128 total)? I think that I can manage within those 'limitations' ...

Thanks for the clarifications, Rene.

0~19 are the 'factory' LFO waveform slots. 20 to 100 are the 'user' slots. 101 and 102 are unipolar and bipolar random.
The factor waveforms are the same as in Dimension Pro.


-René

it's still gonna be interesting when users exchange patches and mess up the LFO substitution.

What do you think, Dale? The MIDI Matrix gets saved along with a .prog. It's my guess that the LFOwaveform folder contents might get saved along with it, too. If that's true, we use an otherwise empty .prog as a delivery container, and it'd have to be attached to any new associated complete .progs as well. Otherwise, it'd be too much of a PITA to reconstruct at the other end. This is off the top of my head; am I missing something here? I'd hate to try to have to dream up some batch load scheme. That's your department.

Let's see if you just busted my Platinum cherry. I can only hope that this doesn't also become the hair color of choice on my dates.
Edit: Yup, you did. Man, I didn't want to reach that number. It's obscene.

And you popped it on the Instruments forum ... deductions for that ... imagine the replies you're not going to get because you did it over here ... hmmm, maybe that's a good thing ...

That's what these forums are for. I've been using and programming (to a certain degree - in a practical manner) synths for close to 25 years. And I plan on learning a whole ton from these guys as well. That's why they do it. That's sort of one of the really good promises of the internet coming to fruition.

Re: programming synths - It's best to start with the basics - filter and envelope settings. Cutoff, Resonance, Filter Amount, and then the envelopes for the Filter and the Amplifier (those are analog synth terms brought forward to the softsynth age). It's how all of these parameters interact that make the sound have a certain character. Then you get into the LFO and movement stuff, which these guys really seem to know about. Then you get into the really esoteric stuff, which these guys also seem to know about. But I will say that 99% of the time, for actual production sounds, you can find a factory preset and then modify it to taste. That's why it's so important to understand the basics of tweaking sounds - Cutoff, Resonance, Filter Amount, Envelopes.

Another really big concept is that of movement over time. That's where the LFOs, Step Generators, and all that will come into play. Even if it's really, really, subtle, like on a Phil Collins synth pad (check the history books or 80s collections for him), good programmers know how to put it in.

I'm looking forward to learning at the feet of the masters, myself! There are also a number of good books available. Sniff around the internet on the music-related sites and ask around.

Oh, and also how effects figure in. In the early days you had to be at a really expensive studio to get those cool synth effects. But the big-time programmers who had access to them would describe the way they program as figuring the effects into the overall sound they were creating from the start - not adding effects at mixdown. Well, of course now we have a whole effects rack at our disposal, assignable to each element individually, etc. So properly and creatively integrating effects will be another big part of learning to program Rapture.

That's where it gets beyond me. So I'll be looking forward to "coming to class" with my MIDI controller, Rapture destinations, and note-taking skills.

Could you use the varying pitch of one element to modify the attack of the pan LFO of another element? Or resonance of one element to control its own filter cutoff or amplitude, as well as attack / release? Or have the resonance LFO control the filter frequency, too, but using a different linear scale (I'm thinking z3ta capability here)? Or effect mix, or LFO depth?

No,Oro. I see where you're going with this. You won't be able to modify one Destination with another Destination. Although I must admire the thought behind it. You'd have to have the EG send out MIDI, which is impossible. Except in Linplug's Octopus. Or a MIDI-generating LFO. Presposterous! Except in Petertools LiveSet.

Hmm ... with some internal rewiring and a Buchla pin-matrix ... Forget that. No, here's how I see it: You take any Source from your KB (and a few new ones generated within Rapture), and run a "cable" to a Destination (or Destinations: plural). You can control Attack and Release of each (or all) of the seven EG routings [4 total filter params; amplitude, panning, and pitch] from your Source(s). And you can do that in any or all of the 6 Elements. And you still have the StepGens and LFOs lying dormant at this point.

Subject to change without notice, when someone who really has a clue stops by.

Edit:

That's where it gets beyond me.

I was hoping that these might help to get you started, Rick. No MIDI controller stuff, but a little more straight-up and in-depth. They're geared towards Dimension, and concentrate on the MIDI Matrix.

You won't be able to modify one Destination with another Destination.

I often have to remind myself of this esp. when I think “hmm, I want a freak out knob, one that keeps everything controlled when at 1 but opens up all the randomisation modulators when I crank it up to 10.”

Plus, once you've dug deep into the power of sfz 2.0 <effect> inserts & busses you start to wish these beasts had an audio input too!

So, Audio Out + MIDI In plz. KTHX.