QUIRKY! Each patch brings something to the table, but what a MESSY table!!
With all apologies to the programmers, the patch could've been tidied up, but, in fairness, I've gone back and noticed some sloppy leftovers in my
own patches, like "Why is the Suboscillator Level full up, but disabled?".
(how did you get to a QUARTER...the transpose setting is still zero! You can tell just by listening? OSC 1 is detuned with the fine setting -46 cents?? while OSC 2 is tuned UP 22 cents. I cant make sense of cents!?)
I have tried to train my ears to this, but actually the tooltip showed 22 cents, which I rounded up to a quarter-tone. 100 cents=1 semitone in an equal temperament scale; look for a further explanation toward the bottom of
this page. Think of a pitchbend set to 1: all those increments in-between can be measured in cents. Blues guitarist's blue note hover around 50 cents, and many alternate, world music, or microtonal scales utilize quarter-tones. Check out an interesting page: the
Scala Home Page. BTW, the latest beta of VSampler has microtonal and Scala support, but then you might have to consider
Sonar. <g> ... Actually, you can get VS3 in a standalone version
here.
What does the unison do again? I can hear a dirtier sound, but technically what is it doing?
You're tripling the note on fingered by your KB or recorded MIDI note by adding two additional internal oscillators with an identical pitch and waveform. Detune works in conjunction with Unison to spread the additional pitches for a detuned/chorusing effect. You can set up Osc 1, 2, & 3 and adjust the Fine controls for a similar effect. Note that this adds to your processing overhead and is limited by your overall polyphony. I don't know the exact relationship, but at lower settings, the Polyphony in the readout
seems unrelated. I would suspect that you'd notice voice-stealing after a Polyphony number of 24 or so with the Unison on (24 voices X 3 > 64 voice maximum).
Is this assignable? Is there somewhere that says 5 second delay?
It is adjustable with the EG 2 Delay slider, and gets assigned to the Destinations in the Modulation section of the EG. The tooltip over the Delay slider says 4857.8 ms. (~4.9 seconds). Again, artistic license: I rounded it up to five seconds.
(Crazy! I'm lost... EG 2 shows us that Lev-03 (which is OSC 3) is heavily modulated in Dest1 but not Dest2. Does this mean amplitude is modulated? The LFO is modulated by pitch. So that means that pitch is modulated over time...but how is the pitch controlled? How do we make it go up or down of alternate? Also, in EG 3 how is it that pitch only modulates OSC 3 and no others?)
Only one Destination is chosen in EG 2, and that is the level of Osc 3 only. This overrides the overall amplitude envelope set in the EG A for Osc 3 (but still depends on the EG A settings if those settings are too 'short'), but none of the other oscillators in this configuration. Were another Destination chosen in the second slot of EG 2, the second Depth control there comes into play. Choosing a Lev (X) as a Destination allows control over that Desination whether or not the EG Level Sensitivity knob is greater than 0%; it'll control that oscillator's level regardless.
The LFO is modulating the Pitch of any oscillator the has it's LFO Sensitivity knob greater than 0%; in this patch, that's only Osc 3 @ 100%. The confusing part here is due to that 5 second Delay in EG 2. You really have to hold a note to hear this patch develop.
Disable all the oscillators except Osc 3, and lower the Delay time in EG 2 to zero. You'll clearly hear the trill created by the square wave in LFO 1 suddenly jump in Pitch after the 2297.3 ms. Delay time set in EG 3. All the settings in LFO 1 control the rapid pitch fluctuations. Change the sliders/knobs there to change up the trill sound. The gradual downward pitch sweep follows the EG 3 envelope (and a subsequent jump up in pitch much later). The sweep only affects Osc 3 because that's the only Osc with it's EG Sens knob under Mod Sens that's greater than 0%.
OH MY! THATS THE FREAKIN BOMB DUDE!!! HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS!?!?!
Just like I wrote in the original tutorial: A couple of quick adjustments will completely change the character of any patch. The important thing is to get your head around what each control does, and change only one at a time while you're learning. That method makes the patch easily restored (or Replace Synth in P5 with the same synth, and navigate back to the patch). It also keeps the confusion down, as some adjustments will result in no sound, or no audible change due to it's dependence on another parameter.
Can you explain why this reverses??
The Amount sets the maximum modulation level in the EG. Double click on the Amount slider in EG A. You'll hear no sound, because the maximum level is set to 0%. Gradually increasing this Amount gives more and more control over the amplitude to EG A. Going in a negative direction towards -100% in the Amount inverts the polarity of the envelope. It may be more descriptive in this patch to invert the polarity (-100%) of EG 1, instead, and listen to how the upward Cutoff Frequency sweeps of the filters are now sent downward. If you listen carefully, you can hear the filter freqs jump up
after the Release portion of the envelope (Note Off, or after you lift your fingers from the KB controller).
THANKS B!!
Anytime, Greg. It's encouraging to note that you've completed twice as many of my tutorials as ...