I didn’t mean to antagonize you.
I love maths.
I feel like ratios are like 2+3=5, it’s pretty basic.
I just meant that maths are not really in your way for discovering FM. Same for all the weird unmusical jargon attached to FM synthesis. “Algorithm”, for instance, is really not wisely chosen.
Btw, the link I gave precisely address with humor this point exactly (you haven’t read it, have you?).
At a time when I knew nothing about FM, it demystified the subject to me, and made learning very simple and fun.
Once one clearly understands the basics, with two signals only, piling more knowledge is less intimidating.
The Cuckoo mega tutorial that just came out is terrific. Open a fresh project and follow along while doing what he does on your own DN2. He starts with Kick and then snare. You’ll be off to the races pretty quick!
It’s not the easiest synth. One thing that helped me was hooking it up to DAW and trying out different ratios, checking with SPAN that I dont use wrong pitched ratios by accident. Other than that or lots of offsetting, it is pretty safe to tweak and get myriad of sounds with the right pitch. Still, not too predictable… It is also super useful that you can tag your patches (self-made or bought) and filter those, makes it easier to find certain sounds, so you dont have to start from scratch every time.
On DN1 I had some bare bones pre-programmed templates for leads, pads, basses, kicks, snares, etc. As well as one note chord voicings via offsets. Havent made those just yet on DN2 cause it’s too fun to just tweak but they do help a lot. I was too busy selling the OG and didnt even remember to backup the patches 🥲
I do have my DN2 paired with couple of analog monos just so I can easily dial in those lovely subtractive sounds when I need them. I prefer analog monos due to their angry, hot gainstaging and saturation.
That ‘Tao of FM Synthesis’ really helped me get a better understanding of FM, nice and simple explanation of the core concepts without getting into all the unnecessary mathematical silliness.
also people doesn’t know what is menu diving without having used a EMU sampler with 2 lines digit screen, managing a full multitimbral , polyphonic , multisample 90 flagship
in my early digitone years i had some moments off despair sometimes, like the op said , but digitone is so full of happy accident that i was motivated to go on. ultimately this machine gives back way more than you invest everytime, you just have to enjoy the journey and all the little sound you find while travelling , this is really a fantastic device. One of the best synth i ever owned and the 2 is even more. I just suggest you to turn the pots slowly and really focus on hearing all the subtle nuances you can have when dialing the mod intensity.
I don’t have a deep understood of FM synthesis. My journey start with modular stuff. Especially a Plaits in 2op FM mode and a Bastl Pizza. Which are both FM synth, and I preferred the crispy, weird, fat sounds palette of those compared to VA synth stuff
I recently pick up the Digitone II and it’s my first deep synth. Modular certainly helps me to do what I want with it very quickly.
Even with lack of understanding of FM synthesis, this box is just filled with happy accident and sweet spots for weird metallic and glitchy sounds. So it’s a great place to start. With those accidents on your way you’ll understand little bit better FM and you will start making more guided sounds, like bass, piano pluck, evolving pad… It’s less immediately rewarding than an analog mono synth but you will do much more!
And remember that Digitone is (at least for me) really far from a classic FM synth, there’s a bunch of filters and FX that can completely change even the most boring base sound. With more knowledge you’ll go to fat square and saw oscillator combined with a LP filter you have you’re VA synth. And if you’re discouraged to try it, just use the other machines they’re meant to be more accessible with less parameters.
I wasn’t super excited for the OG Digitone (and was still in my Eurorack period) but this new version add so much help to shape your own sound quickly, then combined with the Elektron sequencer it’s just a crazy beast
this is a great idea. i used to do my sound design at work, take my dn with me away from home, then when i get home i build a pattern using my favorite sounds that i just made the night before
i had an idea to start building compositions the way youre describing sort of, then when i get home, i could swap out the simple sounds with midi track and my real synths, but it turns out thats not actually how i make music. it might help me compose, but i typically make music by creating sounds that fit well with each other, then building melodies with those sounds.
I think i will try your exact method though, that sounds like a really inspiring idea. sort of like creating a full song from one sample on the dt2 or something
don’t overthink ; FM is just 2 oscillators , one outputing sound and the other modulating it’s fraquency, the amount of modulation is controlled over time by an enveloppe, with algos the configuration is changing : wich osc is modulating wich osc ( feedback is just osc modulating itself) then the rest is classic substractive synthesis
I never try get some specific sound, just play around and do things by ear and save all sounds you like, later you learn which knob do what and it goes quicker to find sweet spots
In the past I’ve convinced myself that I have to have an FM synth just because it’s a different form of synthesis and palette of sounds to the subtractive stuff I’ve grown up with. This has lead to me a DN (twice) and each time it just doesn’t click with me. I just don’t enjoy sound design with it and what I now realise is that my music is absolutely fine without an FM element.
If it’s putting up too many barriers to actually making music then just move on and use something else. In my case, I got a lot of the same results using wavefolders, without the headaches.
The first few days with DN2 I was like “damn this forces me to be super intentional in how I set things up so I have to learn a lot now” and then I remembered it’s a musical instrument and when I listen to a song, I don’t in any way care if the artist got to their sounds in an easy way or a hard way as long as it sounds good. So I either mess around with the synth machines until I’m in the ballpark or just find a preset that’s similar-ish to the sound I want and knob twiddle my way to making it sound right and usually that happens pretty quickly.
I have a bit of a leg up in selecting and sculpting the base synthesis machine because I am a working EE with a lot of experience in RF comms and DSP and that’s FM synthesis in a nutshell but most of the “musical” synthesis bits like using the LFO’s and effects are just sort of like, “turn the knob in both directions and see which one you like better” and there’s not really that many params in the grand scheme so you can do that for a given sound pretty fast. It’s a lot of interconnected degrees of freedom but I find sequencing actual music and learning the various ways to put notes down is a lot more time consuming than finding a good sounding synth for a given track.
Also, the FM drum machine from a non-preset start is probably the best balance of quickness and deep control I’ve ever found for a drum sound, though I haven’t used very many drum machines in the grand scheme. It seems much easier to me to build a nice sound that I want from the ground up this way than to manipulate a sampled drum hit for whatever reason. I had a great kick drum in about 5 minutes the first day just by messing around with it and I had no idea what I was doing, but I think the process is pretty repeatable because I did the same thing for my toms and snares real quickly too.
So basically don’t worry about just twisting knobs until something sounds good. Once it sounds ok, make a pattern of music and then start messing around with the params of the sound a little more in a music context, both synth params and filter/FX/LFO.
The other point I think that’s really relevant and in no way digitone specific for any specific instrument’s sound design is mainly to identify the sonic space you want it to live in (the part of the spectrum and the area in the stereo image). Shape it that way early on using the stereo balance and filters. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good sound before you filter and pan it, it only matters if it sounds right in its actual place in the mix and a synth that sounds like crap unfiltered at dead center fighting with other instruments might sound perfect as soon as you filter it properly and let it stop contending with the other sounds present.
Producers aren’t wizards, they just know a lot of heuristics from learning and practice and have developed their aesthetic intuition and learned lots of shortcuts to do that efficiently with minimal experimentation time. It’s the same process you’d apply to making a rock band’s live mix work properly, and sometimes the sound that works perfectly for a given instrument sounds really weird or bad on its own but that’s just what it needs to be to sound right in the mix.
