Digitone really is great beginner synth for FM in terms of understanding how operators and modulators work. I love mine and also use modular Hertz Donut is great FM eurorack module.
1 Like
Kind of embarrassing, but after 5 years of heavy OG Digitone use, I donāt know that much about FM synthesis. Some possible reasons: I am not interested in synthesizing particular sounds. Rather, I am looking for whatever fits into the āmixā. I donāt work, specifically, on sound design. I donāt save patches to reuse. Neither do I use presets (except for a few drum sounds) in my projects, but all the sounds created in a project are bespoke to that project. I am pretty tame in the sound design department. Weird, noisy sounds donāt really work in the context of the canned accompaniments I make for my students. I rarely work with the Digitone while not trying to complete a particular project. My improvement on the Digitone has been mostly in regard to making well-balanced arrangements, rather than exploring the outer realms of sound design. My most interesting āsoundingā projects have been those where I create harmonies on a single āvoiceā by de-tuning the oscillators until harmony is manifested, with interesting tone-colors, side-bands and envelope effects present and modified by subtle changes in the fine tuning.
The fact that Iāve been able to steadily improve on the OG Digitone over five years without hitting a wall, tells me that the device is quite deep (I am quite shallow?), and that for my musical needs, I donāt need to add more to my setup.
7 Likes
This sounds like you know quite a lot about the practice of FM synthesis! I know something about the theory, but it doesnāt necessarily help me to use DN2 (except when Iām not in a sweet spot, and I generally know why itās not sweet). Whatās important is that you can use the device in ways that benefit you.
I recently wrote up a tutorial on using the M8ās FM instrument, which bears much similarity (though is not identical) to DN2ās Tone machine (= DN1). My conclusion from doing that is that it isnāt necessary to crank on algorithms and modulate everything in order to get good results. Understanding one operator / one carrier, and then moving to two / one or one / two, can generally get one most of the way there.
4 Likes
I sold my M8. Donāt want to go into all the reasons, but one issue, for me was the granularity (or lack thereof) of the detune steps for the oscillators. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, perhaps I was missing something, but the M8 seemed to lack the fine grain control over fine detuning.
1 Like
modular taught me more about FM than anything else using my Hertz Donut.
Yes, this has been remarked upon. One possible solution is to cascade modulators, but thereās a limited supply, and itās not the most elegant workflow. M8 is certainly not for everyone, but for me itās a sizeable chunk of DN and DT almost in oneās pocket (my jeans are not dad enough), and really a much more usable UI than I would have expected from something with only eight oddly-spaced buttons and no knobs.
2 Likes
Where can I read it? 