fm ?

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ittai
Posts: 12
Joined: 08 Nov 2007 13:20

fm ?

Post by ittai »

tonight i was studying some sounddesign whith help from the book 'the dance music manual' in this book there is a big chapter about sounddesign that explains how to do a conga sound using fm sythesis, i tried it, but i don't know how to use the fm module. i did read the manual, but i still don't get it.

here is the explanation from the book :

congas are constructed from 2 oscilators with a dash of fm to produce a 'clunky' timbre. these can be easily constucted in any synth by setting the first osc to a sine wave and the second osc to a noise wave (any type of noise). the sine wave's amp eg is set to a very fast attack and decaywith no sustain or release to produce a click that is then used as a frequency modulation for the noise waveform. the noise waveform's amp eg needs to be set to a fast attack with no release or sustain and the decay set to taste.



any help is very much appreciated ...
karmafx
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Joined: 07 Mar 2005 16:37

Post by karmafx »

hello ittai!

It's hard to understand that casual description out of context. Are there any diagrams or extra info you can give us?
I'm wondering if they really mean FM synthesis or just mean that it
modulates the cutoff frequency of a filter?

Conga's are rather low frequency, right? I would say that it is rather difficult to get low frequency output out of fm modulated noise!?. Also, noise is normally considered frequency-less, but they don't say how to modulate its frequency or even at which frequency the noise should play?

Maybe there is a special drum/conga synthesis fm technique that I'm not aware of...if so, someone please enlighten me !
flos
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Post by flos »

Believe me it's better to use sampled congas, unless you don't want the classic conga sound! :wink:
ittai
Posts: 12
Joined: 08 Nov 2007 13:20

Post by ittai »

that's all he says, i don't understand it either :p

anyway, i've done quite a few sounds from his book almready, and some of them sound quite good !
ittai
Posts: 12
Joined: 08 Nov 2007 13:20

Post by ittai »

flos wrote:Believe me it's better to use sampled congas, unless you don't want the classic conga sound! :wink:

yeah ofcourse, but i would like to learn to program everything, it feels better then using samples.. also it's more about the knowledge then the quality, if you know what i mean..
ittai
Posts: 12
Joined: 08 Nov 2007 13:20

Post by ittai »

so, if i want to use the sine as modulator and the noise as carrier, how should i connect them?
karmafx
Site Admin
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Joined: 07 Mar 2005 16:37

Post by karmafx »

As said, I don't know about the noise thing....you can set a "frequency" for the noise if you set it to cycle mode, but I really doubt you will get anything useful for a conga out of that.

But let's take the general case:

Osc->Amp->Fm->Out

You see, it is really simple since the modulator is built in to the FM module.

Set the FM mode to Sine (=modulator waveform) and use whatever you want for Osc. ModIndex in the FM module controls the amplitude of the modulation.
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