The Propellerhead Reason 4 tutorial site

Fm Synthesis in Reason 4 part 1

FM synthesis is a method of generating sounds using 2 or more signals. One modulates the other and by definition it would return a different sound. FM Synthesis is probably also one of the difficult methods to explain in just a few words. Just as a reference to a complete math book about it: standford documentation on FM Synthesis To back up my own thoughts on the whole FM Synthesis, I understand most of this while programming the FM-Pac (or FM-Pack, or OPLL) made by Yamaha in 1986. The chipset was based on one of its keyboards (DX-2 keyboards at the time) and I got around understanding most of it what FM-Synthesis did by the time. Even while I have dropped the whole FM generation from around 1997 and moved on to wavetables and such, I still have some common knowledge about what makes FM ...

Airy Pad

Here's a more complete patch I did today. The combinator patch holds a couple of patches build from the ground up and uses 4 rotaries. The idea is to shape the lows, mids and high differently again. Yeah, I have a thing with those.

Also I love the effectiveness of the malstrom inside this 'setup'. Especially the additive wave (which are dynamic wave forms that shape different over time) can be very powerful assets in this case.

Vocoding drums

Vocoding is a very old technique that I have been referring to from time to time. It's purpose is to make robotic sound effects from a modulator. Normally one would use a microphone to set up a vocoder (like a talkbox does for instance). Since the carrier signal changes the shape of the vocoder. However, one of the techniques which I personally use from time to time is to setup the vocoder the other way around: meaning, it uses an analog sound to be the modulator input so we are vocoding a subtractor (in this case, but as long as the waveform is simple it should work like a charm).In this setup the vocoder become more an "advanced filter" type, rather just being a plain simple robotic sound generator. It's a cool usuage of this device and you can get some really wacky sounds out ...