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Aural Synthetica v1.1 Digital Modular Sample Synthesizer Startup Guide / Tutorial Dedicated to Rob Baxter Getting Started with Aural Synthetica Running the program. This program can be run from floppy or hard disc provided that the Workbench has been loaded first, It requires Kick start/Workbench 2.04 or higher and 2 Meg of RAM to run. An accelerator and Fast RAM are highly recommended as this program is highly computationally intensive. Users with a 68020 or better should use the 020 version, This includes users with A1200, A3000, A4000 and any other accelerated machine which does not use a 68000 or 68010. Installation If you wish to put the program on a Hard Disc simply copy the Synthetica Drawer to the disc where you want it to go, it can be copied anywhere. If you do not have AmigaGuide on your system use the AmigaGuide installer, it will in stall the AmigaGuide program. What is Aural Synthetica? Aural Synthetica is a very powerful sound creation program which uses modular synthesis design to create any number of sounds. Due to the nature of the program it also turns out to be fairly complex and to help the beginner some Basic synthesizer setups have been added which do the setting up for you and also show what can be done with the various modules. This guide is designed to help you start using the program, A more detailed manual is on the disc in AmigaGuide format called Synthetica.guide, this goes into a lot more detail on what the individual modules do. Most people will start messing around with a program before even looking at the manual - this method is likely to leave you very confused with Aural Synthetica as it is a very complex program, if you've tried and you're lost this book is for you! Starting Up. When the program is run 3 windows will appear, the middle one has a slider and using it you can select the amount of memory the program will use, this will not take all avail able memory as some will be needed to display various win dows. If you are running it for the first time set the memory slider to 50,000 and then press OK, this is the minimum memory that can be allocated. When a sound is cre ated with the program it is created in CD quality sound (16 Bit at 44.1KHz). In mono you should have about 1/2 of a second of sampling time or 1/4 of a second in stereo. When you press OK a window will appear called Setting Up, this initialises the program and sets up the basic wave forms which are used to create sound. If you have another audio program running Aural Synthetica will not allocate the sound channels, if you then create a sound you will then have to save it before you can hear it. If you are running this alone it will take the sound channels and al low you to play the sounds. A Brief tour of Aural Synthetica The program has two main windows which are always open. The top one is called View samples and this is where your created sound is displayed, the play button lets you hear the sound and the Left/Right/Both buttons display different parts of the sample if it is stereo. Pull Down Menus can be accessed from the window, these are New All - This deletes all patch connections and resets all module settings. Project Menu New Patch - This deletes all patch connections. Save Sample - allows you save a sample in one of 5 formats, IFF, AIFF, WAV, MAUD and SAFF. Load Patch - Allows the user to load a presaved patch setup, the sound can then be recreated by pressing render. Save Patch - This saves all patch connections and module settings in a single file. Save Patch & waves - as save patch but includes user created waves (NOTE: only saves waves used in a patch). About Aural Synthetica - Displays some info abut the pro gram. Quit - Allows you to quit. Edit Menu Zero Sample - Deletes all sample data. Toggle Filter - Toggles the Audio filter. Audio Device - Switches Amiga audio on/off. The lower Window is the Digital Modular Synthesizer or DMS window, this is were all the action happens, from here you can open all the other windows and set up your sound. Starting at the bottom left is a dark space, messages are displayed here and tell you whats going on. This is fol lowed by the word Edit: followed by three buttons - Wave forms, BasicSynth and Programmer. These three buttons open the Editors. The final button is called Render and this starts the sound creation process. The Wave Editor This is a large window covered with buttons and sliders, this is where you can create your own waves. The first this to do is to look below the large black win dow for the wave slider, this will be sitting at wave 13, this is the first user wave, the first 12 waves are the ba sic waves and these cannot be altered, you can view them by moving the slider from 1-12, the remaining waves 13-36 are all blank, these can be used to create your own waves. Creating a wave I will not go into detail here as Synthetica.guide will ex plain this, but to get you started this is how to create a simple wave. First select wave 13, the display should be blank. Press Mix Harms and a sine wave will appear which is the same as basic wave 1. If you look on the right hand side of the window at the bottom you will see a set of vertical sliders numbered 1-128. the first is at maximum by default, select this and move it down to about half way, then select slider 5 and move it up to about half way. Now press Mix Harms again and a somewhat different wave will appear. In the middle of the window at the bottom is a row of small radio buttons, named Add/Sub/Mul/>/</OR/XOR. Add is the default but select Sub and press Mix Harms again, this will make a new wave but upside down. If you also try Mul a to tally different wave will appear, the > , < , OR and XOR options however will create totally different waves. Basic Synthesizers Now close the Wave Editor and Press BasicSynth, which will open the Basic Synthesizers window. Basic Synthesizers are Presets which have been built into the program, these allow you to create new sounds without changing the patches or can be used as a starting point for your own setups, all the modules used in a Basic Synth can be changed in the usual way so a large number of sounds can be generated from a single set up. When the Window is first opened a simple display with three boxes appears along with the message "Basic Single Oscilla tor". To hear this sound press one of the Render buttons, there is one in the bottom right hand corner of the Basic Synth window. It will open a small window in the center of the screen, Press the button beside MONO LEFT followed by Start Render. All open windows will then close (except View and DMS) and a small Rendering Sample window will ap pear, a bar will move across the window to indicate progress, If you are using a 68000 machine such as an A500+ the progress will probably be very slow as a great deal of calculations are done when Synthetica creates a sound, Fast RAM will boost the processing speed but a better CPU and fast RAM should would be the best option, please note that if you are using a faster CPU speed will increase but you will not get full benefit of the CPU unless fast RAM is used, this is true for any Amiga Program. Once the calculations are complete a waveform will be drawn and if you press play you will be able to hear the sound. The sound created by Basic Synth 1 is not very exciting but you can make it better. On the DMS window is a large number of numbered buttons, on the top left is one called Osc 1, press this and a big win dow full of buttons and sliders appears, The Window is titled Oscillator 1, it is the Ocsillators which make the Sound in Aural Synthetica, the other modules change the sound produced by the oscillators. The Oscillator will also have 8 black boxes along the top with the first occu pied with a wave, this is a triangle wave and to change the sound you will change the wave into a square wave. To do this you need to find the Waveform slider, if you look at where the waveform is displayed and go downwards you will find Waveform Modulation, if you keep going downwards you will find 3 sliders labelled Waveform, Amplitude and Delay. The first one labelled Waveform selects the waveform you will be changing. The value of this will be 3, change this to 2, now go to the bottom right hand corner of the DMS window and press render, don't use the Basic Synth window as opening it will reset the waveform value. Once the sample has been recreated press play and it will sound a lot louder. If you wish you can try the different waveforms to hear the different sounds that can be produced by different wave shapes, some of the differences will be big but others will sound vary similar. Open the Basic Synth window and now move the Synth slider to 2. This setup uses 2 Oscillators to create an improved sound, press render and play the sound and you will notice it is very different, this is because the waves produced are at slightly different frequencies. If you press Osc 2 oscillator 2 will open, look at the Waveform slider and it will be 3, now look at the three sliders on the right and the bottom one is marked Detune, the two sliders above set which note is played and the octave, the detune slider al lows the note to be made slightly higher or lower, set it to 100 and press render again. This will produce another similar sound but because it has more detune is not quite the same. The different waveforms come in useful here, set Osc 1 and Osc 2 waveforms to number 5, you will not need to close the Oscillator window as the window is updated if you press a button for another oscillator. One the sound is created you can hear the effect, another subtle change can be made by reversing one of the oscillators, Open Oscillator 1, on the right of the detune sliders are two check boxes, one marked NEG and another marked REV, NEG turns the waveform upside down and rev reverses it, click REV. Make sure the waveform in both Osc 1 and Osc 2 is still number 5 render this sample and you will hear a different sound. Modulating Sounds These sounds are only subtly different but what if you want a more interesting sound? To do this you will need to use a form of modulation. To Modulate a sound you change it over time, this can be done in a number of different ways. To illustrate this open the basic Synth window and move the slider to number 10, press render to hear the sound. This will sound different to anything before but it can be enhanced further. Open Osc 2 and change the waveform to number 8, below the Waveform slider is another slider marked Amplitude which determines the output volume of the Oscillator, setting the value up to 300 will introduce some distortion, this wont sound bad but will introduce some ex tra treble in the sound. The form of modulation used here is called Pulse Width Modulation and if there is more treble the modulation will be more pronounced, render the sound to hear the difference. In Basic Synth 10 two Oscillators are used but only one has the modulation. Open Osc 1 and look at the bottom left of the Window, you will find an area marked Pulse Width Modulation along with a Slider, a NEG check box and a Source button with the word NONE beside it in a box. The word NONE indicates that there is no modulation input and it is this which we will change. Press the Source button and a small window called Pick Source will appear select Oscillator 3 and the word NONE will change to OSC 3, now close the Pick Source window and press render. You will notice that the sound is now more pronounced. Other Modules Aural Synthetica uses Oscillators to create sound but there are also another modules and these are used to do a number of sound processing functions, all of these modules modu late signals or can be modulated by them. Envelope Generators create a signal which is used to change the volume of a sound. Apart from Oscillators these are the only modules which can create a signal. Mixers are used to take in a number of signals and mix them together. Modifiers change the shape of the sound waves which are passed through it changing the sound. Wave Shapers also change the shape of waves but use differ ent techniques to produce different sounds. Filters change the levels of different frequencies, this type of filter is called a Graphic Equalizer and could be considered as a glorified tone control. Amplifiers Control the volume of a signal but also provide some more wave shaping capabilities. Delayers hold a signal for a short amount of time and add it back to the original signal, this completely changes the character of the original signal. Tool Boxes contain a number of different functions includ ing Noise generation, Holding sample values, Amplitude Modulation and a sweepable resonant filter, this is a dif ferent type of filter from the Graphic Equalizer and has a totally different sound. Left and Right are mixers which function as Outputs, if you don't connect one of these you will get no sound. The Basic Synth Window shows how the different modules are connected, If you look at number ten you can see there are two Oscs and these are both connected to the Left output, Also connected to the left out is Env 1, the effect of this is best shown using Basic synth 1, if you render this again you can see that the waveform is not a fixed volume but changes, if you press Env 1 you will see a similar shape as Env 1 is used to generate the envelope. The Patch Programmer Now to try a different type of modulation but this time you will use the Patch programmer to connect up one of the pro cessing modules. To open the patch programmer press Programmer on the DMS window, a large window will open which is jam packed with little buttons. This window isn't an exercise in trying to horrify the user or an entrant to worst user interface of the year but is in fact an easy way of programming patches. Once you have figured it out the programmer will in fact be quite easy to use, and the best way to learn is experience. Open the Patch Programmer, there may be a few red lines on the window and these are the patch leads. These patch leads will not be required so the first thing is to delete them, the quickest way to clear a patch is to press New, the window will then redraw itself without any patch leads. This only however clears the patch leads, we will also need to reset the settings for the various modules, to do this click on the View Samples window, then use the Pull down menu "New All" this not only clears the patch leads but also resets all the settings. Return to the Patch window and find Osc 1, this is not clearly marked in the patch window but is easy to find. It consists of 5 buttons in the top left hand side, the large button is the output from the Oscillator and the 4 small buttons are the modulation inputs. Click once on the large button marked 1, the words "OSC 1 Output", "Select an In put" will appear in the black message box. The next button to find is the input to the shaper, to find it look in the middle of the window at the top for the word "SHAP" this indicates the buttons below are for the shapers and it is one of these you will be looking for. Immediately below SHAP will be 4 buttons, one large one marked 1 and three small ones marked P L and S. The input to the Shaper is the left most one marked P. Click on this and a red line should appear, If it does not something has gone wrong, click the P button again until a red flash ap pears in the message box, this indicates an illegal connec tion has been attempted and it is waiting for the user to do something, if you ever press the wrong button by mistake simply press the same one again. Now go back and try again. The input to the shaper from Osc 1 has been connected and now it is time to connect Osc 2 to the Shape Quality Modulation input. To do this go back to the SHAP and click on the small S button, The words "SHAPE 1 Shape Modulation Input", "Select an Output" will appear in the message box, now go across to were you connected Osc 1 output and look below it for the large button marked 2, this is the output from Osc 2 and you should click it. You do not have to connect Inputs and outputs in any order but you cannot con nect an Input to an Input, you also cannot connect an Out put to another Output. You have now connected a sound source to a processing mod ule and also added a modulation input, this in itself will not produce any sound as you have not connected a main out put. Press Test and the words "Errors in Patch" will appear, this indicates that your patch cannot be calculated, If one of the main outputs is not connected this error will ap pear, another reason it can occur is if no Oscillator or Envelope is used in the patch, these create the original sound and at least one of either must be used (you do not need one of each). Find SHAP again but this time click on the big button marked 1, the words "Shape 1 Output", "Select an Input" should appear. The Main Outputs are located in the bottom right hand corner, they consist of 7 small input buttons and a large output button, there is a Left and Right output and you want the Left, there are 6 small buttons marked 1 to 6 and a seventh marked A, click on one of the numbered ones (doesn't matter which). There should now be three red lines which you have added, now press Test and the words "Patch OK" should appear, if not somethings gone wrong, if "Errors in Patch" appears press New and start again. Before moving on I shall explain the other buttons - You have used New and Test but there are also "Clear View", "Redraw" and "Render". Press Clear view, the screen will redraw itself but you patch leads will have disappeared, they have not been deleted simply removed from view, press Test and you will see that "Patch OK" will appear. If you are wondering at the use for such a button it is there in case your patching gets complicated, when a highly complex patch is created you can end up with patch leads all over the place and it is not always clear what you are doing, Clear View removes the existing patch leads from view to let you add patch leads clearly. Redraw redraws the patch leads, when you cut a patch it is not deleted from the view and this can be a bit confusing, Redraw simply redraws all existing patch leads. Press Re draw and the leads you added will reappear. The Render button is the same as the Render button on the DMS and Basic Synth Windows, don't press it yet as the patch is not yet complete. Open Osc 1 and make sure the waveform is number 1, You will also need to change the Octave to number 14, the octave slider is the middle of the three sliders on the right, the display the Note slider should change to "C 523.25 Hz" Now press Osc 2 on the DMS window and the Osc window will redraw itself. Make sure the Waveform is number 3 but this time change the Octave to number 5, the display beside the Note slider should read "-- 1.02 Hz". You will now have selected a high frequency sine wave in Osc 1 and a very low frequency triangle wave in Osc 2. The low frequency wave is way below what humans can hear but in this case it is being used to modulate one of the effects in the slider. You should now close the Oscillator window. The Shaper also need to be set up properly as well. Go across to the middle of the DMS window and find SHAP 1, once you have found it click it and a window will appear in the middle of the screen titled Wave Shaper 1. At the very Top is a slider marked Phaser which is set to 128, this should be reset to 0 as it is not used in this patch. You should also notice a Source button and the word "OSC 1" beside it in a box, this is the patch connection that you made to the P button in the patch programmer. The second connection was made to the S button and this is the Shape Quality Modulation and is located at the bottom of the Win dow. Processing modules all start with an input at the top and the output at the bottom, the output however is not displayed as it can go to many locations at once, an input however can only come from one place. There is a level slider at the bottom set at level 2, this should be changed to 256, the radio button should be on the Bandwidth setting. You will have now fully programmed a patch and it is ready to complete, press render and select the Mono Left option if it is not already there. The sound created will be nothing like any of the other sounds you have heard so far. All the processing modules have a different effect on the sound and this is just one of them. Reopen the Shape window and press Bits and Render the sample again. The result this time will be a more subtle effect but in teresting none the less, these two different sounds can also be combined by pressing Both on the Shape window. Try this and render the sample, after this render it using the Both Opp setting. The result of these two options will sound pretty similar but this is because the level is so high, change the level to 128 and try both again, this will show a bigger differ ence. Changing the modulation speed can make a very big differ ence to the sound. Open Osc 2 and change the octave to 8, keep the shape setting on Both Opp and render the sound. The sound will now be very different as it is being modu lated at a higher rate, previously it was being swept slowly. Changing the wave can also have a big effect on modulation. Open Osc 2 and change the wave to number 1, render the sample and listen to it, then reopen Osc 2 and change the wave to number 7 and re render the sound, this will give also give a different sound, if you wish go through the different waves and listen to the different sounds which are made, waves 4 and 9 may look similar but the sound produced is very different. You can also modulate the waves which are modulating. First open Osc 2, change the wave to number 7 and the Oc tave to number 12, Render this sound. The modulating wave has been moved up to a rate where it is actually now pro ducing a note. We will modulate this note with Osc 3. To do this open up the Patch Programmer and find a button on the left approxi mately half way down marked 3, this will be below the out put from Osc 2. Press the 3 button, this is the output from Osc 3 and we shall use it to modulate the frequency of Osc 2. To do this you will need to look at the Osc 2 but tons and find a small one marked F, click on this and a red patch lead will appear. Now close the Patch Programmer and open Osc 3. Change the wave to number 2 and the octave to number 9. Render this to hear the result, it will sound somewhat different to the previous sound. If you wish to experiment further change the Phase setting of the Shaper, start at very low values. As you see although an option may only make a subtle dif ference to the sound, it's when you add many of them after one another the result can be anything but subtle. More Oscillator Modulation There are other types of Oscillator modulation which I have not yet discussed, these are Phase Shift, Frequency and Waveform modulation. Phase Modulation, Select New All from the pull down menu and then open Osc 2 and set the octave to 7. Then open the Left Output Window (LEFT - bottom right of DMS window), press one of the top six source buttons and select Osc 1 as the Input. Click on Osc 1 and Find Phase Shift Modulation, which is below the main oscillator controls. Press Source and se lect Osc 2. Now press render, after hearing this try the -Only and Both options, these will both give different sounds. The reason is how this modulation works, it takes the waveform being produced and moves it by a distance de termined by the modulation wave, the different options de termine the type of modulation, what happens to the shifted wave and how the shifted and original waves are recombined, if you wish go through the different options although this may take some time - there are 96 different combinations, if you couldn't be bothered doing this (you must be seri ously bored if you do) try the 4 radio buttons on the right labelled Add/Mul/>/OR, there are only 4 of these and they make the biggest difference. Frequency Modulation This is relatively simple compared to Phase Shifting as there are no options to play with other than the Level and NEG options. NEG appears beside most inputs and is used to flip the input upside down, in this case it would make a rising frequency to become a falling one. Frequency modulation has nothing to do with certain Yamaha Digital Synthesizers as they used the modulation to change the shape of the wave. Aural Synthetica modulates the fre quency or pitch of the output waveform creating every thing from subtle changes to mad frequency sweeps. To hear some of these open Osc 1 then press the Source button on the Phase Shift modulation and select No Input, Then go back to the Frequency Modulation section and press Source and se lect Osc 2. You don't have to close the Selection window between selecting different inputs as it goes by the last Source button you pressed. Now press render, you will hear a very unusual sound indeed, this is the sound of a sine wave going up and down very quickly, it is also changing by several octaves. Open Osc 2 and change the octave to 5 and press render. The sound produced this time will be like an old electronic drum, it is the same effect but slower, re rendering with the NEG option will give a different effect of the pitch rising then falling. Frequency modulation can also be used to wobble a sound with vibrato, open Osc 1 and set the frequency Modulation level to 32. Then open Osc 2 and set the octave to 9, ren der this for the result. You can also use it to produce detuning effects, Open the Left output window and on one of unused inputs (not the bottom) press source and select Osc 3, Then open Osc 1 and set the Frequency Modulation level to 14. Press render and the result this time will be of one sound adding to then canceling out the other. This happens because the waves in Osc 1 and Osc 3 are the same, try opening Osc 1 and changing the wave to number 2, the result will be a lot more pronounced. Waveform Modulation What you have seen so far is taking a standard wave and modulating it using various means, the original wave itself however is the same although the output changes. Waveform modulation works in a different manner, it changes the original waveform, this produces very pure sounds but they have movement so they are not dull in the same way as a static waveform is. Open the left Output select where Osc 3 is and change it to None, then go back to Osc 1 and change the Frequency Modulation input to none. Go up to waveform and change it to 0. When you do this a row of sine waves will appear along the top of the window and eight previously ghosted sliders will clear, these al low you select your waveforms, You will also need select a waveform modulation input, select Osc 2 for this. For the Waveforms select the following in this order: 2,10,4,9,9,4,10,2. Set the octave in Osc 2 to 5 and press render. Then open Osc 3 and set the Waveform to 0 and the Waveform Modulation to Osc 2. Then go the right hand side of the window find the copy button and press it, the waveforms will all then change to match those you set in Osc 1. If you are setting up a number of oscillators for waveform modulation this saves you having to select the waves over and over again, The slider below determines which oscilla tor you are copying them from, set it to 2 press copy and they will all change back to sine waves, set it back to 1 and press copy again to get the waves back. Now set the Detune to 45 and open the Left output window and pick Osc 3 as an input, Press render for the result which is simply the previous sound with a detuned copy. Reopen Osc 3 and set the detune back to 0, then move the octave down to 12 and press render. You can try a few Os cillators with different octave settings (12,13,15 or 11,12,15) for an nice thick sound (rember to add the third once as an output and change the wave/modulation settings), also try lightly frequency modulating the highest octave with the FM level at 8 and a modulating frequency of 21Hz (octave 9, note F). If you can follow this lot you should be able to work your way round the rest of the program in no time. For detailed descriptions of the Modules and what the various options do please read the Synthetica.Guide. If you want to see more example sounds look at how the Basic Synths have been put together, these are just like any other patch with the dif ference being that they are built into the program. There are yet more examples included in the Patch Drawer of the disc, these produce a wide variety of sounds, there are no samples supplied as it is much easier to supply a Patch as they take up much less room. Patch Programming Rules The way to create a patch is to start with an Oscillator and take it through various modules to the output, any modulation sources will be fed into the modulation inputs of the modules. All Patches must: 1) Include at least one of either an Oscillator or an Enve lope. 2) Include at least one connection to the Main outputs ( NOT Amplitude Modulation). For All Modules: 1) The first input to the module must be used, this is left or top left in the Patch programmer (any of the 6 for Mix ers). 2) All Modules in use must have at least one output connec tion to another module. Inputs and Outputs: 1) An Input can only come from one Output. 2) An Output can go to as many Inputs as you wish. 3) You can't connect an Input to an Input or an Output to an Output. Note 1: If you click the wrong button by mistake press it again, this will give a red flash and allow you to select some thing else. Note 2: Test will tell you if something will render, not if any sound will be produced or if the sound will be any use. The test is simply designed to inform the user if a given patch will render, it does not check if you have followed the rules properly. Note 3: Envelopes can be used as sound sources but unless they are modulated the sound produced will be probably be to low frequency to hear.