 Hello, Ocelator Sync here, and welcome back to another video in our series where we're taking a look at the sound design potential of the Volcker FM. So in the previous video, we were talking about the envelope, and the envelope is one of our two ways that we have to define how characteristics of our sound change over time. Now, when we're talking about the envelope, we're talking about a journey of sound, a journey which starts when you press the key and the sound might evolve during the time that we're holding on the key, and then we release the key, and the sound trails often kind of reaches its destination at the end there, so it's kind of very much a start to finish kind of situation. The other way that we have of modifying the characteristics of the sound over time is by using our LFOs. So that we're on the same page, LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillator, and it's traditionally one of the key components in our sort of traditional subtractive analog synthesis for defining the way that a sound changes. So an LFO is an oscillator, which is of a low frequency, the clue is very much in the title, typically well below audio range. So if we were to listen to this oscillator, most would probably hear clicks, and quite often we would just see the speaker move in and out, we wouldn't hear anything because it's below audio range typically, so below 20 hertz usually, although LFOs kind of run faster, and it's interesting when they do. In our analog world we would maybe send the LFO to the VCA, so that would control the amplitude of the sound, that would give us a sort of tremolo-uh-uh-uh-uh kind of thing if we had a square wave going there, perhaps we could send it to the filter, so we get a wah-wah-wah kind of thing, that's where you get your whubs. You might send it to the pitch, so you get a-a-a-a-round kind of siren sounds if that's what you're into, or more subtle vibrato sounds I suppose. And if you are Nic Bat, then obviously you will send it to your pulse width of your square wave to get that beautiful pulse width modulation. Now at first glance, the LFO architecture on the Volcro FM can seem quite simplistic. You've really only got one LFO, or one LFO per voice I suppose, but that's one LFO as far as sound design is concerned, and it can only go to two places. It can go to the pitch, and it can go to the level of the operators. But actually when you start to dig into the architecture, and some of the additional features and functionality that exists there, it's actually a very flexible system despite the fact that we've only got the one LFO. So with that in mind, let's dive into the edit menu and take a look. So because we've only got one LFO, it's not kind of a per operator defined thing, although we will go back to the operators as we move along. We are going to head along to the all section of our parameters in our edit menu, and we're going to start off by scrolling across until we get to the parameter. This one here, this LAMD. So this is our LFO amplitude depth. So when you hear that, you're thinking, OK, well, I know what this is going to do. This is going to be affecting the amplitude of my sound. This is going to give me my tremolo effect. So let's check it out. So here is the sound with it turned down, and as we turn it up, absolutely nothing changes. So OK, is my LFO broken? Well, no, it's not. So the way that the LFO works on the Volcker FM is that in this section, in the all section, we're defining its shape. So when we're turning up here, what we're doing is we're making the sweeps wider. I tend to start by making them as wide as possible, and then I can always dial them back. But in terms of hearing what's happening, I tend to turn it all the way up to begin with and then dial it back to make it a bit more subtle maybe later on. We'll look at some of the other parameters in a minute. But the way that the LFO works is that you define the shape here and then you go into the individual operators to define how sensitive they are to them. So here I'm on a parameter, which says AMS. And what this is is the amplitude sensitivity of this operator. So this parameter here defines how much this operator is listening to, affected by, depending on how you want to think about it, the LFO. So at the moment, it's set to zero and we're hearing no change over time. As we turn this up, we start to hear the LFO affecting this operator. Subtle at the moment. And as we turn it up, we can hear that tremolo happening and go all the way up. And we're getting that definite choppy tremolo happening. Now, I'll just point out that one of the main controls of the LFO isn't actually in the edit menu, probably the most important control, which is the rate, is actually on the front panel here on this knob here. So if we wanted to make that choppiness slower, then we can do so. Which is cool. So here we're making operator one sensitive to the amplitude modulation of our LFO. And because operator one is our carrier, the thing that we hear by altering its amplitude, what we're doing is altering the volume of our output, which is why we get this kind of chopping effect. So let's turn that off for a second and move over to operator two. Now operator two is our modulator. So our modulator is going to be defining the timbre of our sound. So by making its level modulate, rather than changing the amplitude of our output, we should be changing the harmonic content. So let's check that out. So that's where it turned down as we turn it up. We hear that kind of throbbing, but it's definitely a harmonic throbbing instead. All the way up to these big old wubs. Cool. So this sensitivity control is actually quite a nice way of working because we can have all of our different operators. I remember we do have six of them. Next video we'll talk about a few more operators. And we can all have them modulated different amounts, which can bring some quite interesting things. So we might want, for example, to not have our sound rubbing so much, but we might want it to be quite choppy. So we could turn our sensitivity up on our carrier to full. And it's quite choppy, but it's not quite as wobbly as it was. But we can make it wobbly by turning this up if we like. Okay, let's talk about some of the other controls that we have for our LFOs because the depth over here is not the only one that we have. So if we move on two clicks along, we get to this parameter here, which says LFO, and believe it or not, that's a W. So this is the LFO waveform. So this defines the shape of our LFO. At the moment it is a triangle wave, which is a smooth upwards and then downwards kind of sound. Equal each side. It's a great sort of general use waveform. You just want to add that sort of gentle modulation to your sounds. As we move through the wave shapes, we've got some other interesting opportunities here. So this first one is a sawtooth or ramp up sound. So here we've got a wave shape which moves up comparatively slowly and then drops down instantly when it gets to the top of the waveform and goes up so you get this wab, wab, wab, wab thing happening over and over again and then goes to the sort of up and down movement. Number two here is the same thing but in reverse. So it's a waveform which starts high, goes down slowly and then jumps back up at the end of the waveform, giving you a down, down, down, down, down kind of sound. I actually really like this waveform for LFOs because it can do all sorts of fake echo kind of stuff. This one can sound really cool if we slow the LFO down a bit actually. So you kind of get these repeated notes happening. You get weird, cool rhythmic interplay between them as well. Cool. The next shape along here is our square wave. It's a very, very choppy sort of on-off kind of sound. Really cool on the Amputeuse, so sort of a square wave tremolo kind of sound. Here we have a sine wave. So this sounds a bit like our triangle wave. Whereas a triangle wave goes up and then straight down, a sine wave is going to kind of even off that top and bottom. So if we compare them, they have slightly different characters to them. Sine wave can be a bit more characterful I think. So that's our sine wave. That's our triangle wave. It's subtle, but there's just a sort of slight kind of difference. A little bit more time spent at the top end and the sweep down is a bit more dramatic I think. Kind of more soupy maybe. Quite like sine waves on the modulation there. And finally we have our sampling hold. So sampling hold, what sampling hold basically does is every time the LFO is going to go round, it's going to pick a new random point to stop on. So what we get is this kind of stop-start kind of different levels rather than a constant sort of oscillation. Now this gets a bit glitchy, so you have to be a bit sort of careful how you use it. There's certain things that you can sort of turn down to make it less sort of jumpy, which will make it less glitchy like this. Using it on some of the other parameters is maybe better in some cases. Quite cool for certain types of atmospheres I think. Especially slowed down, it's quite cool. Okay, so let's just move back to that nice sine wave that I was talking about before because it's quite nice and let's just make it a bit slower. Something like that. So the next parameter I want to talk about is I think one of the most important ones to be aware of because I think this can really change the character of a sound. It can really help you create sounds which evolve more interestingly and more naturally in some cases. So we're going to click back past our depth to LFO D. Now LFO D isn't depth, which is confusing sometimes. LFO D is your LFO delay. Now this is cool. What this essentially allows us to do is delay the onset of our LFO when we first hit the key. So let me demonstrate because it's probably easier to hear than it is to explain. At the moment with this at minimum, if I press a key, that LFO, that sweeping sound comes in straight away. If I turn this value up a bit, you can hear that the LFO instead sort of fades in and this is really, really cool because these can go quite long. So this is one of these tricks that you can employ to make sure that the first part of your note is sort of strong and well-defined and not sort of wobbling away. But then you sort of introduce that once the note is established. So it can like have a good strong start of the note but when it sustains you can make it sort of move and be a bit more interesting. Even just delaying it that little bit. It can be really effective. I use this in a lot of patches. I think it's a really nice feature to be aware of. So so far we've been applying our LFO to our operators, whether it's the carrier which will affect the output level of the operator or our modulator which is going to help change and shape the harmonic content. Now the other place that we can send the LFO essentially is to the pitch so we can get a sort of pitch wobble happening as well. So let's just head over to our operator here and just turn it down. Cool, okay. So we're now at a situation where we're not getting anything sent to our operator so let's take a look at the pitch. Now you would think, potentially, or certainly I did the first time I played with the synth, that we have a knob here that says P-depth and it's right next to my LFO rate and I thought great, grab hold of that, turn up the wobble for my pitch. However, nothing is happening, which is annoying and confused me to begin with. But basically what's happening here is that we have a similar setup in terms of sensitivity to the pitch modulation. If we go across with our parameters until we get to this one here which is the modulation sensitivity pitch, I think that stands for MSP. Essentially what this does is it makes our operators sensitive to the pitch mod so if we turn this up a bit we get that lovely wobbly pitch. I have to say that if you're mostly interested in your pitch modulation I find the sine wave very, very attractive. On pitch modulation it gives it a certain swampiness that you don't get with a triangle wave that I really, really dig. And you can hear here, this is another place where that delay really, really works. So the first part of our note isn't wobbling at all. But then it sort of fades in. If we were to set that a little bit longer, that can again be really, really quite nice so we can set our LFO delay to be longer like a nice strong first sort of note impression and then we give away to that wobbliness which can be really, really, really powerful when you start to sort of match up that delay to maybe even the tempo of the song that you're playing with. Don't just set patches and forget them, tweak them for the sounds that you need for particular songs. If you set that to the tempo so that that fading happens around like the second beat or whatever, it can be pretty magical. Okay, so there's one of the parameter that's related to the LFO that is a little bit more subtle in its use. I wasn't even sure whether I wanted to talk about it but I think for the sake of completeness I will mention it. So it's probably easiest for me to demonstrate it if it's affecting the amplitude. So I'm just going to turn my pitch modulation down. Cool, I'm going to turn that delay down as well. Okay, go over to Operator 1, make it nice and sensitive. Make sure that the amplitude is set up as well. Still got some delay on there we go. Lovely, okay, so to demonstrate this it's probably easiest if I turn my waveform onto a ramp. Let me just turn this off for a second which should be kind of the off position. So this is the final parameter here, this LFO case. This is the LFO key sync. So if I play a note now, can you hear there that every time I hit a key we're sort of landing in a different part of the waveform. So we're expecting to hear this nice ding ding ding ding ding ding ding kind of sound but because I'm hitting the key when it's not quite at the start of the waveform each time we're not getting that nice satisfying dink at the start of the sound. So what the LFO key sync essentially does is it resets the LFO every time you hit a key. But always, doesn't matter when I do it I'm going to get that nice satisfying dink at the start of the sound. So without, I can miss it and sort of get it towards the end of the waveform and it kind of ruins the impact of the sound a bit with it turned on. Always going to hit it. Now that's not going to be applicable for every kind of sound but for certain types of sound especially when you're working with the more steppy waveforms like the ramps, like the square wave and you want to make sure that every time you hit that first note you get that big part of the sound that can be a really essential thing to be aware of. So just to recap, the LFO system here is a little bit different maybe than you might find in some other synths in that in the all parameters we're setting the overall shape of the LFO but we have to go into our individual sensitivity so whether that's the sensitivity on a per operator basis or whether it's that pitch sensitivity at the end here which is in our all menu section you need to set that sensitivity before the LFO is actually going to affect anything. The rate for the LFO is on the panel as is the overall pitch shape of the LFO as well. Take advantage of the different shapes for different kinds of sounds and if you need to get that impact at the start of each sound every time you hit the key then make sure that you turn on that LFO key sync. As always thanks for joining me guys I hope that that was useful and you've got a better idea of how the LFO works on the Volgra FM now. If you enjoy the video make sure to give it the old thumbs and also make sure if you haven't already that you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any more of the videos in this series and of course the other videos that we do on synthesis as well just as a spoiler alert in the next video we're going to be finally talking about algorithms so we've been dealing with just two operators for the last couple of videos we're going to move on to all six in the next video and it's going to be pretty interesting. As always really appreciate you joining me if you want to see anything or if you've got any comments please do drop a comment I love reading comments that people leave on the video so do do that and I will see you again soon guys take care