 Hello, OcelatorSync here, and welcome to the first video in a new series for the channel where we look at building patches from scratch on the Korg Volgra FM. This series is going to be a kind of companion to the understanding sound design on the Volgra FM series that I've been running on the channel for a number of weeks now, and in that series we've been looking at the individual elements of patch creation on the Volca. And what I wanted to do is put out a number of videos where we take all of those concepts and put them into practice and hopefully build some cool sounding patches along the way. So we'll get on with the sounds really soon, but just briefly here's a little bit of housekeeping. First of all, I'm going to be using my free browser-based patch editor for the Volgra FM to build the patches. There's a couple of reasons for that. The first, honestly, is it is just faster than constantly menu diving on the Volgra FM. It's kind of the main reason that I built it in the first place. But I think also from a learning perspective, it is a lot easier to understand what's going on in the patches when we can see everything laid out all at once, rather than trying to keep track of what parameters we've tweaked and just trying to remember what we've done. The third reason, I guess, is that once we're done, it's really easy for me to click this button and share with you the finished patch so that you can take it and tweak it and play with it and sort of revisit what we've done in the video. So another thing that I think is worth mentioning is that when I say I'm building a patch from scratch, I really am building a patch from scratch. I haven't sort of pre-rehearsed building the patch that I'm about to do. So there might be along the way some not so great sounds, some maybe some mistakes that I make. But I think those are worth sort of keeping in. I won't be editing those out because mistakes are a good learning experience as well as the good stuff, obviously. So I hope you guys don't mind when I make some dreadful noises along the way. Hopefully not too many of them, but there might be some. Finally, as to the type of patch that I'm going to be building, well, I put out a poll on my Facebook page. If you're not following me on Facebook, there is a link in the video description. It's maybe worth following if you're interested in the stuff that I'm working on because I do teasers for patches and stuff like that. But anyway, I put out a poll and I asked people what type of patch do you want to see and overwhelmingly, almost without any contest actually, people were asking for pads. So I think the first couple of videos in the series I'm going to be looking at some pads and then we'll move on to some base and some percussion and some leads and that sort of stuff as well. So let's actually get on with building the patch. So I've got an initialised patch like that and I've also got a sequence pre-recorded just so once we've got a bit further into the patch, I've got something to sort of play against and leap round. But I'm going to start by coming down here and picking my algorithm. So in the world of sort of subtractive analog synths, one of the ways that we get our richness for our pad sounds is by layering up a number of voices, a number of oscillators. And that's certainly a legitimate tactic in FM as well. But I thought for this video I'd do something that is sort of uniquely FM and that's I'm going to use an algorithm which only has a single carrier but then quite a complex network of operators modulating that carrier. So I'm going to go with algorithm 18, which I'll also just flash upon the screen for reference. So we can see here that we've got a single carrier which is operator one and then we've got operator two is modulating it, operator three is modulating it and also has feedback if we want. And we've also then got a row of four, five and six all modulating each other and then flowing into operator one. So it's quite a complex algorithm but let's see what we can do with it. So I'm just going to turn off most of my operators just to begin with just because I want to start by just getting the overall envelope of the carrier. I've left operator three on just so we've got some colour so we can hear it a little bit better. So classic pad kind of thing, let's give it a bit of a slower attack, shall we? Yep. And then let's of course also give it a bit of a longer release. So you can hear there at the moment when I release the key, although I've got that release, it sort of drops off. So that is happening because at the moment my only modulator has a very, very short release for release four, which means that it's sort of cutting off almost as soon as I release the key. So if I just want to make that sound a bit more natural, that's just cool. There we go. So that's kind of our starting point. So let's start looking at our operator three here. We might come back up to here and tweak a couple of bits and pieces, but that's kind of a good starting point. So let's talk about getting a bit more richness even just off this one operator. So let's add a bit of detune perhaps. Immediately we start getting that kind of beating. So one of the things to bear in mind when you're dealing with a algorithm with so many modulators running into a single carrier, so we're probably going to have to keep our operator output levels a little bit more conservative. I'm going to leave them kind of where they are around 90 to begin with, but we'll probably have to bring them down as we start to bring in some of the other operators. Okay, let's come down here and let's take a look at this feedback. So feedback means that operator three as well as modulating operator one is also modulating itself, and we can get almost like introducing resonance, if you like. It's going to be a bit of sharp sharpness. It's almost like a resonant filter now. So that's probably pushing a bit too far. So let's bring that operator level down a touch just like that. Okay, that's probably a nice starting point with that one. So what I'm going to do now is turn on operator two as well. That's our other operator that's sort of just sitting on its own. Let's give it a longer release as well. You can immediately hear that they're beating against each other in quite a cool way. So let's find a tonality that really works. Let's try some different tunings. Oh, wow. See, this is what FM can do that analog can't do. There's no phase or anything, no external effect. It's just because we've got two modulators all hitting this one carrier, and they're just beating off each other in a really interesting way. Let's level that down to it, not getting quite as... So one thing that I like to experiment with is, sometimes it's tempting just to leave the fine control alone unless you're doing like sort of bell sounds. But let's just try just a moderate amount of... Oh, sorry, a very minor amount of fine. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We can probably push this output a bit more maybe. Kind of brassy but also paddy at the same time. That's really cool. Perhaps we could also have this operator sort of fade in a bit more as well. Increase or rather decrease the rate of envelope generator part one. Let's try a lower octave there. It's really cool because the beating becomes less rapid as we go down the scale. So we've kind of got this movement throughout the whole of our sound at the moment. So that's a really positive start. Maybe just make that fade in slightly slower. So here we can hear now that we've got that purity right at the start of the note. And then it gets that beating kind of comes in afterwards. Yeah, like that, like that a lot. Okay, so that's a great start. But we've still got another operator that we can modulate into our carrier. So let's turn that on as well. Okay, so let's give it a longer release like the other ones. I'm just going to set the sequence going so I can... Okay, so things are getting pretty crazy now because we're hitting so much coming in now. So let's try to find a different tonality here. Maybe that's a bit more of a sparkle over the top by increasing this course control. Okay, so that's obviously far too much at the moment. But there's something about that that I quite like. So let's just reduce the output level of the operator just to try and find a bit more of a controlled sound there. Maybe have that fade in a bit more as well. Let's do the detune a bit. I'm just going to drop it down tiny bit more in anticipation of the fact that we still got these two other operators that are going to modulate into that modulator. So we're going to be able to get far more complex sounds on the go. So let's do that. Let's bring in this operator 5 and see what it does. Things start to get pretty interesting there. Let's make this one come in real slight, shall we? Actually, let's make it come in real fast but then have it drop off pretty quickly. Again, a ghostly sort of groan happening behind it. Now, this is one of those things that I'm probably going to dial out a little bit with the velocity when I get there. I'm just trying to get this bass sound happening first. Let's try the detune of it. Let's be brave and let's try the fine tune a bit. Let's try that. There's some interesting stuff happening there. I'm always scared to put in operator 6 but let's give it a go. Let's see what happens. Things are getting real buzzy now. Actually, there's up registers. That's kind of cool. Let's mess with the tune a bit. Let's got something to it. Let's get a bit more of a paddy. Obviously, there's too much of it at the moment but let's just get an envelope working there. We kind of want it to die down. There's a point during that sweep where it has this lovely hollowness. It's looking to linger there a bit longer. What I'm doing here is just adjusting the second part of the envelope here. Okay, let's reduce the operator to the output level because that's too much fizz. At the moment, we've got a sound which is cool. I'm really getting into that kind of hollow noise. Go away, antivirus. That hollow noise that's happening there. Let's see what else we can do. At the moment, we've got a sound that sounds pretty cool at the moment. What it's not doing is it's not changing with the velocity at the moment. That's what I tend to do once I've got a nice bass sound to work with. Let's work with the velocity. The first thing that's obvious to me that I want to adjust with that velocity is all of that fizz. I'm just going from operator 6. Let's turn the sense up. That's what the velocity turned down. That fizz is coming in only on that. It's harder notes and then in the middle. I think probably similarly we can take an approach and apply a bit of key velocity sense to operator 5 as well. That's what we've lost down in the middle. I think probably across the board we can put just a bit of key velocity sense for all of our other modulators. One thing to bear in mind when you're doing the key velocity sense, you can hear now that everything seems to be more of a top than it was. The key velocity sense means that when the velocity is on full, the operator is actually going to be boosted above the level we've got here, so we can probably turn that down a bit on all of these just a little bit. That's velocity in the middle. A little bit of that hollowness there. Not too much. Turn it down a bit more. This is pretty mellow actually. The velocity down. Real mellow with all the way down. Kind of cool though. Now we've got the velocity happening. Let's talk about LFO. This has already got quite a lot of wobble because of the beating, but let's just try a little bit of pitch modulation. I'll turn the pitch once that's tipped up a little bit. Give us a bit of LFO speed and turn the pitch mod depth up a bit. I could actually dig a bit of pitch mod on there, despite all of the wobbly that's already happening. That feels a bit too much. Let's turn the depth down a little bit. That's cool. Let's turn the velocity up. I'm going to put a little bit of LFO delay on there just so it doesn't come straight at me. Get a bit more purity at the start of the note. A bit longer on the delay there. The other thing that is jumping out of me is that I kind of want to put some amp modulation on probably... Maybe operator 6, so that fizziness has a bit of wobble to it. A bit more. So it's not making that much difference. Perhaps we need to apply it to operator 4. I'm not really getting the effect that I'm looking for. I think there's so much beating and moving that it's not really being pulled out so much. So we'll leave the amp modulation for a little bit. So next thing to take a look at is how well this patch is working across all the registers. So let's drop the octave down a couple of octaves to see how it feels. Okay, that's kind of cool. It's kind of made me think that the release isn't long enough now that I'm hearing it and low register, so let's just drop that down a bit. Okay, let's try that with the velocity down a bit. All the way down. Yeah, that's feeling pretty balanced to be fair. Yep, now I'm happy with that. Okay, so let's try something in the upper registers. Okay, so that's with the velocity order. Obviously that is too fizzy. So in the middle. Yeah, so in general, I think the sound at the moment gets too fizzy in the upper registers. So what that means, we want to apply some of our operator scaling, our level scaling here. So we're interested if we're talking about the upper part of the register with the right depth. We want to make sure that our curve here is a negative. So at the moment it's negative linear. We'll try that. And let's just bring up the depth on some of these and see what happens. Sorry, the right depth, what am I doing? Okay, that's already sounding way more balanced. Kind of felt we don't need quite as much fiz. The right depth up on six. Sounds like it's in a weird aliasing as well. Ah, there we go. Okay, let's get five down. Okay, let's make sure that hasn't affected us too much in the lower registers. If it has, then we need to adjust our break point a bit. Okay, that still feels like we've got all the fiz that we need, but now when we go up higher. Okay, I think we can probably afford to push that depth a bit more. You can hear on those two lower chords. There's higher chords there. The depth has hit us pretty hard. With these lower chords. Not so much. That tells me we can probably drop our break point a little bit and have the scaling start a little bit earlier on the keyboard. Let's try 40. See how that goes. Ah, okay. So that's pretty much taking it all together, which makes me think that the depth is probably a little bit too high. So we can pull that back a little bit. Came back to where we were to begin with. Still got the fuzz and the fiz there. We can drop our velocity down. That's when it sort of cuts an octave down. It's two octaves down. Okay, so this is kind of interesting fine tuning because that three octaves down is still kind of playable. I'd argue that by the time we get to even when we get to three octaves up, it's not as useful. So maybe what we do here on our global voice is that we transpose the whole patch down an octave. Yeah. Okay, I'm feeling pretty good about that. So one other thing that might be worth looking at, and I do this so much that it's almost cliche as far as I'm good to know. It might be nice to have a little bit of a pitch sort of sweep happening. So the easiest way to do that is to set your pitch envelope R1 and R2 to be as fast as possible. And then have L2's level just a bit lower. Yeah, kind of sweep up. I just really like that on a pad. And we can speed that up, of course, by... So we're getting to L1 in the middle here as fast as we possibly can, and then straight away getting down to what we hear as our sweep. We don't really hear getting down to the low point because we're still fading in the noise there. And then we're jumping from this low point here up to the midpoint again at the rate defined by R3 here. So we can probably make it a little bit faster. Yeah, it's nice. I'm feeling now that at the highest velocity we could probably afford to make these modulators ever so slightly lower, so it's not quite as obvious. Don't know, am I just being cautious here? Maybe let's just try just down to the two notches across the board just to see what that's like. I think that's more balanced, right? Still got that fizz, but I think that's more balanced across the whole range now. That's about halfway on the velocity slider. We've just got that nice rasp there. That's velocity all the way off. Okay, I'm pretty happy with that. That's a pretty cool sound, actually. Right, so most important thing, let's give it a name. I am going to call this, I'm said to say Pad 1, so that I can easily keep track of it. I am going to create a shareable link so that I can share that patch with you guys. The link, this link here, will be in the description of the video so you can get straight to the patch and have a play. I'm going to save it just so that I don't forget to save it later. Okay, and that's a pad patch. I will do another video on a pad as the next build a patch from scratch video, but we'll take a more sort of FM does analog type approach and use sort of multiple voices to try and get richness that way rather than via our modulators, but I think what we've ended up with here is a very FME kind of pad, which kind of what I wanted to show off first. Anyway, I hope you enjoy that, guys. I hope that wasn't too long to sit through. I hope you picked up some tricks and some ideas for your own patches as we were making our way through that patch. If you did enjoy the video, please do give it a thumbs up and make sure you're subscribed to the channel so that you don't miss out on any of the upcoming videos on the Valkyrie FM and other synthesis fun as well. I will be carrying on with the sound design series. There's a couple more topics, a couple more parameters that I want to discuss before that is all done, but we'll be working out a bunch more with these sort of patch from scratch videos and we'll look at pads obviously because everyone seems to want the pads but we'll also look at some bases, we'll look at some leads, we'll look at some bells and some percussion. I'm currently building a percussion patch pad patch pack, so perhaps I'll make one of those patches sort of on-screen as I go along. Otherwise, thank you so much for watching, guys and I will see you again soon.