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I am seriously considering purchasing a Montage, but haven't quite satisfied myself on FM-X. I logged many hours programming on an SY77 & 99 back in the day. One of my favorite features of those synths was looping operator level eg's, which does not appear to be available in FM-X. Admittedly, much of that was to create rhythmic, pseudo-arpeggiations, and fell fall short of a full-fledged arpeggiator such as has been implemented in the Montage.
A typical design I used would be like this: a carrier's eg looping in a AD pulse (like this: |_|_|_....) while being modulated by an operator with a more gradual eg (/ _...). This all assumed that an initial key-press or note-on started all the loops. I enjoyed using multiple carrier/modulator pairs cycling at different lengths.
So, I'm wondering what ways there may be to emulate this in FM-X. I read the posts to "On the FM-X side of things", and see that an arpeggiator can be used for modulation of individual operators. Also, it may be that LFO#2 can work on selected operators.
My questions seem to center on: how does the arpeggiator affect the triggering of operator level eg's? Can it change pitches of carriers without retriggering all 8 eg's?
If this has already been addressed on the forum, please direct me to it.
Thanks
JohnR
Posted : 06/12/2016 9:21 pm
Let me know if I'm off-center - but "AD Pulse" I am thinking translates to "attack decay" pulse.
Although you could use an LFO on Amplitude for this pulse, another way - since we do have ARPs - would be to have a looping note on/off/on/off ... etc pattern at the frequency you want the AD pulse to rest at. Set the gate time (note off time) to be nearly zero. Then the notes would be forced to cycle through the amplitude curve without using any LFO resources for your "AD Pulse".
The arpeggio shouldn't retrigger the LFO start (which could be assigned to carrier pitch). Modulators may sync up with the arp note-on, but I'd have to dig in to see if that's a fixed relationship (not at the keyboard). Seems like using an LFO out of phase with a repeated note of an ARP (looped) would do the trick. I think this was essentially where you were going to begin with.
Posted : 07/12/2016 10:03 am
Topic starter
Hi Jason
Those were helpful suggestions, thanks. I was pretty sure that the LFO having a triggering option would be a partial solution. Bu the t on the other hand there is apparently just the one LFO for this purpose. I was accustomed to 3 carrier/modulator pairs doing some interesting things with a single key press.
Don't get me wrong - I am not demanding that the Montage replicate all the features of the SY77/99 series. In fact I still own a TG-77 with the best of my old programming installed. I have no doubts that FM-X is a superior tone generator. I'm just exploring the limits of the arpeggiator I guess (and trying to come to grips with the loss of EG segment looping)
John
Posted : 08/12/2016 1:15 am
Since envelope looping involves envelopes - lets start there.
Montage doesn't have as sophisticated of an envelope as the SY77.
SY77 HT = Montage Time: Hold
SY77 L0 = Montage Level: Rel(Hold)
SY77 R1 = Montage Time: Attack
SY77 L1 = Montage Level: Attack
SY77 R2 = Montage Time: Decay 1
SY77 L2 = Montage Level: Decay 1
SY77 R3 = Montage doesn't have this
SY77 L3 = Montage doesn't have this
SY77 R4 = Montage Time: Decay 2
SY77 L4 = Montage Level: Decay 2
So Montage, relative to the SY77, is "missing" an envelope stage between the hold/attack and the key off.
Then beyond the key off, Montage only has a release time - but the level is tied to the hold level. This is not the case with the SY77 which has not only control over the release level - but gives two stages of release (RL1 and RL2) with time and level parameters for each.
So to really emulate the segment looping - you've got to have some parity with the envelopes themselves which does not exist.
"Segment Loop Point" is the effective term in the SY77 manual which describes this EG looping and basically says that if you're holding a key down - once the L4 portion is reached (last level before the release) - you can tell the EG to "go back" to either the L1, L2, L3, or stick to L4.
Since the arpeggio trick would make the EG "go back" to the very beginning (pre-HT) - there's not really an equivalent way using ARPs to replicate the SY77 "segment loop point".
The compromise is to make the EG "go back" to the pre-HT point, and setup the hold time to zero - so you're really going back to the pre-attack phase. Given how you drew your "AD loop" - I take it you already on the SY77/99 were setting R1 to 0 and L1=L0 in order to make the segment loop point go back to L1 which would setup L2 as your attack level rather than L1. So this type of programming on the SY77/99 could be somewhat emulated if you ignore what happens on the release (which has those 1.5 extra stages of control vs. Montage).
The other caveat with using the ARP method is that an ARP doesn't know when you're past the "decay 2" time in order to send the next note off/note on event. So this will have to be tinkered (note length and tempo setting) with to match the envelope. After some tinkering, you can probably add up the attack/delay times to come up with a formula that will get you the right note length and tempo combination(s) that would work.
This path only allows some emulation of the segment loop point = S1. There would be no provision to loop back to a middle point of the EG.
Also - I'm providing more of the context of the SY77/99 not necessarily for your benefit (since you have a much deeper understanding than me about the legacy FM Yamaha synths) - but more for other readers.
Posted : 08/12/2016 3:15 am
