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FM-X Dry Run Using Aftertouch Article

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Jason
Posts: 7910
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Beginning to dive into FM-X a bit more, I thought I would start by trying to program up someone else's DX7 "voice" by following an Aftertouch Article June/July 1989 page 10 - reference http://yates.ca/dx7/AfterTouch-Magazine/AfterTouch-1989-06_07.pdf

Steps (For Nightshade):

1) I started with the FM-X init voice
2) Next I selected the algorithm. The article shows Alg 7 - but when I pick Alg 7 in Montage it doesn't match. I know Montage has 2 more operators - so it shouldn't match. But really Montage Alg 7 isn't anything like DX7 Alg 7. So I went in to search and chose the appropriate search parameters and didn't find anything close until I bumped up the carriers. Looks like Alg 29 is pretty close if I imagine carriers 1 and 2 are gone and imagine 3/4/5 switch places with 6/7/8. You'll have to excuse if it's obviously not correct - but this is where I maybe should do more research. At any rate, I pick Montage Alg. 29
3) Looking for ways to "disable" 1 and 2 - i find that if I do anything to "stop" carrier 1 - no sound comes out. Ok - for now I'll just ignore [1] and [2] carrier contributions and pretend like they're not there (for better or worse)
4) I see feedback is 3 - set that right on the Algorithm screen (0 -> 3)
5) Looking at the "PORTA MODE RETAIN" trying to set that up. Looks like the DX7 manual shows this as "P RETAIN" - so searching for that. Doesn't matter - since I notice time = 0 which disables the porta. effect - which is good because if this was going to do gliss - Montage doesn't support gliss that I'm aware of. I set time to 0
6) Pitch range - imagine that means pitch bend range because of the picture. range 7 and step 0. The range part I can set because 7 means PB- 7, PB+ 7 (the DX7 looks like the positive and negative bend cannot be different). So i set that up. One control difference is the step part. On the DX7, you could set the "gain" of the pitch wheel. The step is 0 = smooth - like what we have currently, while step = 7 would jump straight between no pitch and the maximum value since our range is 7. And if the step was 1 - we would hear the pitches going up by semitones with no between pitches. 2=whole tones, 3=so on... through max of 12. Not sure what happens when step>range - but I imagine it would just go up by 7 and limit the motion where the pitch wheel was changing pitches. Montage doesn't have this for values of 1-12 unless you setup "Pitch" as the destination and setup the curve to match - which is possible - just not "out of the box" easy.
7) Modwheel (mw), Foot Controller (fc), Breath Controller (bc), After touch (at) these have settings which I won't set right now. Aftertouch is disabled completely, so that's already done. Key mode Poly is already setup under the common settings
8) Next square - LFO
The DX7 has 6 LFO waveforms - so the picture of a funny step function is called "Sample and Hold" in the DX7 manual. Although - again this doesn't really matter since I see pitch and amplitude sensitivity (ams, pms) are set to 0. So I skip this other than making sure pitch/amplitude modulation are 0 for everything on montage - and I set the LFO speed to 0 for the heck of it.
9) Next square - Frequency/Output
a) I'm imagining pressing the operators 1-8 will let me edit. The numbers are not going to match the article since I have an extra 1 and 2 operator, so I'll start with what's in the article called "1" and maps to what's in the Alg 29 of Montage as "7" - so I click on "7" at the bottom of the screen which shows "Form/Freq"
b) The only "unclear" thing in this box in the article is "On/Off" - there's no element on/off - the only on/off in the DX7 manual is key on reset - so that's how I'll define this column. They're all "on" and that's the default for the init voice - so nothing to do there
c) "Level" touchscreen menu - I set the level for Op7 to 95
d) Same "Level" menu - I set "Level/Vel" to +4 to match the aftertouch article "vel sens" column
e) Back to "Form/Freq", I setup the "freq" column items. When there's an "x" under "mode" in the article, that's "Ratio" on Montage. A "Hz" in the article, and that's "Fixed". So I keep "Ratio" as default. And also Coarse=0 and Fine=0 results in a ratio of 0.50 which seems to match the article.
f) I set detune to -1, self explanatory.
a-f should repeat for the article operators 2-6. Just a repeat of the above with the next row of info filled in, and mapping:
Article Op 1 = Montage Op 7 (for reference below)
Article Op 2 = Montage Op 8
Article Op 3 = Montage Op 6
Article Op 4 = Montage Op 4
Article Op 5 = Montage Op 5
Article Op 6 = Montage Op 3

... by the time I setup the 6 operators it certainly sounds like something. on to the next part
10) Next square - Scaling
a) Referring to the above map - I'll start on the montage with op7 or article op1 and setup the scaling
b) Under scaling - I'm glad it shows "NORM" because I'm not sure what to do, right off, on the Montage if the scaling mode was Fractional - which I am guessing is the other value that could be here.
c) All the curves look like straight lines. So I'm calling the ones like "/" (ramping up) as montage +Linear and ramping down "" as montage -Linear. This is setup in the "Level" menu. For Op7 (=op1 in article), I setup montage "Curve Lo" as -Linear (default) "Curve Hi" as +Linear, "Lvl/Key Lo" as 20, "Lvl/Key Hi" as 18, and breakpoint is already C3 - so no change there.
d) Repeat a-c for the other Ops using the DX7 to Montage Op# translator for this alg. above

not a huge difference with these programmed in terms of overall character - but that's fine .. moving on

11) Next square - Envelope
a) Starting with Op7 again on Montage, same "Level" screen since it looks like attack/decay are here.
b) The Montage and DX7 are a little different here. DX7 uses starting level and rate and the numbers mean different things in R1 L1 (1 as the number) so let me see ...
R1 = Attack time
L1 = Attack level
R2 = Decay 1 time
L2 = Decay 1 level
R3 = Decay 2 time
L3 = Decay 2 level
R4 = Release time
L4 = Rel(Hold) level

On the same page (montage) the only other parameter is "Time/Key" which maps to "Rs" in the magazine article.
So following article Op1 (Montage Op7) - I set:
Attack time = 85, Attack level = 91, Decay 1 time = 35, Decay 1 level = 57, Decay 2 time = 0, Decay 2 level = 64, Release time = 25, Rel(Hold) level = 0, and Time/Key=2. I keep Hold Time = 0 since DX7 doesn't seem to have this.
c) wash and repeat for a-b for other ops.

12) after doing all that, I turned the level off (set to 0) for carriers 1 and 2 since now the other carriers have inputs - they're making sounds.

I'm guessing unless I made an entry mistake that I'm hearing how this voice is supposed to sound.

The notes say "The voice most resembles a combination plucked chime / bowed trombone sound". Well, I don't know what a bowed trombone is unless it's a present - and I'm not hearing high-frequency stuff I would expect from a "chime" kind of a sound. But maybe this is what was intended.

Maybe it's also documented somewhere else, but this can be used as a way to translate those aftertouch voices into montage FM-X. Well, unless there's LFO things or fractional scaling because this voice didn't have to cover that.

 
Posted : 05/10/2016 11:46 pm
Jason
Posts: 7910
Illustrious Member
Topic starter
 

11) Left off the PEG settings (in the Aftertouch article the "P" row under the "Envelope" box.
d) Set those up, same general process as the operator envelopes (for R1, L1, etc) - but in the Common "Pitch/Filter" -> "PEG/Scale" menu
e) Not sure altogether what to do with the PEG Depth since 8va is the most extreme (and default). This is called PEG Range on the DX7 and I notice it's left off of most voice worksheets. I'm going to set this to (2 oct) since that gives me concert pitch out of the voice.

Edit: Here's a quick and dirty clip. The normal laptop mic deal with all the room noise, grunting, and chair squeaks.

https://clyp.it/th3cgrgj

 
Posted : 06/10/2016 6:16 pm
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