Here’s the first in what I hope will be a series of Operator Units; it’s a building block in a custom unit. It’s loosely based on the standard Operator in FM8. There’s quite a bit missing, however, the main features are included and I think it’s a very versatile and usable unit.
It’s called Smooth Operator - which will give you clues about my age if it doesn’t just make you laugh!
The carrier is a sample player with AKWF Perfect Sine Wave loaded, you could replace this with anything really, although your milage may vary and well, the point is that it’s possible to generate lots of complex sounds from just the Sine.
After the Carrier there is an Inverting VCA and an Envelope VCA with an ADSR next level down. I’m not sure if the Inverting VCA is needed but for explicitly inverting the Waveform this is super clear and I like how it sounds. You might like to have your Carrier set to positive and your modulator (another nested Smooth Operator) set to negative!
The ADSR is set to a short envelope, after v/oct and speed settings this is good area to focus on - think about how each operator can have it’s own envelope so you get the modulations happening over time and not just constantly interacting. You could also try inverting the v/oct input on the Carrier Envelope Release set at your maximum desired length, so that higher pitched sounds have a shorter envelope.
V/oct on the main Unit maps to the Carrier Pitch v/oct, but also has an optional LFO (muted by default) which is a standard Sine Osc.
Sync the Carrier (and/or the LFO) by mapping the Trig parameter to the main gate input, or not - for free running modulations.
Speed is intentionally left empty. This is to keep the Smooth Operator as a discrete unit, you can add another Smooth Operator inside the current one here!
I’ve tried to keep it as generic as possible so that it could be used repeatedly and as a learning aid but I would strongly encourage making your own custom units.
Any suggestions welcome, if I find ways to improve it I will update it
There’s a LOT of places where adjustments can be made, sometimes to quite extreme settings if you start turning everything in a particular direction!!
It can get a bit tiger, so watch those speakers!
Enjoy
SmoothOperator.zip (5.7 KB)