FM Part 4

Making a simple FM synth, part 4: Making a panel control to control the modulator's pitch relative to the pitch of the carrier.

Watch the video

Notes

• I'm doing a lot of Show Hints in this video: the little cursor & "i" button in the structure toolbar is active, which means that when I mouseover a wire or a module, I'll see pop-ups showing info about the module or the signal in the wire. Very, very handy.
  
• (1:02) I always like to pay a bit of attention to the step size and mouse resolution of my panel controls, because you can control how smoothly they respond, and the level of detail they give you.
• (1:56) I'm setting all my modules to mono here - which is what the orange square means in the bottom-right corner of each module. A polyphonic module has a yellow square. I like mono.
• (2:00, using the Add module) It might be worth replaying this bit: it's little things like this... using Add modules to mix signals, and doing maths in general to your sounds... that make Reaktor so powerful.
  
• (3:05) ...Or a bit like pulse-width modulation.
• (3:23) 5 semi-tones, or MIDI notes, is the musical interval of a 4th (C to F or A to D). A 5th (C to G or A to E) is 7 semi-tones or MIDI notes. It feels like when the modulator's 12 or 24 or 36 notes up from the carrier, you get the most musical FM harmonics. Musical intervals give musical harmonics.
• (5:36) Here, I'm turning up the FM amount, not changing the interval between the modulator and the carrier. More FM means louder harmonics, and changing the interval changes the sequence of harmonics produced.