Learn How To Make an FM8 Deep House Chord Stab

In this tutorial, learn how to make an FM8 Deep House chord stab. With a help of a tuner, navigating the ratios becomes really easy!

FM8 Deep House chord stabs can be hard to make if you don’t have a really good understanding of the Operator ratio values. Because FM synthesis is based around operators, ratios and carriers as opposed to filter, oscillator and semitones, it can be hard to dial in the proper pitches.

The easiest way to make an fM8 Deep House chord stab is to open up a tuner to make sure you’re getting the right semitone intervals!

First, Johnny activates Operators F, E and D. Any chord needs three intervals which is why Johnny activates three operators. To make a minor chord stab in a synth like Massive, for instance, you would just pitch the first oscillator to 0, then pitch the next oscillator to +3 and the third oscillator to +7 semitones. That would give you a minor chord. For a minor FM8 Deep House chord the ratio values are 1 for Operator F, 1.2 for Operator E and Operator D is 1.5.

You can apply those ratio tunings to any waveform to create a unique FM8 Deep House chord stab.

Cheers