Sound Design and Creating Rhythmic Patterns with FM8

This video offers some great insight into the layering capabilities of FM8, as well as some very informative sound design tips making for a very helpful tutorial.

David Earl presents a well informed and incredibly concise lesson in FM synthesis sound design, while explaining decisions and procedures along the way. He has a thorough working knowledge of the synth, is able to fly around the interface and understands the mechanics of the various features and how they interact with each other. It only takes about 4 minutes to design three distinct sounds layered together, so you may want to watch this one a couple of times if you’re just getting comfortable in FM8.

This session starts out with Operator E modulating F, and Operator C modulating D. These two sounds make up the first two main sounds of this endeavor. The envelopes of each operator is then shaped to change the delivery and development of the notes as they are played. At this point it sounds like classic FM synth from the late 80s or early 90s, with elements of glass bell and horn blended together.

Operator A is then set up to modulate B which is fed back into itself to generate feedback. The envelope for operator B is programmed as a pulsing loop, which generates a nice rhythmic element rich in noise. The synth has now become a layered rhythmic instrument that can be used to fill a few needs in a production.

Do you design layered sounds in FM8? Would you like to share one of your ideas with the rest of the FM8Tutorials community? Contact us today and we’ll be happy to chat about how to get your sounds in front of thousands of people all over the world!

Cheers,
OhmLab