U-He Zebra Basic Overview Series: The Patches Window

We are kicking things off here with a basic in-depth overview series of U-He Zebra, and this first installment in the series covers everything you need to know about the patches window.

One of the most basic functions you need to get a handle on when starting up with U-He Zebra, is knowing how to use the Patches window. This is where you load, save, browse and manage your presets. Our resident Zebra guru, Mark, does a great job of breaking it all down in a way that is very accessible and easy to understand for users of any experience level. Simply put, this video gives you all the knowledge you need to master this one little corner of U-He zebra from your very first session forward. And switching back-and-forth between the synth itself and the file browser on the computer helps explain where these sounds live on your machine and how you can easily manage them, no matter how loosely or strictly you prefer that to be.

Pro Tip: When designing your own patches save often and make sure you write ideas that you have during the process into the the Description and/or Usage fields of the info pane for later personal reference.

The right-click quickly becomes your best friend when working with U-He Zebra. You can use it just about anywhere in the synth to discover shortcuts and options that are not readily visible otherwise. One of the most important uses of the right-click is to Refresh your preset database. When you are working on organizing your preset collection (adding new folders, etc) on your computer, when you go back to Zebra, you need to Refresh to see the changes take effect. I often refresh simply to make sure that I am up-to-date and not missing anything before I dive into a serious production session.

Pro Tip: Add entire collections of sounds to your preset library by simply adding them via your file browser on your computer and Refreshing in Zebra!

You can use the Favorite and Junk options to make browsing and finding your U-He Zebra patches even easier. Over time you will find creative uses for features like these and it will probably help keep things a bit more organized and tidy as your preset collection grows larger. Another small feature that I find rather nice is the Save Only Active Modules option. This leaves you free to experiment during the sound design process and simply save it using this option to ignore all the modules you tried but decided did not serve a beneficial purpose.

Cheers,
OhmLab