Assignable Program Modulation (Apm) - Akai S6000 Operator's Manual

s5000 / s6000

ASSIGNABLE PROGRAM MODULATION (APM)

Assignable Program Modulation is a concept that was introduced by Akai in 1993 with the release
of the S3000 series samplers and subsequently in the S2000 and S3000XL range and now, of
course, in the S5000 and S6000. Basically, APM allows you to route any of the controllers (128
MIDI controllers, LFO1, LFO2 and envelopes) to pitch, filter, amplitude and panning - even back to
the LFOs themselves. Thus the S6000 is also a powerful synthesiser as well.
However, these techniques are not limited to only creating wild and extravagant synth sounds -
you could, for example, use aftertouch routed to the filter to introduce swells and growls on brass
samples or you could use velocity to control detune to create a more ensemble sound in a layered
strings sound. The modwheel could be used to control the rate of amplitude, panning and/or pitch
modulation to recreate a rotary speaker effect on an organ sound. The auxiliary envelope could be
used to control the feedback element in a heavy metal guitar sound or could be used to fade
vibrato in and out in a controlled way over time. The possibilities are enormous.
One way to consider APM is as a matrix:
EXTERNAL MIDI
This resembles the 'patch pin' matrix used by an early make of British analogue synthesiser where
pins are inserted into a board to make a connection. Down the left are the modulation sources and
across the top are the destinations (or modulation inputs) they can be routed to and in the above
example, the MODWHEEL is routed to amplitude and panning. AFTERTOUCH is also routed to
the second amplitude modulation input. As you can see, LFO 2 is routed to control panning and
also filter cutoff frequency. In this example, the AUX ENV is controlling the depth of LFO 2's output
whilst the MODWHEEL is controlling LFO 2 rate. As you can imagine, there are many permutations
and possibilities.
NOTE: A modulation input may only have one control source routed to it so it is not possible,
for example, to route LFO2 and the MODWHEEL to, say, FILTER mod input 1. However the
same effect can be achieved by routing MODWHEEL to filter input 1 and LFO 2 to filter input
2.
Version 1.21
OUTPUT
AMP
1 2
MOD WHEEL
PITCH BEND
AFTERTOUCH
VELOCITY
KEYBOARD
LFO 1
LFO 2
AMP ENV
FILTER ENV
AUX ENV
MOD WHEEL
PITCH BEND
EXTERNAL
KEYGROUP
PAN P/AMP FILTER
1 2 3 1 2 A 1 2 3
STRUCTURE
LFO1 LFO2
R DL D R DL D
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