Tutorial 3: Drones Revisited - 4ms Company Spherical Wavetable Navigator User Manual

Tutorial 3: Drones Revisited

Now we're going to go back to making a drone in order to show off more of the SWN's features. You'll be detuning
your oscillators and using an LFO to slowly browse through the wavetable.
1) Start where you left off at the end of Tutorial 2 (page 4).
2) Remember how you changed from a drone to a melody by pressing the LFO->VCA
Push
and
Hold
Turn
3) Now add some depth to the sound. Hold down the Fine button with one hand and push
+
Fine
Spread
Waveform
4) Patch channel C's LFO to the Browse jack (patch the third LFO OUT jack to the jack
5) Let's set the LFO shape to something smooth so there aren't any sudden movements in
Save Preset
6) Now let's slow down the speed of the LFO so the drone is morphing very slowly. Turn the
7) Let's go back to working on the timbre. Just like in the Turning vs Push+Turning
Push+Turn
8) Want to take it a step further? Here are some ideas:
Browse
Sphere
Octave
FX
Scale
button? Press the button again to turn off the VCA and make the channels go back to
making sound constantly. If you played with turning LFO->VCA on or off for individual
channels, then you may need to turn it off for whichever channels are still on.
and turn the Transpose/Spread knob up a few clicks with the other hand. You should see
a pattern of flashing red and blue lights at the bottom. If not, make sure you're pushing
down on the Transpose/Spread knob while turning it. This is called "Detuning Spread",
meaning that each of the six channels is detuned by a different amount. You should hear
some subtle beating or phasing sounds.
LFO OUTS
Gain
In
below it: see above). Depending on how much you played with the LFO Shape and LFO
Speed in the last tutorial, you may be hearing anything from a slow sweeping sound to an
occasional blip.
Dispersion
the drone. Turn the LFO Shape knob until the light above the LFO OUT jacks are yellow
(or at least channel C's LFO light is yellow). This selects a sine wave for the LFO shape.
Peek ahead to the color chart of LFO shapes if you want to see all possible shapes.
LFO Speed knob down until you see the light above the LFO OUT channel C jack fading
very slowly, perhaps taking 5 –10 (or more) seconds to fade from off to on again. You
should be hearing a slowly morphing drone.
discussion (page 5), push down on the Browse knob while turning it to change your
Sphere. The sound should change drastically as you select different sets of waveforms
(which we call a Sphere). Keep turning while pushing until you find your favorite drone!
• Patch one of the other other LFOs to another jack on the SWN.
• Turn on LFO->VCA for some of the channels and makes sure their LFO speeds are
very slow. Drones tend to sound good when sounds slowly go in and out.
• Set each channel to a different Sphere. See the Global vs. Local section (page 4) to
see how to do this.
• Use the Transpose feature to tune two channels to the same pitch, and then press
Fine button while turning Transpose to detune them slightly. If they have the same or
a similar waveform, the beat frequencies will add another dimension to your drone.
Fine
Browse
Sphere
Page 6 of 32
Spread
Dispersion Pat. WT Spread
Phase