Make Awesome FM Growls in NI Absynth

We have looked a lot into granular synthesis in NI Absynth, so what about some FM for today? Absynth has some really cool FM options, its a bit tricky to learn, but so awesome!

As you might know FM stands for frequency modulation,  (yes the same as in FM radio’s!) and it always works with at least 2 ”oscillators”  whereby one oscillator is controlling the (frequency of the) other one. If you choose the option FM in the drop down menu in Absynth’s oscillator module and you go to the mod-page, you will find the first of these oscillators. This one is the modulator, easy to remember since the page is called the modpage!

This oscillator is providing the magic and it controls the frequency of the main oscialltors (on the main page!). If you experienced with FM8 you probably want to work in ratio’s here, and you can!  The ratio, or transposition, between the two oscillators is very important and you have to be precise with this, try changing both ratio’s in the oscillator and you’ll understand what I mean.

The other important things in FM are the envelopes, and this is great because Absynth has the best envelopes you can think of! For example, use an envelope to modulate the amount of one oscillators controlling the other one and you get some really interesting results. Another cool thing is to slightly offset the ratio’s, this often creates a detuned reese bass kind of sound, combine this with an all-pass filter and you’ll find yourself at the root of some really awesome sounds! Enjoy!

– Jorgalad