The Power Of X&Y Pads in U-he Zebra

Finally we are going to look into the X&Y Pads in u-he Zebra! About time, because this is going to rock your world.

The X&Y pads in u-he Zebra are a great tool to add flexibility to your sounds, they can mangle and morph a sound into anything you want.

If you go to the Perform page inside zebra you see four pads with and X and an Y Axis and a dot in the middle.

You can think of the dot as being the “current state” of the sound, in the middle it is always going to sound like it was before you started messing with it.
You can reset the dot to the middle by double clicking on it.

Lets start with one of the four pads first, it doesn’t matter which one you choose, they are all exactly the same
If you click on the first one for example you can see a lot of empty modulation slots below, this is where you can define your modulation target.
The source is always going to be the X&Y Pad.

Another, and perhaps faster way to assign knobs is to go over to the synthesis page, right click on a knob you want to modulate, and choose which X&Y pad it should be assigned to.

Once you have done this for a few parameters you can go over to the Perform page again and start dragging that little dot around, you will get some awesome sounds!

A few things to keep in mind:

• – The way I use the X&Y pads is pretty random, just to come up with new ideas

• – You can also use the X&Y pads to precisely modulate filter cutoff

• – Things can get very loud, use a limiter if your going for the random approach!

• – MIDI learn two knobs to control the X and the Y axis of the pad

• – The more controls you assign, the more crazy it’s going to be (often in a good way)

You are in for so much fun!

Jorgalad