Using FM Synthesis in Absynth

It’s nice that this one starts out with a shout-out to the Yamaha DX7, as many of us recognize it as the original mainstream FM synth that was the inspiration for FM7 and, of course, FM8 the current FM synthesizer from Native Instruments. Using FM synthesis in Absynth is something that will either be quite cumbersome and difficult to understand at first, or it will be intuitive for you. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground at all when when first starting out. It happens to be one of those things that is very simple in theory, but quite involved and complex in practice.

Using FM synthesis in Absynth starts out with the setting one or more of the oscillator modules to run in FM mode. This allows you to modulate the main sound that’s loaded into the oscillator with a second waveform in various ways to generate inharmonic elements. This is an incredibly powerful way to design sounds and to begin deeper experimentation with sounds.

The idea is that if you influence a sound wave with another sound wave at a certain frequency value and what you end up hearing is the sum and differences of all frequencies involved. Of course, there are frequencies involved (in some cases) that you cannot hear. These can still affect the overall shape and audible sound of the sound you are making though simply by changing the original shape of the sound wave. An simple example of this would be LFOs, and how they are used to control, modulate and affect sounds through various parameters, or the original sound waves themselves.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab