Zebra Oscillators Overview

This is a great tutorial to kick things off here, as it explains basic navigation and goes in-depth into the Zebra oscillators and how you can get more out of them!

This video is full of good information and it’s presented in a way that you can easily follow along with if you are new to Zebra. The Zebra oscillators is where everything starts and where this amazing synth gets a lot of it’s power. After a tour and explanation of how to load and manipulate patches quickly we get into the good stuff. The Synthesis window is where you build up your sounds, and you will notice right away that the oscillator matrix is also where you can apply filters, etc. The way you go about added, removing, muting, etc is very intuitive and one of the great things about Zebra that keeps you focused on your sounds, rather than operations.

So what make Zebra oscillators so different from other synth’s? Although it is a wavetable-based synthesizer, you are in complete control of the up-to 16 waves that will be used in any one of the oscillators. In other words, you make your own custom wavetables! This alone allows you to do many things things that are either simply not possible with other synths, or at least makes it easier to do in general because you are not having to build around preset wavetables. Brilliant! If you are unsure how to even begin building 16 different waveforms that will work well together, you can simply use the alt-click shortcut that generates snapshots of a smoothly morphing set of waveforms. Again, Zebra is making things easy for you!

If you are not that into using ‘normal’ waveforms, fear not! Zebra oscillators allow you to easily draw in your own custom waveforms using the SpectroBlend option. Zebra offers several ways for you to edit and manipulate the harmonics of your oscillators. This quickly moves you towards additives synthesis. There are many more parameters available for you to tweak to fine-tune your oscillator programming before moving on in your sound design sessions. As you move through some of these options, such as voicing, tracking, velocity, etc you quickly begin to realize just how much though has gone into every single feature in Zebra. This truly is an amazing synth experience!