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Get the best out of Alchemy's FM filter


3ple

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For a while I felt that the FM filter inside Alchemy was a bit of a useless feature, until today!

I would change the waveforms, put the Amount and the Feedback all the way to the top, but no real interesting sounds...

By accident, today I was playing around with the ES2 and that made me had that ah-ha moment (not the band).

 

Went to Alchemy and tried using the FM filter, but this time with the Unison knob all the way up. It got better, but still not very interesting (I always like to be able to create aggressive sounds and then either keep them aggressive or make them softer). And then, I decided to change the Phase knob from Random to either 0% or anything in between. WOW!!! Now that's some extreme change! And when you load a different waveform, then you can clearly hear a different sound! This totally changes the game for me and hopefully to those of you who also would like to explore Alchemy to create these aggressive sounds or even if you just want to have a more decent FM synth that comes up with interesting textures.

 

Play with those Amount and Feedback knobs for more aggressiveness. Also change the waveform, the number of voices (unison), the sync, the sym.

 

Hope it helps! ;)

 

PS - For those who don't know how to set the FM filter properly, double click the FM knob to make it go to the middle/50% (I have Logic 10.4.2 so I don't know if early versions work this way with the double click). Right click the knob and choose Note Property > Key Follow. Then adjust the amount of modulation (Depth) to 100%.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure that the Detune is set to 0% or it will sound weird (unless you want it that way, but...). Try it at 0% first ;)

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Alchemy is (using street language) badass. If you like aggressive sounds from the Drum-N-Bass or other genre try, just for the pure fun of it the preset "Visions - Bass - Fragmentator", but fiddle with the sound only by opening via shortcut B the smart control window. That, on playing and recording along a beat with automation makes a track alone.
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