The continued chronicles of a madd sound artist: playing with FM8’s frequency modulation in an orchestral context.
Sometime ago I did a post on a software instrument / effects bundle that goes by the name of Komplete… The FM8 is a software synth found in said bundle…
If you’ve ever seen the movie Blade Runner, recently rereleased… If I’m not mistaken, that film’s sound track was made with the Yamaha DX7…
The DX7 is a “frequency modulation” synthesizer.. or FM synth.. This is just one sorta technology for synthesizing sounds electronically. The DX7 was a very popular synth, Brian Eno is famous for using it.. and the DX7 now considered a classic. The FM7 is a software emulation of the DX7 and the FM8 is an upgrade from the FM7…
Some notes about FM…
- It tends to be very efficent with respect to what sorta demands it places on processors.
- The sound created tends to be a little cold, dark.. simple in some ways.. so you’d probably want to put it through a few effects to give it some character..
- FM synths tend to be difficult to learn to program.. its just the nature of Frequency Modulation
Ok.. so the FM8 is sorta like a sci fi version of the FM7. I haven’t really gotten the chance to explore the FM8.. till now, but I can tell you about what’s new in it.. at least with respect to what this particular moment leads me to wanting to take advantage of.
- New onboard effects… These effects are very very nice.. ranging from guitar amp emulations to reverb and EQ… to chorus and flange.. lots of goodness.. The question mark here is I don’t know how well integrated into the sound engine these are.. my impression is that they aren’t really tightly integrated.. what you’d probably like to do is.. have the effects parameters modulated by the synth program.. and I don’t think the FM8 does that.. though I’m not sure.
- Morph Pads… You have X/Y Axis’s… think of this as like a grid.. on a square piece of paper. At the 4 corners of that grid you can put a synth program / patch. Another words.. if you had some sort of a programed horn section… you could put that at one corner.. you could then have some sort of a programed string section put at another corner.. as you move between those two corners the sound will morph between them. Since I’m thinking of using the FM8 in a ambient sorta way.. morphing between sounds.. will allow me to create a kind of morphing ambient sound scape.. which should be great… the big challenge here is figuring out how to automate the XY movements in the sequencer
I’m still working on the Toshiro Mifune VS John Wayne project.. or I should say this is that sound project. Up until this point all the sounds are acoustic sound of two types: Orchestral and Ethnic. There’s a certain kind of “timelessness” you associate with these kinds of sounds.. How long have the instruments found in todays Symphony orchestra been around? So the feeling you get from these sounds is that this composition could have been made anywhere since the dawn of these instruments.. (Though compositionally.. no composer in history would approach composition in anything like the way I’m doing it) In the case of the ethnic instruments.. the dates go back even further.. we get a sense of primordial human experience…
The sounds of the FM8 are the opposite.. They were used effectively in Blade Runner to call to mind a futuristic dystopia.. We tend to associate FM synthesis with sci fi / futuristic stuff… So there’s the question of how do we integrate them into this production…
The title “Toshiro Mifune VS John Wayne.. calls to mind post WW2 cinema history.. Films by John Ford and Akira Kurosawa… It’s sorta the Samari versus the cowboy.. It’s perhaps interesting to note that Kurosawa was hugely influenced by Ford.. and that Kurosawa’s Samurai pictures and a huge influence on the American western.. as a for instance the Magnificent 7 was essentially a remake of Seven Samurai. Perhaps it should also be mention that Kurosawa’s films were a huge influence on George Lucas.. and Star Wars…
In a strange way the music seems to be commenting on film history..
Latter that day:
My sound work has always had a cinematic quality to it.. I always feel as if we are somehow moving through space.. its as if my music was “music with camera angles.” The challenge of integrating the electronic elements with the acoustic stuff continues.. I’ve started this process by using sounds that are atmospheric, often more atmospheric then musical…
Besides the FM8, I’m also now working with Absynth and Massive…
The entrance of the electronic sounds involves automation of volume, effect sends, and pan position.. I have a long section where the sounds are far away in the background and more or less moving closer.. The trouble is that the acoustic instruments are playing softly at this point.. so I feel as though we hear the atmospheric sounds to quickly.. they aren’t quite subtle enough in there entrance.
I’m not sure how much of a problem this really is.
A tactic for countering this problem.. is to set up some delay aux tracks.. and bring some of the orchestral and ethnic percussion into the delays.. as well as more into the verbs.. Which ought to help fill out the space a little. Right now I’m driving at the notion of wanting to go deep into atmospheric ambiance soundscapes… with slowly evolving sections..
Latter that night:
Music’s going very well.. but alas I think I must call this blog entry to and end… Stay tuned, as they say, as I’ll probably make more new version of this track available shortly..