Bright and dark
Hear harmonics, tell bright sounds from dark ones, and use the macros to make a dark and a bright version of your loop.
Harmonics
Almost every sound is a stack of tones: the note you hear plus quieter harmonics above it. Few harmonics sound dark, soft or pure. Many sound bright, buzzy or glassy.
Waveforms
A sine wave has no harmonics, so it is pure and round. A triangle adds a few quiet ones, a square more, and a sawtooth has them all, so it's the brightest.
Filters and FM
A low-pass filter darkens a sound by removing the harmonics above a cutoff. FM works the other way: one oscillator wobbles another's pitch very fast, which adds harmonics. More modulation, brighter sound.
The Model:Cycles is an FM machine with no filter knob, so you darken a sound by turning its modulation down.
Listen, don't calculate
COLOR, SHAPE, SWEEP and CONTOUR do different jobs on each machine. Don't think in FM terms: turn one, listen, and name what changed.
Lesson 6
- Bright and dark.
- In this lesson you will hear harmonics, tell bright sounds from dark ones, and use the macros to make a dark and a bright version of your loop.
Every sound is a stack of tones
The note you hear plus quieter harmonics above it.
A sine has none, a sawtooth has them all. The more harmonics, the brighter the sound.
A low-pass filter darkens a sound by turning down everything above a cutoff. Burial's hats in "Ghost Hardware" are pitched way down with their highs cut away, so they sound dusty rather than crisp.
FM, in plain words
One oscillator wobbles another's pitch very fast.
A little wobble adds a few harmonics; a lot adds many. Then noise. The Model:Cycles has no filter knob, so less modulation is how you go dark.
The four macros mean something different on each machine. On five of the six, SHAPE and CONTOUR set how much modulation there is, so they are your main brightness knobs.
COLOR and SWEEP change the tuning and movement of the tone. Use your ears to decide if that's brighter.
Let pattern changes wait for the bar
- On B01, hold FUNC and press PAGE to open the SCALE menu, set CHG to 64 with LEVEL/DATA.
- Then press BACK.
Nothing changes in the sound. When you pick another pattern now, it starts at the end of your 4 bars.
Make a twin
- Hold PATTERN + 1 and press RECORD to copy B01.
- Then hold PATTERN + 4 and press and hold STOP until the countdown finishes.
- Go to B04 (hold PATTERN, press 4).
B04 is an exact copy. B04 becomes the bright version, B01 the dark one.
Brighten B04's hats
- Press PLAY, select T3 and turn SHAPE and CONTOUR up.
- Hold FUNC and turn PITCH up a few semitones.
Crisp, glassy hats, the kind that cut through a club.
Brighten the rest of B04
On T1 turn CONTOUR up for click, on T2 turn SHAPE up for more crack, and on T4 turn SHAPE and COLOR up.
The same beat, now hard and shiny.
Now the dark one
- Hold PATTERN and press 1.
- When B01 starts, select T3, hold FUNC and turn PITCH well down.
- Turn SHAPE and CONTOUR down and DECAY a little shorter.
Dusty hats: more like brushed paper than cymbals.
Darken the perc too
- Select T4 and turn SHAPE and COLOR down.
- Leave your round kick and snare from lesson 5 as they are.
A soft, muted loop where nothing pokes out.
Compare
- Switch between B01 and B04 while it plays (hold PATTERN, press 1 or 4).
- Finish on B01, your track, and save it: hold FUNC and long-press SETTINGS.
Same rhythm, two worlds. Dark sits back and lets you lean in; bright jumps forward.
You want your hats darker. Which move works on the Model:Cycles?
Answer
Less modulation means fewer harmonics, and a lower pitch moves everything down. Together they do the job a low-pass filter does on other synths.
More harmonics, brighter. Fewer, darker. In night music, start dark and add brightness only where you want the ear to go.
This lesson's challenge
In B01, give just one hat its own sparkle: press RECORD, hold that hat's trig and turn SHAPE up. One bright hit in a dark loop pulls the ear to it.