u-he

womoma · Post by **womoma** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:56 am

Hey.

Im checking out Zebra 2 at the moment and Im very impressed so far.

I know there is a manual online, and I have had a look through it. It tells you all the capabilities of Zebra, thats kool.

Still, it would be very useful to have a tutorial or two for Zebra 2.

Even something as small as a two or three page tutorial for creating some basic patches, and flirting with some effects would be fantastic.

Regards,
wombat.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:39 pm

Have you tried Zebralette? - It's a turtorial that looks & feels like a plugin...

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:02 pm

Womoma, if you have any specifics you need help with, feel free to hit me up too. You know where to find me

URS, is the manual going to be updated soon? Quite a few missing sections and xxx??? in it still.

womoma · Post by **womoma** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:45 pm

Urs, thanks for taking the time to reply. Yep Ive had a look at Zebralette. It did help somewhat. The patches in Zebra 2 are fantasic by the way, though Im sure you've already heard that a million times.

The "controversial" [cm magazine quote] online manual is good for explaining what different sections of Zebra 2 do, but it will baffle people who are new to synthesis.
To be honest, I still think a tutorial would be superb. Something like a 20 minute video tutorial would be pretty easy to do, and very helpful to beginners, aswell as seasoned synthesists who want a quick quide to general use of Z2.
Maybe even a page in the manual where a patch is created from scratch, or a library patch is reverse engineered.

Either way, Ive managed to get my head around much of Zebra 2. I stayed up all night last night, reverse engineering patches.
I'm starting to think of Zebra 2 as a less fiddley, more user friendly Absynth.

Looking forward to buying it and sharing some patches.

Tarekith! Cheers man. If I have any questions Ill hit you up.
Funny you and me make time to listen to all the mixes and mess around with Zebra, wonder whats taking the rest of the guys!

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:13 am

I'd be very interested in writing a Zebra tutorial at some point. I've written a couple in the past (Access Virus out of interest, Roland V-Synth for cash), and seeing as I'm a TOTAL Zebra2 fan now (can't get enough), such a project would be FUN! I'm still learning new tricks in Zebra2, so it might take several months before before I'd be confident enough to start.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:30 pm

Great news Howard, your Access tutorial is very well done.

womoma · Post by **womoma** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:06 pm

Thanks Howard. That would be superkool!

stevechristian · Post by **stevechristian** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:52 pm

I would love something like what Macprovideo did for Sculpture. I learned alot about getting the most out of sculpture from that video and would gladly pay $30 - $40 for a quality Zebra2 tutorial of the same quality.

beej · Post by **beej** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:27 am

Hey Steve, welcome!

Video tutes are a great way to learn this stuff. The amount of supplementary material for Z2 will increase over time (user patches, scripts, templates, skins etc).

But actually, for a complex synth, Zebra is quite accesible to learn. Start off by only adding an oscillator to the grid and playing with that, seeing what the various parameters do - consult the online manual for some extra help. Then play with the envelope. Then add a filter, try the different filter types. Modulate the filter with a second envelope. Then add some LFO modulation.

Once you've got this far, you've already got a good conceptual understanding on Zebra - adding and connecting modules, add modulation to parameters using envelopes and LFO's.

Then you can explore the extra stuff - MSEG's, FM and Comb oscillators, effects and so on. Because each of them are so modularised it's relatively easy to stick to one module type to understand how it works and how to apply it.

Plus of course, the extra asset included in the price is the great and friendly user-community and dev-support. So you should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly, provided you're familiar with the basic synthesis fundamentals etc.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:31 am

Dissect some of Howards presets... some smart stuff in there

stevechristian · Post by **stevechristian** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:31 pm

I understand exactly what you're saying beej. I think I just need to understand how Zebra2 works a little better. To me, it's such a different approach to synthesis that I feel overwhelmed with all the options and what I can do with it. I think that is the best advice. Start with a blank slate and build up from there....slowly. BTW, is there a .pdf or anything that can be downloaded? I think the online manual's great, but I'd love to be able to have a printout for work to pass the time

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 1:49 pm

stevechristian wrote:I think that is the best advice. Start with a blank slate and build up from there....slowly.

Yep, SLOWLY is the way! I found Zebralette very useful as a tutorial. It kept me focussed on the basics. Another tip: If something doesn't sound quite right, try to avoid throwing virtual hardware at the problem - use as few modules as possible

beej · Post by **beej** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 2:06 pm

Howard wrote:If something doesn't sound quite right, try to avoid throwing virtual hardware at the problem - use as few modules as possible

If you've got it.. flaunt it...

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:24 pm

beej wrote:
Howard wrote:If something doesn't sound quite right, try to avoid throwing virtual hardware at the problem - use as few modules as possible
If you've got it.. flaunt it...

not only that, but Zebra cannot sound good until there are at least a dozen modules in there!!

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:47 pm

pdxindy wrote:...Zebra cannot sound good until there are at least a dozen modules in there!!

Zebra simply CAN'T sound good, because it doesn't have TAE. Or a D-Beam...

u-he

KVR Audio

Beginners Tutorial would be superb.