ZebraCM - tuturial/manual?

[pc999]

I have played with Zebra demo before and I could barely understand what is hapening, but once it to expensive I keep delaying my understanding of it anyway.

But I got a CM issue with ZebraCM, I still dont understand much of it, but now I would like to know more about how to use it.

SO is there any place here I can see tuturials or somethingthat can help me make more sense of it.

I already can use VA synths, but not much more than that.

So any resources for ZebraCM?

Thanks in advance.

[Urs]

ZebraCM is a very basic VA-synth with 2 oscillators, a noise generator and a filter. The major difference is the seamless transition of oscillator waveforms, symmetry (PWM) on each waveform and the different filter characteristics.

Most parameters e.g. for LFOs, envelopes and FX can be read up about in the Zebra-manual:

http://www.u-he.com/zebra/manual/

Cheers,

Urs

[mcnoone]

So any resources for ZebraCM?

You can also try downloading some presets for it from here.
http://www.u-he.com/PatchLib/zebra.html#zcm

Maybe just looking at how these presets were programed, and what was done to achieve certain sounds, might also help you learn to use it.

There's also a randomizer h2p script for it somewhere, that might help in giving you starting points, although I believe starting with the initialize (init) preset is best.

Good luck.

[DavyAch]

I was in exactly the same boat - not really knowing how to work this thing (or any synth for that matter, due to my limited intellectual capabilities!). However, I found some tutorials for making sounds on www.musicradar.com, and followed those. Slowly what was going on dawned on me, and I began fiddling round with parameters. Put zebracm in the search box on the site and follow the links. From memory there are 3/4 tutorials - enough to get you the basics at least.

Enjoy!

[Urs]

Actually... yes... there's a ZebraCM tutorial in every other print issue of CM... soem of which went into Musicradar... of course

[DavyAch]

Hey Urs. Shouldn't you be working on a free synth (read that somewhere) instead of answering on here??

[Urs]

Hey Urs. Shouldn't you be working on a free synth (read that somewhere) instead of answering on here??

It's the other way round... I should do other stuff than working on some free synth...

Trying my best to get both doen

[pc999]

Thanks, those things will help.

After the initial shock of so many "knobs" I started to see somethings. It seems there is a lot of destination for modulation too, it will take sometime to test.


But still some doubts.

The Wave "knob" what it actually does (It seems that is modifies a SAW wave???)? And can you change the wave form (eg to a sine or square)?


Thanks again.


I will keep a eye on the new synth too, specially if I can learn from it too, and does have such a nice presets like this one .

[bmrzycki]

I wrote this up a while ago describing the details of ZebraCM:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 29#3538729
Keep in mind all the filter types in Zebra CM use the older 2.3 models and not the newer 2.5 models. Also, the CM version has no XMF filters which have their own unique texture.

Regarding the "Wave" knob... ZebraCM is a stripped down Zebra2 with 16 fixed waveforms. The Wave knob lets you select 1 of the waves in the set. Whole numbers for the knob like 1,2,3,4,5... select each wave where partial numbers like 1.75 blend the two adjacent waves (in the case of 1.75 it'd be wave 1 and wave 2 with wave 2 having more influence over the shape).

An easy way to understand this is to download the Zebra2 demo, install it, and then load some of the ZebraCM patches into Zebra2 (they're compatible). You can get ZebraCM patches from here:
http://u-he.com/PatchLib/zebra.html#zcm
(I recommend the patches by beej and mcnoone)


Now take a look at one of the patches from beej's pack, named Assassins:

You'll see Circle 1 is the position of the module in the signal chain. Because Oscillators do not take input the Osc1 signal is merely summed with the output of Osc2 along with the Noise modules and all 3 feed into the filter VCF1.

Circle 2 denotes the Wave knob for Oscillator 2, currently set at 5.60. Now, if you look at Circle 3 you'll see I've selected the extended settings for OSC 2. This will give you a visual representation of the 16 waveforms all ZebraCM presets use. With Zebra2 you can draw your own waves but in ZebraCM the slots are fixed to these specific 16.

Next you'll notice two sets of lines drawn in the box labelled "Wave 6". The yellow line with square points at the verticies denote the shape of the waveform kept in slot 6. However, the brown line denotes the shape of the actual waveform producing sound. Remember when I said that a non-integer waveform number meant the two adjacent waves were blended? Here is a concrete example of it in action. Zebra is interpolating Waves 5 and 6 to determine the overall blend. Because the setting is 5.60 this means Waveform 6 has more influence on the shape than Waveform 5. However, you'll also see that Waveform 5.60 (brown) looks nothing like Waveform 6 (yellow).

Finally, circle 4 shows you the 16 wavetables at a glance. In Zebra2 you can click on each of those boxes to select the entire wave. Wave 6 is selected here because it's the closest wave to 5.60.

I think playing with the demo of Zebra2 with ZebraCM patches might help you to understand the design of ZebraCM as well as the u-he plugin philosophy.

I hope this helps.
(also, please forgive me if I didn't say the correct colors for the waveforms, I'm a bit colorblind. I tend to think of them as "wave with square vertices as the waveform" and "the other one" as the actual wave making sound)

[pc999]

Thanks that is really helpful not only it helps to understand Zebra but also what I am hearing when I change that knob.

I will try to load them in the demo.

If I keep learning about Zebra(s) I may need to start saving , it seems quite interesting.