Zebra3 Info

[lnikj]

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

*sigh*

I've given up. Buying Serum just to read the manual. Might even try it. Hope it's worth looking into.

Ermm ... having started all this (or the latest rerun of it anyway) ... I hope you're not regretting it

[clangorous]

This will be too geeky, but I'd really like to see a some way of deriving wavetables from mathematical functions.

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

It's a nice editor, but it's a fixed menu of algorithms. There's no way of generating a waveform from an arbitrary function, which is what I would like to do. As I say, it's super geeky idea, and I'm not holding out much hope for it.

(In my experience, drawing waveforms isn't a productive way to discover interesting timbres.)

Not sure I'm following. I'm open to the possibility of using something like this, but help me understand how drawing waveforms isn't productive for finding new timbres while using algorithms would be.

I like tweaking and hearing the results and trying to move closer to a sound. Wouldn't algorithms be more like randomly finding sounds? Or would one be able to control it even more as in "I like where this is going, let me try reducing odd harmonics and see if that makes it less crisp" kinda thing? And how much math would one need to understand in order to use it in more than a random way?

[hakey]

help me understand how drawing waveforms isn't productive for finding new timbres while using algorithms would be.

Maybe just me, but I find drawing waveforms rarely results in timbres that I find useful or interesting. As for why derive waveforms from functions - just intuition. Music is maths.

[Urs]

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

*sigh*

I've given up. Buying Serum just to read the manual. Might even try it. Hope it's worth looking into.

Ermm ... having started all this (or the latest rerun of it anyway) ... I hope you're not regretting it

Well, I've been thinking about it for a few days before. The videos are all a bit like "look, you can add sawtooths on top of your sawtooths, and you can even add more sawtooths of top of those", which might be a visually interesting concept, but the sound doesn't quite echo the beauty of the presenter's idea.

I sometimes think about doing a radical thing and allow for only two waveforms to morph between, but then truely morph in spectacular ways. The whole "key framing" thing with wavetables just doesn't sound good. It's always somewhat mechanical sounding. There are just always those "edge moments" where a movement of harmonics takes a turn, and it isn't smooth.

We'll see... and as I said, I'm working on the spline/curve based editor. Which I find way more important than the waveform drawing tool anyway.

[Urs]

It's a nice editor, but it's a fixed menu of algorithms. There's no way of generating a waveform from an arbitrary function, which is what I would like to do.

The Formula Parser in Serum is actually quite comprehensive. It has operators for phase, sample, current sample values, selected frame or current frame, trigonometric and other functions, standard math operators... it can be used to create a single waveform, a whole set of waveforms, or alter/mutate a single waveform or a set, based upon a selection or not. I can't see how a built-in function generator could be any more comprehensive...

Ideally however it would run in realtime, and that's where I'd rather head for a future version.

[Urs]

Hmmm, I don't think it has any memory though, so I guess one can't write a formula that does integration or anything, e.g. for filters and stuff.

[lnikj]

I sometimes think about doing a radical thing and allow for only two waveforms to morph between, but then truely morph in spectacular ways. The whole "key framing" thing with wavetables just doesn't sound good. It's always somewhat mechanical sounding. There are just always those "edge moments" where a movement of harmonics takes a turn, and it isn't smooth.

Sounds very interesting indeed. I do hope you will implement this. It could be an 'as well as' rather than 'an instead of' other possibilities.

[clangorous]

help me understand how drawing waveforms isn't productive for finding new timbres while using algorithms would be.

Maybe just me, but I find drawing waveforms rarely results in timbres that I find useful or interesting. As for why derive waveforms from functions - just intuition. Music is maths.

Fair enough, and thanks for responding. It does get one thinking...was trying to figure out what something like this might look like. Like generate something and then work with it (tweak) to develop it further.

[hakey]

It's a nice editor, but it's a fixed menu of algorithms. There's no way of generating a waveform from an arbitrary function, which is what I would like to do.

The Formula Parser in Serum is actually quite comprehensive.

I completely missed that.

Anyway, sorry, it was a random brain fart and I didn't intend for it to meander into a discussion of another synth.

[mrj1nx]

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

*sigh*

I've given up. Buying Serum just to read the manual. Might even try it. Hope it's worth looking into.

Glad to hear it! It sounds like you have a bit of bias regarding serum, and using it for a bit will hopefully change that. What made the difference for me was listening to a Steve Duda interview and understanding the ideas behind it, much of which was just making the road from idea to sound as easy and fast as possible. He has an incredibly pragmatic view on the tools he make based on the day to day real life workflows he's experienced. On the surface it can look pretty much like yet a standard synth with some bells and whistles but it is just a really powerful and versatile tool. Give the user easy to use tools and aid visually whats happening. It makes it less of a black box than massive for sure, especially for the wave morphing effects. An oscillioscope becomes pretty useless as soon as theres more than one note, so in that regard serums visualisation is quite nice. I found it immensly interesting to have iZotope insight running the rolling spectrogram while using Z2 and seing the osc effects happening, it helps a lot to gain a better intuitive feel for sound as well. Alchemy has that view built in for some of the osc types.

[Urs]

It sounds like you have a bit of bias regarding serum, and using it for a bit will hopefully change that.

My bias is thoroughly because, the sheer number of people who take Serum as an example has turned into lecturing me. It's like, you know, "after 15 years of not getting there, look at this thing, it'll get you there".

I think people have gone nuts

[lnikj]

My apologies for reintroducing it into the thread Urs I certainly had no intention to lecture you; I was just trying to find out where you are headed with the editor. As I said, your plans for it sound great. I'll get me coat.

[Urs]

An oscillioscope becomes pretty useless as soon as theres more than one note, so in that regard serums visualisation is quite nice.

See, it still doesn't visualize what comes after the phase or level mangling, just like Zebra doesn't visualize OscFX. So in that respect, it's not an example of something done better than Zebra.

The isometric terrain view of the waveform may be nice, but it ultimately is an expression of all the things Serum isn't. Technically, pre-rendering everything into sample based waveforms is the most simple thing to do, but it's far below my goals. It does however allow for that isometric view, but it does not allow for more elaborate realtime manipulation, e.g. in the spectral domain. As such, if we added to Zebra what Serum does, we would go a step backwards. Suggesting to me to do that is suggesting to me to put pretty visualization over sound quality and flexibility.

I'll be honest. Serum's wave editing tool is great. But that's all there is to it, even though the prettyness of the UI may suggest otherwise.

[Urs]

I certainly had no intention to lecture you

No worries, I guess no-one did. As I said, the sheer mass of those well-meant suggestions have turned into an annoyance which is not backed by what I see in it.

You need to also consider that Zebra 2 is twelve years old. It's not like I've started thinking about these things today. It's just that a few people have done the obvious before I had a chance to put them in.

[hakey]

Well, I had a look at the function parsing input of that synth... hmm, yeah, too geeky. Sorry for bringing it up.

If there's any way to increase the likelihood of serendipitously discovering interesting timbres when drawing waveforms - extra tools/processes from the drop down? - that'd be good.