Hive 2 functions
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- KVRer
- 3 posts since 21 Feb, 2006
I just discover Hive and I am very impressed by the synth, its sounds and its possibilities… but not impressed by the user manual !… I have difficulties to understand the rules of « functions » versus others LFO or Enveloppes… I don’t see its on the good global scheme provided at the beginning of the user manual… is anybody may give me a pedagogical approach of these features… I will be gratefull…
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- KVRAF
- 2296 posts since 23 May, 2012 from London
Function Generators come from the land of hardware modular, Make Noise Maths probably being the most commonly known implementation. Depending on how they are setup, they can behave like an envelope or an LFO or a slew limiter (glide/portamento is slew limiting of pitch), hence why they are called Function Generators, instead of either of these 3 terms.
The LFOs in Hive and most other synths, soft or hard, are bipolar by default whereas the FGs in Cycle Mode will always be unipolar (same as envelopes) and unlike the LFOs, the FG need to be triggered or gated to run. The FGs will output high/low gate signals depending on its state, with FG1 tracking Rise and Still and FG2 tracking Fall and Move. These gate signals can be used to modulate and or trigger events elsewhere in the patch.
Why/when/where to use them? For the most part, 1 of the 4 regular envelopes and or LFOs will work but if you need more modulation sources and or you want to make use of their features and can accept their limitations, FGs are there for you. They are nice for percussive/pluck sounds where you just need a simple decay envelope, especially as you can modulate the Slope parameter to create nice grooves with a varying tight/open envelope. As per the manual you can also make use of the gate outputs to derive pulse LFOs with variable width. Using the Follow Mode and feeding something to the input, e.g. a Shaper Sequencer with lots of sharp edges, you can derive a smoothed out version to modulate some other parameter/s in the patch.
The design philosophy of Hive is very much centred around efficiency/reuse in this way. It keeps things focused and encourages you to program patches that are coherent/interconnected, rather than just having lots of independent/unrelated modulation happening all over the place.
The LFOs in Hive and most other synths, soft or hard, are bipolar by default whereas the FGs in Cycle Mode will always be unipolar (same as envelopes) and unlike the LFOs, the FG need to be triggered or gated to run. The FGs will output high/low gate signals depending on its state, with FG1 tracking Rise and Still and FG2 tracking Fall and Move. These gate signals can be used to modulate and or trigger events elsewhere in the patch.
Why/when/where to use them? For the most part, 1 of the 4 regular envelopes and or LFOs will work but if you need more modulation sources and or you want to make use of their features and can accept their limitations, FGs are there for you. They are nice for percussive/pluck sounds where you just need a simple decay envelope, especially as you can modulate the Slope parameter to create nice grooves with a varying tight/open envelope. As per the manual you can also make use of the gate outputs to derive pulse LFOs with variable width. Using the Follow Mode and feeding something to the input, e.g. a Shaper Sequencer with lots of sharp edges, you can derive a smoothed out version to modulate some other parameter/s in the patch.
The design philosophy of Hive is very much centred around efficiency/reuse in this way. It keeps things focused and encourages you to program patches that are coherent/interconnected, rather than just having lots of independent/unrelated modulation happening all over the place.
Always Read the Manual!
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- KVRist
- 395 posts since 3 Mar, 2015 from Japan
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- KVRAF
- 4197 posts since 23 May, 2004 from Bad Vilbel, Germany