Lesson Info
3. Voicing
Lessons
Introduction and What You're Going to Learn
00:43 2Getting Started
07:58 3Voicing
06:12 4Routing - Part 1: Intro
08:52 5Routing - Part 2
05:29 6Routing - Part 3
02:09 7Macros
02:56 8Performer
07:02Lesson Info
Voicing
Hi. In this video, we're going to take a look at some of the voicing controls available to us in Max. Ok. So I've got a very simple patch loaded up here. Very basic sound. And what we're gonna do is have a look at this section over here. So right now it's set to poly mode which allows us to play more than one note at the same time, which is especially useful for like cords and pads, anything while you're playing more than one note at the same time you see here, the voices are set to eight, which allows us to play up to eight notes at the same time. Ok. Let's see what happens though. If I turn this down to like three at any given point, it's playing three notes at the same time, but it's letting go of some of the other notes in favor of the three newest notes if you like. However, if we switch to mono, this turns it into a monophonic synthesizer where we only play one note at the same time, this is very useful for bass sounds or lead sounds where you might have them just monophonic beca...
use they're just playing melodies, for example. OK. Great. You'll see here as well that we've got some different options for the engine setup. Now, when we're on free run, it functions as if like in an analog synthesizer that inside the synth itself, the oscillators are just running all of the time and if the voices are slightly out of phase, they're just slowly shifting in and out of phase all of the time. Let's have a listen to that by turning up some of the voices and then switch over to unison. So I'm gonna turn on unison now and with unison on when I play a single, no, it's actually using multiple voices to play that single note. And with the more voices that you use and the more out of phase or out of tune that they are, the kind of bigger the sound gets. So the sound gets much more character, much more color and in some cases, much wider sound as well with units sent off, it's a much drier, much scratchier sound. Ok? But with unison on and we have free run on. If I trigger a single note several different times, the beginning of the note is gonna sound slightly different because those oscillators are just constantly running. So the sound is susceptible to wherever the phase of those oscillators are when I happen to trigger the note. So let's have a listen to that. So you can hear that kind of motion that kind of beating between the different voices there that's constantly happening and it's always different whenever I triggered a note because it's independent of whenever I trigger it. But if I switch to reset all, it's always resetting every time I hit the note. So I'll have a more consistent note this way. So let's have a listen. It's basically perfectly consistent when I have it on reset all as well. These options here open up. So I have spread and phase options for both of my oscillators right now. However, my second oscillator doesn't have any gain. So I'm gonna turn up the volume here and I'm gonna adjust the waveform here as well. So it's more similar and now we have these different options for phase and spread. So phase is time. OK. So if I turn up the phase of one oscillator, I'm just shifting it in time relative to the other one so that the two kind of just line up differently and that will have tonal characteristics on the sound as well. So let's have a listen. So it's all very phase, it sounds very phase at the moment anyway, but it's just kind of different types of phasey sound here and we have spread here as well. So if I turn up the spread all the way up on oscillator, one, then oscillator one is playing at full spread. So it's covering the stereo spectrum. If I do the same with the second one or if I pull them both all the way down, I'll get a much narrower image. It's especially easy to hear this effect on headphones. What you should be experiencing is kind of a narrow sound, but we do have a more global stereo width control for all of the voices here in unison as well. So if I turn it all the way up and then turn up the spreads on each oscillator, very wide sound now, OK, if I turn it all the way down, completely narrow sound and quite a bit thinner as well, so all of these, they just give you a lot of different options when you're trying to create a really, really big synth sound, especially for like pads and stuff like that. This stuff can be really, really useful. So those are the different options available to you with regard to the voicing of the synthesizer and the stereo spread of the sound that you're making. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
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