Subject: [jv1080] Taurus Patch Programming #10
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 18:58:23 -0700
From: timkoelm@iconz.co.nz
To: jv1080@emccta.com

Greetings JV/XP'ers!

Welcome to another (long overdue) patch programming tutorial. Over the past few
months I've been experimenting further in Super JV patch programming, and have
come up with some real "corkers". These new patches will form the next set of
tutorials, which I'll hopefully be able to share with you over the next few weeks.
Also, I've spent a lot of time tweaking and fine-tuning my existing patches - I'll
notify all of you sometime in the near future when I organise these patches into
a bank for downloading...some of the alterations have resulted in patches that
sound much better than the originals.

Anyway, today, a rich pad. There's actually not a lot to this patch, which is why
it's called "Simple Saw Pad". It's only two oscillator, but it's quite thick and
warm, and fits beautifully into a mix. It'll be just the ticket for newage, ambient
or gentle electronic pop.

As I've said, this patch uses two oscillators, or "tones" as they're known in
Rolandese. Tone 1 is a sawtooth wave (Synth Saw 2), and tone 2 (Synth Saw 2inv)
is the same wave but inverted. When played "raw" together, these two waves will
cancel each other out. Try it; initialize a patch, select the waves and play.
Then try altering the pitch of one wave by one or two cents. You'll immediately
notice quite animated "beating" sounds. The relatively heavy detuning between these
two waves is at the heart of "Simple Saw Pad".

So, as a start, I've altered the pitch between the two waves at the most basic
level, on the PATCH/WG/PITCH page. I've then used one LFO for each tone to modulate
pitch, using a triangle LFO waveshape. Notice that the LFO for tone 1 is modulating
pitch in an opposite direction (-2) from tone 2 (+2), and that the LFO rates are also
different (10 vs 5). For even more movement, the stretch tune parameter is cranked
to its maximum, and there's also a fair amount of 1/f modulation ("Analog Feel").

A simple low-pass filter is used to shape the raw waves into a muted, warm tone.
The TVF envelope is inactive, and the TVA envelope is set to a standard pad ADSR
shape, with slowish attack and decay.

I wanted a fair stereo effect for this patch. However, panning each tone to the
extreme left and right just didn't cut it; there just wasn't enough "beating" and
movement, and the tone was rather thin. There just seemed to be more frequency
interaction when the tones were panned centre. Here's the workaround I used, and
it's real handy for stereo pads which aren't "processor intensive". I panned both
tones just left and right of centre. The stereo effect was minimal, but the tone was
thicker and there was a nice level of "beating". I then used a trick which I notice
the Roland sound designers using quite often: setting the master reverb processor to
Hall 2, and cranking the effect send depth for each tone to the max. The result is
a thick pad with a good stereo presence while only using two tones. Quite a lot of
pads in preset bank C use the reverb send technique...I guess the only catch is it
requires judicious use of effects.

Well, that's "Simple Saw Pad". It doesn't sound particularly awesome by itself, but
it fits really well into a sequence, and it doesn't tax the Super JV engine much -
an important factor given all the discussion over Super JV's apparent problems with
delay, and all.

Comments and questions as always are appreciated. Enjoy!

Best Regards,

Taurus3

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