The M4 machine consists of four main sections:
the oscillator section,
the amplifier section,
the filter section and
the Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO)
section.
You have here two main oscillators (Osc1 and Osc2) and a sub oscillator
(SubOsc).
The sub oscillator always oscillates one octave (12 halfnotes) below
oscillator 1. Its level you can control with the SubOsc
Vol controller.
Oscillator 2 is detuneable with the Osc2 SemiDet
and Osc2 FineDet sliders and can be synced
by oscillator 1 (Osc2 Sync).
For each oscillator you can choose their wave form with the Wave parameter
(Osc1 Wave, Osc2 Wave
and SubOsc Wave).
The pulse width controllers (Osc1 PW and
Osc2 PW) move the centers of the waves to
left/right. Below you see a sine wave with pulse width 50:50 and with pulse
width about 70:30. Hope you understand the principle.
With the Osc Mix slider you control the
balance between oscillator 1 and oscillator 2. The Osc
MixType fader is for controlling the kind of mixture.
The oscillator section contains a Pitch Envelope. The attack
and decay time can be adjusted with the Pitch Attack
and Pitch Decay faders,
the strength of the envelope modulation with Pitch
EnvMod. Negative envelope modulation is also
possible.
With the Pitch Glide slider you control
the speed of portamento. A value of 0 means no portamento, 127 is a very
slow glide effect.
The amplifier has a linear Attack-Sustain-Release envelope curve. The
Amp Attack, Amp Sustain
and Amp Release faders control the attack,
sustain and release time of the amplitude enevelope. The volume (sustain
level) is a non global parameter and is controlled per track.
In the filter section you have lowpass filter with -12db, -18db and
-24db/octave and highpass filter with resonance adjustment and bandpass/bandreject(notch)
filter with bandwidth controlling.
Choose one of them with Filter Type.
The cutoff/center frequency you control with the Filter
Cutoff slider, the resonance or bandwidth
with Filter Q/BW
(Q=Quality=Resonance, BW=BandWidth).
The filter has an envelope for the cutoff/center
frequency. Set the attack, sustsain and release time with Filter
Attack, Filter
Sustain and Filter
Release, the strength of modulation with Filter
EnvMod. Negative envelopes are possible.
The M4 machine has two low frequency oscillators (LFO1 and LFO2).
A LFO is a very slow oscillator which can modulate different
parameters of the oscillators, amplifier and filter.
LFO1 Dest and LFO2
Dest (Dest = Destination) specify, which parameter(s) the LFOs modulate.
LFO1 can modulate the frequency of oscillator 1, the pulse width of
oscillator 1, the volume and the filter cutoff/center frequency.
LFO2 can modulate the frequency of oscillator 2, the pulse width of
oscillator 2, the oscillator mix and the filter resonance/bandwidth.
LFO1 Wave and LFO2
Wave specify the waveform of the LFOs. If random is selected, the
LFO holds one random value for the time of one cycle (sample and hold).
With LFO1 Freq
and LFO2 Freq you set their frequencies
in Hertz (0-116) or in Ticks (117-127).
The strenght of the modulation of the selected parameters by the LFOs
you set with the LFO1 Amount and LFO2
Amount sliders.
In the Attributes window you can scale the amounts for the different
parameters. from 0% (0) to 100% (127).
With this feature you can for example modulate the pulse width of oscillator
1 only very slightly (LFO1 PulseWidth1 Scale = 13 (about 10%)) and the
filter cutoff frequency very strong (LFO1 Cutoff Scale = 127 (100%)) with
the same LFO.
With the LFO1 Ph Diff and LFO2
Ph Diff you can get very nice sounding results. Ph Diff means Phase
Difference, so what these parameters do is setting different LFO phases
for every track.
Below you see a picture of a sine LFO wave for three tracks with
a phase difference of 90°, which means 90° difference between
track 0 and 1, 90° difference between track 1 and 2. If this LFO modulates
the cutoff frequency for example, you have different cutoff frequencies
for each track. Hope you understand.
I've spend really much time to write this doc, so I hope it helps you.
happy sounding!
Makk (makk@gmx.de)