I’m still in the early stages of learning FM synthesis. What are some useful tips and tricks to create specific types of sound?
And as a tangential question: was there much happening with FM synthesis in between the Yamaha DX era and the devices that Elektron, Korg, etc. released in recent years?
It’s such a fascinating area of electronic music.
there’s at least one other dedicated thread to this
Thanks. I had a read of a few, and they’re very interesting. Is there are a specific thread you were thinking of?
Have some random pick at these…
My own understanding came from reading this:
Thank you. That’s a great series of articles written in a really entertaining manner. I particularly liked the example of how with most synths and effects, increasing a parameter increases the audible result by a predictable and incremental amount. But that with FM, and with the ratios in particular, this is not the case. Not being particularly adept at maths, I’m still a little confused about the link between FM ratios and musical intervals. For example, 1:2 being an octave I get. But with intervals, a 3:2 ratio is a perfect fifth. In the article the writer says a 1:3 ratio in FM synthesis is a perfect fifth, or perhaps I misunderstood this section. In any case, thanks for the link.
I think both are fifths, one being right above (2/3) and the other an octave higher (1/3 being half of 2/3).
The best synth to experiment with FM is, in my experience, the Digitone.
The UI being focused on the ratios, and offering ways to escape them, you are more in control of what you are doing, I found.
2 OP FM is already a lot, when you can act on the waveform. And there you can have a pair of these.
You don’t have a zillion of envelopes, but the one there are sufficient and makes it easier to understand what’s going on and imagine what will happen when you tweak a knob.
It is FM implementation done right (thx @Ess and the Elektron team).
You can/should start very simple, A and C only for starters, until you learn the ratios and start to explore with escaping them through ratios offsets and adding the B pair.
Totally agree. Digitone is really the best for learning FM.
i have a series of shorts on my YouTube channel with FM tips taken from my course. Will help with understanding how to create basic waveforms and how to approach FM sound design etc. 9 videos total. Might be useful 
I’ve seen a few resources correlating FM ratios to 12-TET interval ratios. This is (largely) not correct.
With FM synthesis we’re dealing with timbral harmonicity, not musical intervals – so it’s closer to the idea of the harmonic series and/or overtones.
While a 3:2 ratio (or a multiplication of 1.5, which would correlate to FM ratios) is a perfect fifth in just intonation, the equal temperament interval is different – 1.49830 … What will happen in practice is that 1.5 gives you a stable timbre while 1.49(…) will have some movement, so to speak.
The FM ratio values are simply multiplications of the input frequency (usually a MIDI note etc), and by increasing the factor the resulting modulation will yield different overtones. It’s not necessarily an “octave above” when we have a ratio of 2, it’s the second overtone in relation to the fundamental frequency.
So tl;dr is, don’t confuse interval ratios with FM ratios.
Thanks for clearing that up. I’ve still got a long way to go to fully wrap my head around FM, but it’s great when someone clears the path of misinformation.
Top secret… no one actually ever does.
Just twiddle the knobs and see what happens. After a while you start to understand the relationship between twiddle and sound. Then you still scratch your head.
Personally I use FM to get away from recognisable sounds, and more experimental, weird sounds. Having said that you can get some tasty bass patches and lush chord pads
One thing I love to do with patchable synths like the Moog Grandmother is to do FM. Things can get pretty crazy, especially when you don’t have the Digitone’s safety net of more or less fixed ratios.
this video made me understand more about FM, partials and harmonics, than most tutorials ive seen
i think its a perfect jump start into exploring FM. Once you are comfortable with those concepts its cool to look at FM waveforms and imagine how they are constructed
i think PC98 has a chip that has 4 operators, same amount the Digitone, so you can practice reconstructing some of the sounds you find interesting!
in regards to algorythms, this video does some good demystifying
once you see the basic building blocks that algos are made of, its easier to know why you would want to use one over the other, for a certain sound 
I found this to be quite helpful to get a (slightly) better grip on the theory and it has examples that you can play around with too:
PS - it was made for DX synths but can be adapted and applied to the Digitone or anything else I would imagine.
Thanks for the comments and links everyone. I feel like I’ve entered FM university - not sure when I’ll graduate through…
Lots of tips and tricks for percussion as well as general sound design here:
I also found his series on the Volca FM immensely helpful in comprehending (DX-style) FM synthesis.
^His “How I Drone” Digitone video is extremely helpful
My specific Digitone FM tip is press syn1 + yes to randomize settings until you hear something you like, tweak to taste (mostly harmonics, mix and feedback) and then adjust FM levels/envelopes manually to shape the sound.
I’ve stumbled on a lot of cool sounds this way 
I just NEVER remember to use the randomise function on the Digitone when I’m sound-designing. I need to put a sticky note on it to remind myself. Thanks!
I did not know this existed. Can you also randomise trigs or only synth parameters?