Novation Peak

Speaking of out of sync LFOs, you can do this per voice (not just for each LFO) as described by Ricky Tinez in this video (also linked above by @josker)

The title is a bit overstated (really just this one tip? on every patch?), but the trick is a good one. Hopefully worth a repost.

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Yes that’s the video that gave me the idea. His way the LFOs get resynced every power cycle though. If you use a mod matrix slot then when you return to the patch they’ll get out of phase again.

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Ah! I misunderstood then. Sorry, I had read per LFO, not per voice. (Though a careful re-reading shows me you did say per voice…)

If you can get the LFOs out of sync with your approach, that is indeed much better. I didn’t like the fact that you needed to ‘reset’ each power cycle. And also, the way you hit the keys to initialize the start of the cycle for each voice made it so the LFOs were out of sync, sure, but not really random.

Yep! Using velocity (or any of the envelopes, keyboard, etc.) to modulate LFO rate will get them out of sync (on a per voice basis) :slight_smile:

Additionally, you can do: Animate x Velocity: LFO Rate
This way you can mess with the sync and then “lock it in.”

Either way, there’s no way to save the phases of them after a power cycle (I’ve put in a request to Novation for this). The phases persist through patch changes unless you hit a patch in which the LFOs are set to common.

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Neat idea with the unison + spread at 127 to get those hard panned stereo voices and different modulation on each side! Def going to try this tonight.

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Anyone have tips on emulating duophony/paraphony?

I know each voice gets its own filter and amp envelope… but perhaps with some creative envelope settings one could send two consecutive notes through common envelopes?

I’m trying Poly2, 3 voice unison, low unison detune, low unison spread, one saw oscillator with saw density at half, no filter keytracking, no divergence, LFOs set to common, phase free, lots of pre filter drive. But cant figureout how to get the notes through the same amp envelope. Perhaps a global lfo set to retrigger, ramp down, mapped to amp envelope? hmmm

I was just thinking about this when I was playing my Odyssey yesterday, keep the thread updated if you come up with a rad paraphonic style patch!

Ok i just built a really fun patch:

It’s not true paraphony of course. Essentially using LFO1 and LFO2 as amp and filter envs set to common and retrig, and using the arp in chord mode to lock in the same start time for all notes in your interval/chord so they sound theyre going through the same envelopes.

ADSR:

  • A=0
  • D,S,R=127 for both amp and mod env 1 (we aren’t using these so we leave them open)

OSC1: whatever waveform you like. No modulation. I like a wavetable like Modeling for this one, but you can use whatever. OSC2/3 you can use if you like, but with all the unison, 1 osc sounds best to my ears.

VCA

  • set vca level at 0. This is important!

Filter:

  • Set it low, like 9 o’clock
  • Env depth at 12. We arent using this.
  • Keytracking at 0

Voicing:

  • Unison 3 or 4 voice (to make yourself voice steal to taste)
  • Detune and Spread at 0, adjust this at the end if you want to but i feel like low values are the most convincing here
  • Poly2

LFOs:

  • LFO1: Saw, Sync 16th, Common On, Repeats 1, FadeSyncOn, FadeIn, Phase 0deg. Rate knob should be around 9 oclock for both to start with, but LFO1 should be locked at 16th notes (or whatever you’ve set your arp at)
  • LFO2: same as 1 except you can play with rate a lot more:

LFO controls now act as envelopes. Moving fade time creates an attack envelope, moving rate negatively lengthens decay. For plucks, have your amp lfo at 0 fade time and move rate higher, vice versa for chord stabs.

Mods:

  • LFO2+/-: VCA level, about 40
  • LFO1+/-: FiltFreq, about 40
  • anything else you think is cool

Arp (optional)

  • Type: Chord
  • Rhythm, Sync etc to taste.
  • Keysync On
  • Keylatch On

Playing the patch:

  • Play intervals and they’ll triggered in sync via the arp and will sound kind of paraphonic.
  • You can also disable the arp and just make sure to strike two notes simultaneously. Unfortunately theres no way of disabling subsequent notes from retriggering the now ‘global’ envelopes. Strumming notes is pretty noticeable when the ‘amp envelope’ LFO has a low fade (short attack), less noticeable when it’s long
  • Move LFO 1 Fade, LFO 2 fade, and LFO 2 rate for envelope modulation
  • Move LFO 1 Depth to open up the filter EG

Other tips

  • Set a global LFO to modulate shape of osc 1 for some really nice harmonic modulation
  • Set a global LFO to random s+h to modulate either LFO1 or LFO2’s rate negatively at random by about -5 to get some random ‘amp decay’ or ‘filter decay’
  • Adding noise sounds great!
  • OSC Common keysync is cool, try that. Dont know what it does but adds something different

final note - its possible i didnt need to do the LFO to vca/filter mod trick for this and the usual VCAs/filter envelopes would have been fine with some combo of keysync and the arp? if someone wants to try, let me know if that works just as well. Either way it was fun to get here!

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here’s what it sounds like on my end, saw osc at start, switching to “modeling” wavetable later. note- i have osc 3 filter mod at around 12 o’clock, just noticed. definitely a different harmonic character with that on!

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Wow very nice write-up, I love it! I’ll give this one a try.

Here’s an example :slight_smile:

2 voice unison patch going for the stereo effect

EDIT:
Post #777 :peace_symbol:

… umm the allude to the US national anthem was accidental …

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Ooh that patch has some serious thickness going on! Super smooth low end with super grainy high end, really nice.

Really nice - what osc waveforms are you using here? Low end is crystal.
Here’s my take on the binaural patch! First half is bypassing FX entirely. (please excuse my poor keyboard skills.)
OSC1 (BS sine) > FM+1 > OSC2 (Grow) > FM+64 > OSC3 (BS Sine) > FM+1 OSC1 again.
…some noise FM on the filter, and tons of velocity and aftertouch modulation going everywhere, including reverb > inf

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Heck yeah :sunglasses: thanks! All the waveforms are triangles:

  • FM Ns> Osc 1 (for that grainy, binaural high end effect)
  • Osc 2 is an octave lower, and I think the RM1+2 volume is pretty high
  • Osc 3 has some shape modulation (also binaurally)

Happy to share the patch if y’all are interested.

Love it! I think using the noise in some way really accentuates the stereo effect. Luckily the Peak gives us three ways to do that (Noise, FM Ns > Filter, FM Ns > Osc 1) :cowboy_hat_face:

@fffiiissshhh Is your GAS for the Super6 going down? :wink:

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Haha so far yes:) I’m making like 2 patches a day. I’m addicted!

On the plus side, I’m loving the sound design process and flexibility! Some of my favorite Legowelt patches are literally one oscillator…insane! I also love having a screen for patch names and mod matrix details…I’d certainly miss that on the Super6;)

On the ‘hmm’ side - I feel like that flexibility also means I have to really dial in patches carefully. Once there, it sounds amazing, but I feel the sweet spots aren’t always as broad relative to the synth’s possibilities on other synth’s I’ve owned. Even the OG Minilogue, albeit with a much smaller palette, one could really just turn knobs and pretty much everything would sound ‘good’ somehow. That was also my experience trying out an OB6 in store. So yeah, on the Peak I spend a lot of time carefully programming sounds and modulation, but once there, I can’t always let myself go and just turn whatever knob - I really have to know how that knob will affect the sound. Tradeoff for the sound design possibilities.

Things like the curves on the faders are taking me some time to get used to, and the interaction between various knobs like LFO1depth / env depths, the various distortion/drive/gain stages, etc take a while to get a feel for.

Biggest feature wish so far would be a Prophet or Sub37 modulation assignment workflow. Like holding LFO type or range and wiggling the parameter you want to modulate to assign it to would be amazing…

tl:dr, I love it

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+1

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anyones Peak ever just shut off mid use? I was doing a major tweak session…and it just went blank. then started again about a minute later. :confused:

The screen goes black if you dont use it for a while. Its a screensaver. But i have never had it stop making sounds or actually turned it self off.

I was USING it. it rebooted. :thinking:
checked to see if the power was seated properly. it was. no idea wha happened.