After some months of honeymoon with my first Elektron, an AR2, I added a Digitone to my setup this April. Since this is my first FM synth, I had the idea to learn FM sound design by trying to rebuild some classic FM sounds, mostly Yamaha DX7 stuff from the 1980s, on the DN. Learned a lot in the process; here’s the results, a 13 minute video and a free sound pack with 60 Digitone sounds, one project, and a few sounds for AR2 and Novation Peak, too.
(Of course I don’t own the copyright for the original songs I covered in this vid; but covering them in this kinda educational context should fall under fair use. Also, sorry for calling the Digitone DT rather than DN in the vid )
Watched this earlier. The patches are so good! Plus the video is very informative!
I used Dexed to use the old “Tub Bells” DX7 patch on my Volca FM for a Cocteau Twins cover, so might try to re-do it using your recreation on my Digitone
DX7’s 6 operators are more-or-less extra voices and you can recreate anything without the extra 2 ops. FM isn’t really that complicated once you get some experience with it. You learn what the different ratios sound like when the modulator is driven to various levels (plus feedback) and how sounds are constructed with overtones and layers. Algorithms are another level of harmonic complexity. The rest is classic synth design - envelopes and LFO’s, and in the case of Digitone, filters. And the selectable waveforms help make up for the missing two ops, since I imagine a lot of what those ops are used for in DX7 patches is creating non-sinewaves as a baseline.
The Digitone is such a sweet synth, glad to see this kind of stuff coming from it.
I’ve been trying to nail those early 90’s Soundblaster sound card tones like the ones from all the point and click adventure games of that era (like Phantasmagoria, those cheesy FM harps and bells etc) I can get close but not quite yet.
Matching sounds with DEXED
Many 1980s songs just used the presets from the 4 DX7 factory ROM cartridges. Some of that is documented online. Some became clear when I went through those 8 banks (4 cartridges × 2 banks each) on DEXED. So I started from the settings on DEXED; switched individual operators on and off to see what they do, and which 4 of the 6 are most important to get the sound (or, whether I can replace two DX7 operators by only DN operator C with wave shaping). Then replicated the pitch ratios of those 4 operators as close a possible on the DN (coarse ratio parameters are identical to DX7, but fine tuning needs to be adapted). Also, looked for a suitable algo, X/Y balance, and osc sync settings; as well as LFO (which can easily be replicated with the great DN LFOs; only exception: LFO delay … the fade in on the DN is more linear). You can actually get very close to the relevant operators/ratios/algorithms structure of most famous DX7 patches on the DN.
Then comes the difficult part: Getting envelopes, dynamics and keyboard scaling right. This is a bit trial and error, and will not be spot on in most cases: The DN envelopes and scaling settings are way less flexible than the DX7 ones (though you get the filter with dedicated ADSR in exchange). Biggest problem is that you cannot set individual levels for operators B1 and B2; you would often need both of them as modulators at subtle levels; but on DN, if you want both B1 and B2 as active modulators, at least one of them needs to be at 50% level or above, which is often way too much.
Recreating by ear. The more I learned about FM, the quicker and easier it got to just recreate sounds on the base of what I heard.
Yep, mostly agree. In many cases, the classic DX7 patches have two carrier/modulator pairs creating the exact same sound, slightly detuned (as you would detune dual oscillators on an analog synth). You can get close to this sound (while not exactly replicating it) with a single carrier/modulator pair, adding chorus. And while the DN waveshaping is limited (and I haven’t yet found a good use for the right side of the knob, shaping two operators at once), a waveshaped operator C can often kinda replace carrier/modulator pairs aimed at creating saw-ish or square-ish waveforms.
Also, DN can do layering. DN algo #4 has a stack of 4 operators (3 modulators on top of a carrier). No DX7 algo horizontally stacks more operators. Many DX7 algos are basically 2 or 3 oscillators: 2 or 3 carrier/modulator combos running in parallel, with no crossmodulation between those combos. As far as I see, you could recreate almost all DX7 algorithms by layering two DN sounds; exceptions: DX7 algos #4 and #6 which have feedback loops across 2/3 operators; and #16, #17 and #18, which have 4 modulators affecting 1 carrier (but that functionality is rarely used in DX7 patches).
This is very interesting. I had no idea some of the early DX7 patches were based on parallell detuned pairs of the same structure/patch. I always thought of the 4-op structure as a bread-and-butter version of the 6-op structure, giving you most of the options with slightly reduced complexity.
The Digitone really is a dream come true for me. I used to make drum kits with a TX81Z. The Digitone is quite an improvement in that regard
I actually just made a thread about a particular dx7 patch. Were you able to make the harpsichord with the release noise, and if so, how? great work btw.
Didn’t have this in before, just tried to recreate it. The release noise is really difficult; the Digitone envelopes just aren’t made for this. The only thing that I came up with was using a low pass filter with an inverted envelope. Kind of works, but only if you hold the note a bit before releasing. Immediate release won’t give the desired effect (unless you make the filter envelope attack time really short, which messes up the sound unfortunately).
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