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Lesson 2 - Chiptune Music with SunVox - Module view

Completion requirements
Working in the “Module View”. Introduction to digital sound processing building
blocks: waveforms and envelopes, as well as basic audio effects such as delay and
different kinds of digital filters.

Lesson 2:

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Transcript

00:02 - Video 02. Module View: instruments, effects and settings. Hello! In this tutorial we will explore the features of the “Module View” a little more deeply, and you will become familiar with some of the basics of digital signal processing.
00:20 - Let’s load up our previous project by clicking on the icon in the top left corner. Choose “Load Project,” and select the project which you saved from the last lesson.
00:34 - If we select the “Analog Generator” in the Module View, we can have a look at its parameters on the left side. From this panel we can tweak our module. Let’s click on the letter “V” to resize the panel. 
00:54 - As I already pointed out this module is actually an oscillator. An oscillator is, most of the time, the core of an instrument called a synthesizer. The task of a synthesizer is to electronically create a sound from scratch. Typically, in a synthesizer, it’s possible to set the waveform produced by the oscillator, set the amplitude envelope of the waveform playback, and to filter the resulting sound. With the “Waveform” slider we can set the kind of oscillation produced by our “Analog Generator.”
01:27 - This is then displayed at the bottom of the panel view. We can choose between Triangular, Saw 
Square among others, and different colours of noise, but we can also draw our own custom waveforms by selecting “Draw” and then, with a finger, draw a new waveform on the display itself. For some purposes, it’s acceptable to have a sound that immediately plays at full volume when a key is pressed, and instantly drops to silence when you release it. In most cases, however, we do need a little more control. The red sliders define parameters that pertain to the envelope generator. 
02:14 - An envelope generator is a modulator that changes a parameter over time to control the amplitude of the signal. Our envelope has four stages: “Attack,” which dictates how long the sound takes to go from silence to maximum level; “Release,” which measures the time the envelope takes to return to zero after the finger is withdrawn from the key; “Sustain,” which can be set to either “On” or “Off” and which allows us to prolong the sound; and finally the “Exponential” switch, through which it is possible to modify the slope of the envelope. We can make our oscillator sound richer by adding a second frequency using slider number nine. 
03:04 - Blue sliders represent the filter’s commands. A filter is a circuit that reduces the level of certain parts of the frequency spectrum. The filter type can be choosen via this slider and it is possible to choose between “Lowpass”, “Highpass”, “Bandpass” or “Band Reject”. 
03:30 - The “Filter Frequency,” or cutoff frequency, is the frequency at which the filter starts to reduce the signal level.
03:41 - “Resonance” feeds some of the filter output back into its own input, altering the shape of the filter and producing a boost around the cutoff frequency. It is even possible to set a dedicated envelope for the filter.
04:03 - By double-clicking on the Module View we bring up a list with all the available devices. As you can see they are sorted into categories. All devices comprised under the “Synths” category are meant to produce sound according to different methodologies. Those listed under “Effects” are meant to affect and modify the sound produced by a synthesizer. Let’s choose “Delay” as an example. Now we can connect it to our oscillator. The task of a “Delay”, as its name suggests, is to delay a sound by a certain amount of time. 
04:41 - Let’s now tweak our “Delay.” The two sliders labelled “Dry” and “Wet” are common to all the “Effects.” “Wet” defines the amount of synthesizer signal affected by the delay process. In contrast, “Dry” represents the amount of signal that will pass through the effect without being modified. The red sliders represent by how much the sound of the oscillator will be delayed. You can set these values independently for the left and right channels, and you can also choose how the delay lines’ lengths are computed, whether in milliseconds, Hertz or ticks. For an exhaustive explanation of all the available “Synths” and “Effects” I would suggest you read the software manual, available at the link found in the description. (http://www.warmplace.ru/wiki/sunvox:manual_en. ) Let’s now save our project, so we can use it for our next tutorial.



Last modified: Wednesday, 13 September 2023, 4:33 PM