Zebra only has a couple of modules (Fold and MSEGs) that have any visual feedback. I don't think u-he is big on this maybe because it adds more CPU load. One thing I've found helpful is to add an oscilloscope plugin to your master bus and see what the Oscillator effects, PWM, Sync and VCOs are doing to the OSC waveform.
U-He has been adding visual feedback in their more recent products (Hive, Bazille, etc) although not as much as some would've liked. In Vital, Serum, Pigments, etc, everything is animated.
Yes, this, but I also used a spectrum analyzer (like Voxengo Span) to get a better grasp of what the oscillator effects were doing.
My god this open so many possibilities.
Zebra tips. While trying to create metallic noise sounds such as a cymbals, no matter what I did, white noise + VCF + EQ just didn't cut it. The solution came from a Serum tutorial video by Au5. What we need to do is carve out bands of frequencies from the noise.
To do this in Zebra, you can use the AP Phaser 8 filter like so:
As you turn the cutoff knob, you can hear the band moving through the white noise. Resonance adds a bit more teeth to it. Split works more like a fine tune. Modulating these ever so lightly can produce some very nice results.
This technique works to modify the timbre of any input, not just noise. Works great on pads to generate nice organic sweeps. I've attached the patch with some additional modules and modulations, just to make it palatable.
I got Nordsund Dusk too in a previous sale. It's fantastic and has tons of great Zebra tips!
I'm taking this at face value!
Let's revive this thread..
One thing I figured out late in Zebra were the Arpeggiator Modulators ArpMod and ArpMd2. It was really hard to find out where they were within the UI.
In Zebra, you have to select the +A or +AB buttons to see the lanes.
In ZebraHZ, it is a bit harder to find because there are no A/AB buttons. The lanes are always present but they just looked like dividers.
I wish they had used different colors for the two ArpMod lanes.
You can associate ArpMods to levels in different lanes and break the pattern of everything triggering at the same time. In the attached example, I used ArpMd2 to turn off the Bass Drum except for the first note.
Sounds like this:
View attachment BassNDrums.mp3
ArpMods only change when a note/step is triggered so it will need to follow that pattern. Zebra Arpeggiators are really nice but not very easy to modify, especially when you want to insert a new note in an existing pattern. But limitations are sometimes good, they trigger new ideas that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
What I realize is that Soft Synths are so complex, it is hard to wrap an intuitive UI around it that lets you tweak every little thing easily. Thus it becomes imperative that developers find uncommon and innovative UI elements to solve it with in the limited space allocated to them within a DAW. I just have to commit to RTFM, several times.
Reviving the good ol' thread again.. Here is a technique to get a semi-realistic female vocal "aah" sound-- it will work only well with in the 3rd octave, the lower octaves will sound too nasal. This is just a starting point, there are many ways we can go from here. The secret to making it less synth-y is in the pitch modulation. The LFOs are driving the OSC Detune and Vibrato. There is a simple MSEG that bends the pitch slightly during the attack..
Try modifying the VCF2 cutoff to change the timbre and format. I tried to keep it minimalistic just to demo the method.
Patch attached.
You can probably shape the relevant parameters with modmapper(s) so that the patch sounds more consistent across a wider range.
Yeah, use it all the time :-DZebra tips. While trying to create metallic noise sounds such as a cymbals, no matter what I did, white noise + VCF + EQ just didn't cut it. The solution came from a Serum tutorial video by Au5. What we need to do is carve out bands of frequencies from the noise.
To do this in Zebra, you can use the AP Phaser 8 filter like so:
As you turn the cutoff knob, you can hear the band moving through the white noise. Resonance adds a bit more teeth to it. Split works more like a fine tune. Modulating these ever so lightly can produce some very nice results.
This technique works to modify the timbre of any input, not just noise. Works great on pads to generate nice organic sweeps. I've attached the patch with some additional modules and modulations, just to make it palatable.
