Instead of starting with a looped sample or a collection of sampled drum hits, we can also create entirely new drum sounds from scratch with Falcon’s Drum synth oscillator.
- Open the right-hand sidebar and choose the Oscillators tab. Expand the Synthesis > Drum folders, and you will see all of the drum synth oscillator presets.
- Before we get started zoom in a bit in the Mapping Editor to see the key range we are going to focus on in greater detail. Click the + button on the bottom right of the editor to zoom in.
- Let’s start by adding the Bass Drum preset ‘BD Saving’ to cover the range B0 to C1. As you drag-and-drop, the vertical position within the Mapping Editor determines the key range of the keygroup, with wider ranges set near the top and narrower ranges near the bottom.
The Drum oscillator consists of two sound generators, a pitched oscillator and a noise generator. The two can be independently edited, then the mix between the two is set the with the Mixer. The Master section adjusts the combined signal, with EQ, distortion, and other settings.
- To give the kick a little more edge, let’s change the Oscillator waveform from sine to Triangle, and move the Osc/Noise Slider to add a little noise.
- Now let’s import the ‘SD Maniac’ preset from the SD (Snare Drum) folder to D1, and play a few notes to see how the kick and snare sound. Let’s bump up the Distortion, and lower the Q on the noise filter.
- For toms, let’s drag over a preset from the Electric Tom folder, ‘Large Tom’, to F1.
- We can then tune the tom with the oscillator Frequency Slider.
- To use this customized tom as the starting point for additional toms, right-click the keygroup and choose “Duplicate Selected Keygroup”.
- The duplicated keygroup will initially appear stacked on top of the existing one; grab the new keygroup and drag it over to G1, then adjust its frequency to change the tom’s pitch.
To change the length of time the toms ring out let’s tweak their amplitude envelope. If it’s not already displayed, toggle visibility of the Modulation Editor with its button in the upper right of the Edit view.
- Then click and drag a selection over each of the tom keygroups, then click on the “Amp. Env.” tab in the Modulation Editor. When you adjust the envelope’s Release knob, you will be editing the release time for all of the selected keygroups.
- We can also use the Drum oscillator for synth lead or bass sounds. For example, drag in a preset from the Synth folder, such as ‘Clean Synth’, to cover the range C2 to C3. Moving this keygroup to a separate layer will give us more flexibility with effects routing and other program settings, so let’s move the keygroup.
- Right-click the synth keygroup in the Mapping Editor and choose Move Keygroup To > New Layer.
