MetaSynth 5.

0
Tutorials
software by Eric Wenger manual by Edward Spiegel

manufactured by U&I software LLC, 701 Seventh Avenue Redwood City, CA 94063 http://www.uisoftware.com http://www.metasynth.com This documentation describes MetaSynth version 5.0 and was prepared Jan - July 2009. 2009 U&I software LLC. MetaSynth and Image Synth are trademarks of U&I software, all rights reserved. All other brands and trademarks mentioned are property of their respective owners.

Credits Thanks to: Raphael Elig, Cory, Helge, Glen, Stuart, Andrew, Anton, ivind and Jurgen

Contents
Tutorial: QuickTour.........................................................................5 Tutorial: Sample Editor. ..................................................................10 Tutorial: Effects Room...................................................................11 Tutorial: Image Synth Room..........................................................17 Tutorial: Image Filter Room...........................................................32 Tutorial: Spectrum Synth...............................................................36 Tutorial: Sequencer........................................................................49 Tutorial: Instruments......................................................................53 Tutorial: Montage Room................................................................62

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Tutorial: QuickTour
Basic Anatomy
MetaSynth is made up of a number of different rooms that provide different functions. The Effects Room provides envelope-controllable effects. The Image Synth Room synthesizes sounds and music from a sound canvas where notes and harmonics are painted with unprecedented control over frequency-mapping, harmonic envelopes and stereo placement. The Image Filter Room provides astounding stereo filter effects using the same sound canvas interface as the Image Synth. The Spectrum Synth provides a paradigm-breaking way of creating sounds and loops by analyzing the open sound into harmonic-based events that can be edited and sequenced to create new instruments, intriguing sounds, and fascinating loops. The Sequencer Room is a simple lightweight pianoroll style sequencer where musical phrases and loops can be programmed and either rendered as a sound file or imported into the Image Synth for further processing. Finally, the Montage Room is a 24 stereo-track mixing application that uses Image Synth presets, sound files, MetaSynth sequences and spectrum sequences as events a very powerful way to either layer sounds or create compositions and mixes. The Montage Room also provides multitrack recording. The MetaSynth window has two panes. The upper-pane is the Sample Editor and is visible in every room. The lower-pane is called the XEditor. The XEditor changes when you switch rooms and provides the rooms unique tools and features. Focus and keyboard shortcuts. Either the upper or lower pane has the focus. The focus determines whether typing is sent to the upper or lower pane. A green frame is drawn around the pane that has focus. All command keys are sent to the main menu bar and mostly provide shortcuts for the Sample Editor (the upper-pane). (The command key may be marked with an Apple icon or clover leaf icon and is generally found to the immediate left of the spacebar.) Most shortcut keys are typed without the command-key and are directed to the pane that has the focus. To set the focus, click in the Sample Editor or XEditor as desired. Menu Bar. The main menu bar commands mostly apply to the Sample Editor that appears in the upper-pane. Command key shortcuts apply to the main menu bar and can be typed no matter which pan is active. All XEditor shortcut keys are typed without the command key. Tool Tips. At the bottom center of the MetaSynth window is the Tool Tips display which displays information about whatever tool or, in some cases, group of tools the mouse is over. The tool name might be displayed or information such as the time and/or pitch that corresponds to the cursors position. Some tool clusters (such as the Spectrum Synths left-hand tools) are treated as a group and share a Tool Tip or a message about the currently active tool. Sample Editor / Sample Waveform Display. The upper-pane of the MetaSynth window is the Sample Editor. Its central area (the content area) features a display of the sound currently loaded in memory. This sound may be from a file opened with the Open menu command or a sound rendered from one of MetaSynths rooms.

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TUTORIAL: QuickTour
Sample Editor / Waveform DisplayDisplay of the current sounds waveform. When a sound is opened from the File menu or rendered by one of the rooms, it becomes the current sound. Menubar commands apply to the Sample Editor. The Sample Editor is available in every room and is the upper-pane. When the Sample Editor is active, pressing the spacebar plays the current sound.

Content Area / Canvas All of the rooms have a content area or canvas that is surrounded by toolbars. The upper toolbar is where the rooms File and Edit popup menus are found. (The main menubar applies to the Sampler Editor found in the upper pane.)

Tool Tips - Context-dependent information appears here. XEditorThe lower-pane of the MetaSynth window is called the XEditor and is where each rooms tools appear. When you change rooms, the XEditors appearance changes. To make the XEditor active, click in it. When the XEditor is active, pressing spacebar previews the rooms output.

Set-up
Before you start exploring, you may find it useful to disable a couple of system-wide keyboard shortcuts that conflict with MetaSynths shortcuts: command-space (play selection in MetaSynth) and F12 (Render and Save). The OS default setting of one of the Spotlight shortcuts is command-space. Dashboard is set to use the F12 key. You can turn these off in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts. If you do not want to change the F12 shortcut, you can hold down the command-key or control-key when pressing the F12 key.

METASYNTH PREFERENCEs
There are a few MetaSynth preferences that you should set up before getting started.
Open

Preferences. Choose the MetaSynth 5 menus Preferences command to open the preferences dialog. Output Device and Sample Rate. Choose your preferred output device and set your preferred sample rate. -6-

TUTORIAL: QuickTour Press the set hardware sample rate button. It is a good idea to press this button whenever you change devices. Working at a high sample rate can tax your system. A 96 kHz sample rate requires a lot of horsepower when performing some tasks (like Image Synth synthesis and Spectrum Synthesis). If you get stuttering at high sample rates, we recommend lowering the sample rate and setting it to a high sample rate only when you are ready to render to disk. Show Comments in Main Window. Make sure this option on. This will allow you to see Image Synth and Image Filter preset comments in the main window which is very helpful when touring the presets. Note: if you change this preference while in the Image Synth or Image Filter rooms, you need to switch to the Effects Room and back for the change to take effect. Preferred File Format. This preference determines the default file type for files that you save. Load Instrument While Playing. Turn this option on. When this option is on, MetaSynth will try to load the appropriate instrument when you switch between Image Synth presets or between sequences. Append flt when processed. Make sure that this is turned on. When this option is on, _flt will be appended to a sounds name when you process it in the Effects Room or Image Filter. It is safest to leave it on so that you dont inadvertently save over your original sound. If a sound already ends with _flt, MetaSynth wont add it again.

QuickTour
This is a quick tour of MetaSynths rooms to help you get oriented. In-depth tutorials for each of the rooms follow this chapter.
Open

Sound. Choose Open from the File menu. Choose Application Directory from the Favorites popup. The Favorites popup lists folders of special significance to MetaSynth. In MetaSynths Sounds folder are some sound files. Choose one of these files and click on the Open button.

Play

the sound. Press the Play button to play the sound. Press the spacebar to stop (or play the sound). When using the spacebar to start/stop playback, it is directed to the pane that has the focus. Play the selection. Command-drag in the waveform display to create a selection. Type command-spacebar to play the selection, or press the Play Selection button .

The XEditor. The XEditor is what we call the lower-pane of the MetaSynth window. Its precise appearance depends on the current room. When you first launch MetaSynth, the Effects Room is open. The XEditor displays the Effects that make up the Sample Editor Rooms core functionality. Later tutorials explore the features of the MetaSynths rooms in much more detail. This lesson covers common features common to all (or most) of the XEditors.
Activate

the XEditor. Make the XEditor active by clicking on any of its controls. Notice that the lower-pane now

has a green frame that indicates MetaSynths focus. Preview the effect. Press the spacebar. The active sound effect is previewed. Until the upper-pane is given the focus, pressing the spacebar will preview the effect.
Render

. The effect is applied to the sound and loaded into MetaSynths memory (which is displayed in the upper-panes waveform display). The sound data on disk is not changed until you save the file. Each room (XEditor) can render sound to MetaSynths Sample Editor.

the effect. Click on the render icon

File

popup. Click on the XEditors File popup to display the file commands appropriate to the current XEditor (the precise commands vary from room to room). Choose one of the effect presets that appears in the -7-

TUTORIAL: QuickTour menu. While in the Effects Room, the File popup lists the effect presets stored in the Effects & Resources folder. The menu also includes recently opened effect presets. Each rooms File popup displays recently opened files and/or presets found in MetaSynths home directory.
Edit

popup. Click on the XEditors Edit popup to display the available edit commands. These commands apply to whatever is selected in the XEditor. The commands found in the menu vary from room to room. This popup is where you find the commands to cut, copy, paste and undo (in the XEditor). Shortcut keys and Edit commands. The upper and lower panes, each have their own clipboards and shortcut keys. Make sure that the lower-pane (the XEditor) has the focus. Type a, the universal XEditor shortcut for Select All. Type command-a and notice that the command is applied to the Sample Editor. Undo is simply z for the XEditors rather than command-z. The lower-pane must have the focus to receive shortcuts.

The Rooms. To switch rooms, click on a rooms name.

Visit the Image Synth. Click on the words Image Synth at the top of the MetaSynth window. The XEditor displays

the Image Synth interface. The Image Synth synthesizes sounds from the image displayed in the content area using an instrument selected with the Choose Instrument popup . The Image Synth basics are covered in a later tutorial. In this tour, you will be playing back presets that we have provided.
Preset quicktour. Click on the Choose Preset icon

and choose the first preset. Press the spacebar to listen to the preset. Explore the rest of the presets using the following steps: Stop playback by pressing the spacebar again. Type ] to go to the next preset. Type the spacebar to start and stop the preview. Use the [ and ] keys to go back and forward through the library and audition the presets. NOTE: For the tour, we recommend stopping playback before switching presets. When live-switching presets, MetaSynth cannot change the playback tempo.

Visit

the Image Filter. Go to the Image Filter Room by clicking on the room name. The Image Filter filters the sound open in the upper pane using the image displayed in the content area. How the Image Filter works is covered in a later tutorial. The Image Filter can perform amazing filter and eq tasks. Its complex dynamic stereo filters and high-resolution eq are amazing. The Preview to Disk command makes it possible to record Image Filter performances to disk. Open a sound. Open a sound to filter by choosing the Open command from the File menu. Type command-d to remove the selection.
Choose

a Filter. Choose an Image Filter with the Choose Preset tool . Preview. Press the spacebar to preview. Stop the preview by pressing the spacebar. Explore a few of the other filter presets. Visit the Sequencer. Go to the Sequencer Room. The sequencer is a simple piano roll sequencer (without MIDI input). Explore the presets. Explore the provided preset sequences by choosing a preset from the File popup menu and clicking the preview button (or pressing the spacebar). Stop the preview. Choose another preset and preview and repeat with the other presets. Remember to stop the preview before choosing another preset to ensure that the presets instrument loads. Visit the Spectrum Synth. Go to the Spectrum Synth. The Spectrum Synth creates sounds, loops and grooves -8-

TUTORIAL: QuickTour by analyzing sounds into spectrum events that can be processed and rearranged. This rooms features and functionality is covered in a later tutorial. Audition the presets. Listen to the spectrum sequences listed in the XEditors File popup. If playback stutters, lower the preview sample rate in the Preferences dialog. Visit the Montage Room. The Montage Room ties MetaSynth together. It is a multitrack audio sequencer that can mix Image Synth presets, sequencer sequences and spectrum sequences and sound files on its 24 stereo tracks. MetaSynths default montage will be open. Play the montage. Click on the Play button to listen to the montage. If you are asked whether you want to render unrendered sounds, click Yes. To save download space, some of the required sounds were not prerendered. The default montage provided with MetaSynth is a composition that makes use of elements created in each of MetaSynths rooms.

COmmON FEATUREs
Below are some functions and features common to most of the rooms. We recommend taking a little bit of time to become familiar with these features and actions.

Preview icon. Click on the preview icon to preview the XEditors sound. Pressing the spacebar performs the same action as clicking the preview button. The preview icon may appear as either or

Render icon. Click this button to render the XEditors output. In most rooms, the rendered sound is loaded into the Sample Editor memory and displayed in the upper pane. In the Montage Room, render mixes the sequence to disk and does not automatically load the mix into MetaSynths sample editor display. Type the return key when the XEditor has the focus as a shortcut. Option-clicking on the render icon will pop up a menu of additional rendering commands which vary slightly from room to room.

Set Sequence Loop Options. Use this tool to specify the number of iterations that will be rendered when a sequence is rendered. Set the option to Dont Loop if you want only one iteration rendered. Preview to disk. Most of MetaSynths rooms provide a Preview to Disk command in the File popup menu. Use the command to record live previewing to disk. This feature is covered in the room-specific tutorials. Command-drag to select. In the content area of every room and in the sample waveform display, hold down the command key and drag the mouse to make a selection. Some rooms also have a selection tool that you can activate in order to make selections without holding down the command key. h to scroll. In some rooms, there may be content that is out of view. To scroll the content area, hold down the h key to get the hand cursor, click in the content area and drag the mouse to scroll. * and / numerical shortcuts. Type * and / to double or halve the value displayed in any numerical field.

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Tutorial: Sample Editor

Background
The MetaSynth window is divided into two panes. The upper-pane is MetaSynths Sample Editor and is available from all of MetaSynths rooms. The Sample Editor is straightforward but functions slightly differently from sample editors with which you may be familiar. This chapter covers a few of the MetaSynth Sample Editors unique features. If you have not performed the QuickTour tutorial, we recommend that you perform it first as it covers some Sample Editor features not covered in this chapter.

Lesson
Open

a sound. Choose Open from the File menu. Choose any audio file. The Sounds folder in the MetaSynth folder contains some sound files that you can use. For quick access to the MetaSynth folder from any MetaSynth file dialog, choose Application Directory from the Favorites popup . , or press

Play

the selection. To play the selected portion of the sound, click on the Play Selection icon command-spacebar with the upper-pane active.

Loop

play. To loop the selection or the entire sound (if there is no selection), click on the Loop Play icon . Making selections. To make a selection, hold down the command key and drag in the Sample Editors waveform display. Extending and shrinking selections. Hold down the command and shift keys and click in the sound to extend or shrink the selection. Creating an insertion point. To create an insertion point, rather than a selection, command-click at the point where you would like the insertion point to appear. Zoom in. To zoom in on an area, hold down the option key, click where you want the zoom to be focused, and drag to the right. Zoom out. To zoom out, hold down the option key, click where you want the zoom to be focused, and drag to the left. Change the vertical scale. To change the vertical scaling of the waveform display, click on the Sample Vertical Scale icon and click until you find your preferred vertical zoom. Clicking repeatedly cycles through the settings (which are fixed). Scrolling the waveform display. Zoom in on a portion of the waveform. To scroll the waveform, click in the waveform display and drag in the desired direction. You can throw the waveform to the left or right to quickly scroll across a large distance. Zoom in on the selection. To zoom in on the selected area, make a selection and click on the Fit to Screen icon Select By. To select by precise time coordinates, click on the Select By icon and enter the selection in and out times.
Edit, Transform and Generate pop up menus. Take a look at the commands available in the Edit

, Transform

and Generate

popup menus. These provide common functions that are useful when editing sounds. - 10 -

Tutorial: Effects Room

About the Effects Room
The Effects Room provides envelope-controlled DSP effects that include both familiar effects (such as echo, reverb and eq) as well as unique effects such as Grain and Shuffler. The XEditor (the windows lower pane) applies sound effects and filters to the sound loaded into the Sample Editor (the upper pane). The various sound effects can have up to 4 editable parameters. In many cases, you can use either a constant value or a dynamic envelope for the effects parameter. For example, the Pitch & Time effect allows you to transpose the sound by a constant value (the same amount for the entire duration of the sound) or with an envelope that allows the transposition to vary over the course of the sound; the pitch can even be controlled by a pair of envelopes that provide independent dynamic transposition of the left and right channels. Effects Room performances can be recorded direct to disk at full-fidelity (subject to CPU limitations).

Tutorials
Set-up.

Choose the File menus Open command and open the file Ana MetaSynth Speech that is found in MetaSynths Sounds folder.

PRESET TOUR Select a portion of the currently loaded sample by command-dragging in it.
Explore

the provided effects presets by choosing them from the File popup menu

and previewing them by

clicking on the preview icon popup menu at startup.

. All effect settings found in the Effects & Resources folder are listed in the File

EXPLORE PITCH & TIME Type command-a (Select All) to select the entire sound in the Sample Editor. Click on Pitch & Time in the XEditor. This effect lets you change the pitch of the sample without changing the playback speed and/or change the duration without changing the pitch. Choose slider value from the control mode popup found to the left of the Transpose in Semitones parameter. Set the effect parameters as follows: Transpose in semitones: 0 Speed %: 100 Amplitude Decimate: 0 Inertia: 0
Start Adjust

preview playback by clicking on the Preview Effect icon. the Transpose slider as the sound plays. If the preview starts to stutter, set Amplitude Decimate % to a value greater than 0. It reduces the resolution of the preview to enable smooth playback. Set the parameter back to 0 before rendering the sound to disk. - 11 -

TUTORIAL: Effects Room SIMPLE ENVELOPE MANIPULATION Choose Envelope mono from the popup to the left of the Transpose parameter.
Start Use

preview playback by clicking on the Preview icon

the minimum curve tool by clicking on it and dragging to the right until the envelope curve (the red line in the content area) is at its minimum position. the maximum curve tool to explore its full range by sweeping the envelope to the maximum.

Use

Simple sine wave: Set the Frequency (found to the left of the curve tools) to 2. (The frequency setting determines

the number of cycles of a periodic (repeating) waveform that are created when using tools such as the Sine Tool.) Apply the Sine Tool to make the envelope a sine wave.

TIP: To make use of a curve tools full range, click and immediately drag all the way to the left (keeping the mouse button down); now, dragging to the right will provide the tools full range of values. This is especially useful for tools near the right edge of the screen.
Ramped

sine wave: Set the Frequency to the maximum value and apply the Sine Tool again (drag all the way

to the left then -- keeping the mouse button down -- drag all the way to the right). Click on Ramp Up tool and drag slightly to the right. Curves & modifier keys: Modifier keys (control, option, shift) can be used when applying curves to modify the tool behavior. Try each of the following: Multiply: Option-drag. Hold down the option key and apply any of the curve tools to multiply the tools curve with the envelope. Internally, envelopes are store as values between 0 and 1 or -1 and 1. So, multiplying tends to force the envelopes values towards zero (since, you are multiplying by a value of 1 or less). Inverse Blend: Shift-drag. Hold down the shift key and use any curve tool to blend towards the inverse of the tool of the tools normal envelope. For example shift-applying, the Ramp Up tool to a horizontal line results in a ramp down. Modulate: Control-drag. Hold down the control key and apply any of the curve tools. Modulate uses the tool to modulate the phase envelope. The result is somewhat unpredictable and impossible to describe in anything but mathematical terms. STEREO ENVELOPES Stop the preview if it is playing. Set the sound to stereo (if it is not already) by clicking on the Mono/Stereo toggle in the upper-pane. When applying stereo envelopes, the Sample Editor sound must be in stereo mode or the result will be a mono sound.
Choose Stereo Envelope for the Transpose parameters control mode. When using stereo envelopes, the left and

right channels have independent envelopes. In this case, the red (orange) envelope controls the left channel and the green envelope controls the right. Click on the red envelope (the topmost envelope) icon to activate it.
Clicking on an envelope activates it so that the XEditors tools apply to it. When stereo envelopes are used the envelope color may be slightly different than the icon colors.

Preview

the sound and modify the red envelope using any of the tools as it plays. - 12 -

TUTORIAL: Effects Room

Activate Copy

the green envelope and modify it (as the sound plays). the red envelope and apply the lower toolbars Blend with Clipboard tool .

the envelope by typing c.

Activate Paste

the clipboards envelope by typing v. Click on the Invert Envelope tool or type i. Invert all the envelopes by shift-clicking the Invert Envelope tool. Shift-clicking most of the lower tools applies the transformation to all of the envelopes. Choose Paste to All from the Edit popup. Use the / and * shortcuts to halve (Twice Slower in the Edit popup) and double (Twice Faster in the Edit popup) the envelope. These shortcuts apply to most of MetaSynths rooms and to numerical fields. (Note: use your keyboards numeric keypad to type * in the Effects Room; if you use the shift-key to type an * in the Effects Room it will be applied to all envelopes.) Explore the rest of the tools in the lower toolbar. HARMONIZE EFFECT, PENCIL, SEGMENT AND SELECT TOOLS Switch to the Harmonize effect by clicking on its name and set its parameters as follows: Balance (slider): 50 Transpose (mono envelope): 3 (which is a minor third) Grain rate: 0 Randomize: 0 Start the preview playing. Activate the purple envelope (third from top) which controls the Transpose in Semitones parameter by clicking on it. Note that in some cases a slider setting is relevant even when using an envelope to control the parameter. In this case, the slider sets a base value which is further modified by the envelope. When this is the case, the numerical indicator for the slider will display the slider value; otherwise - will be displayed.
Click

on the Zero tool to set the envelope to a constant 0. This tool sets the envelope to 0. Whether 0 is the minimum value or the middle value depends on the effect and parameter. by clicking on it. The pencil allows free-form envelope drawing. Click and drag in the the pencil tool content area to draw a free-form

Activate

which is useful when you want to create an envelope of discrete values. the line segment tool Set the grid to 16, and turn it on. Click in the content area and drag to draw segment. Continue drawing line segments as the preview plays. Make a selection within the envelope by command dragging in the envelope. You can also make selections by
Activate Apply

activating the Selection Tool . any of the curve tools to reshape the selected area.

Crossfade & Convolution MetaSynths Crossfade effect uses both the main sound loaded into the Sample Editor and an auxiliary sound. It is usually useful to have both sounds be the same length OR to set the Sample Editor selection to the length of the auxiliary file. Set the Sample Editor selection length to the auxiliary sounds duration. Open StereoDrums133.caf from the Sounds folder. Select All. At this point, we are opening the sound just to create a Sample Editor selection that corresponds to this files duration since we are going to use it in a moment as an auxiliary file. - 13 -

TUTORIAL: Effects Room Strings54.caf from the Sounds folder. Notice that when the file opens, the previous selection is maintained. Click on Crossfade in the Effects list. MetaSynth will prompt you for an auxiliary sound. Choose StereoDrums133.
Open

caf which should be available from the Recent Files popup found in the lower-right corner of the Open Aux Sound dialog. Set the parameters as follows: Level Source (slider): 50 Level Aux: 50 Convolution level: 100 Start the preview playing. You will hear a sound created by convolving (morphing) Strings54 with StereoDrums133. Because convolution level is 100, you only hear the convoluted sound. Convolution Level is the balance of the morphed sound with the mix of the main and auxiliary sounds. Lower the convolution level as the preview plays. You will now hear a mix of the convolution, the sample editor sound (the source) and the auxiliary file. Use Ana MetaSynth Speech as the aux file. Stop the preview and choose the Open Aux Sound File command from the File Popup. Choose Ana MetaSynth Speech (from MetaSynths Sounds folder) and explore the parameters. With convolution, you usually want to use a pitched sound as the main sound and either pitched or unpitched sound as the auxiliary file. SHUFFLER & DISCRETE ENVELOPES

Discrete envelopes are made up of discrete steps and are usually the first envelope.

A few effects, including Shuffler and Inertia, make use of discrete envelopes that are made up of a fixed number of segments rather than a continuous curve.
Render

a rhythm loop. Render a rhythm loop for use in the lesson by performing by the following steps: Go to the Sequencer Room. Choose the Drum Pattern.mseq from the File popup. Choose Loop Twice from the Loop Options popup Render the sequence by clicking .

. (It will appear in the upper panes Sample Editor waveform display.) If using the demo version, open the Drum Pattern.caf found in MetaSynths Sounds folder. Return to the Effects Room.

Activate

the shuffler. The red discrete envelope is the Shufflers heart. Shuffler is a bit like a step sequencer where each step is taken from somewhere in the source loop (the Sample Editors sound). A stepss vertical - 14 -

TUTORIAL: Effects Room height determines the source position. A step with height 0 plays back the first slice of the source sound. A step at 50 plays back a slice taken from half way through the sample. (Note: Both 0 and 100 correspond to the samples beginning.) Turn the grid off and activate the pencil tool .
Set

the Shufflers parameters to: Beats per loop (slices): 16 Grain volume (slider value): 100 Attack time (slider value): 0 Release time (slider value): 100 Speed: 66.5 (half the rhythm loops tempo. The Shufflers tempo is calibrated to half the true tempo.)

on the Zero tool to set all steps to the bottom. Type a to select all of the red envelopes segments. Start the preview playing. You will hear the first part of the sample repeated over and over because all of the steps are set to 0. The tempo may appear to be twice the original tempo
Click

and slowly sweep the envelope through the entire vertical range by clicking on the Maximum tool dragging to the right. (You might want to start by dragging all the way left and then dragging right.) Sweeping the envelope will reveal which part of the sample corresponds to what height. You will often find interesting moments this way. When you find a cool moment, jot down its vertical height so that you can use it later Use the pencil tool and click in the content area to set the envelopes steps.
Slowly

the steps by clicking on the Randomize tool and dragging right. Command-drag in the envelope to select some of the steps. Use any of the shaping tools to re-shape the selected portion of the envelope. Explore the Shufflers other parameters especially the Attack and Release parameters. Stop the preview, and open the sound Ana MetaSynth Speech (it will probably be listed in the Recent Sounds menu). Set Beats per Loop to 32. This parameter determines the number of steps/slices that can be shuffled. Start the preview playing.
Randomize

a to select the entire envelope and apply the Ramp Down tool by clicking on it and dragging right. This essentially reverses the order of the slices. Adjust the first step so that it is not quite at 100 since 100 plays the beginning of the sample. Explore various tempos and different Beats per Loop settings.
Type

INERTIA & PREVIEW TO DISK Like Shuffler, Inertia uses a discrete envelope. Unlike most other effect envelopes which represent a change over time, the Inertia effects discrete envelope defines the resonances of a resonator bank that is active through the entire sound. The resonators are simultaneously active not sequentially. You can change the resonance over time by playing the envelope while previewing, and you can capture the performance using the Preview to disk command. Open the sound Ana Metasynth Speech if it is not already open. Command-drag in the sample waveform display to select a portion of the open sound. Click on the Inertia button to activate the effect. Set the parameters: Number of resonators: 4 Amount (slider value): 100% - 15 -

TUTORIAL: Effects Room

Feedback: 50 Input Gain (slider value): 50 Brilliance (slider value): 100 sure the entire envelope is selected by typing a. Set all the steps to zero by clicking the Zero tool

Make

the envelope using the Maximum tool and make note of interesting resonances. Use the pencil tool and set each of the resonators to a different pitch (height). The envelopes height determines the pitch of the resonance. Explore different resonances by shaping the envelopes steps using any of the available tools.
Sweep Change the number of resonators to 8 and explore how the Randomize tool

can help find interesting settings. Remember that you can command-drag to select just a few of the steps before randomizing. When you find a setting you like, choose Save Filter/Effect from the File popup. If you save the setting into MetaSynths Effects & Resources folder, the setting will be available in the File popup menu whenever you use MetaSynth. Stop the preview and choose Preview to Disk from the File popup. A dialog box appears for you to create the file to be recorded. The preview will start playing and will be recorded to disk as long as playback continues. Explore Inertias other parameters (especially Feedback) and adjust the resonators.
Stop

the preview (by pressing spacebar or clicking on the preview icon

) and open the file that you just

recorded.

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Tutorial: Image Synth Room

Background
The Image Synth Room is a paradigm-breaking composition and sound design environment that enables the creation of previously unrealizable sound and music. MetaSynth interprets the image on its canvas (the rooms content area) as sound and allows you to paint sound to create musical passages and phrases, abstract sounds, or sounds intended for use in samplers (including MetaSynths built-in sample-based instruments). An Image Synth sound picture can trigger hundreds (sometimes thousands) of simultaneous harmonics and/or notes in any tuning space you can imagine with dramatic panning effects and dynamic envelopes (derived from the image color and brightness). The Image Synth Room is a sound design and electronic music composition environment; it is not a keyboard-playable virtual synthesizer. The Image Synth allows you to paint complex harmonic envelopes impossible with other types of synthesis, allows you to invent tunings and frequency maps, and provides a sound design metaphor that makes extraordinarily rich stereo fields simple to create. The rooms canvas can be thought of as a graphical score that uses a non-traditional intuitive notation system, or you can think of it as a sonogram-to-sound translator: color defines position in space (pan/balance), brightness determines amplitude (volume), horizontal position determines time and vertical position determines pitch. The nuance and range made possible by the Image Synth is impossible to capture with words. If you are new to MetaSynth, make sure to take a tour of the supplied preset libraries. They will give you an idea of the vertiginous range of audio exploration possible with image synthesis. MetaSynth provides a full-featured painting environment with filters and tools designed especially for painting sound and music. While it is possible to import pictures into MetaSynth, most composers paint their scores/sounds in the Image Synth canvas or import short sequences from the Sequencer Room. Sounds and phrases created with the Image Synth can be mixed and sequenced in the Montage Room or used in external audio applications.

HOW METASYNTH PLAYs A PICTURE

MetaSynth plays the canvas from left to right at the speed determined by the tempo/duration setting. A sound picture is the combination of the canvas image and the Image Synth settings (stereo mode, instrument, tempo, tuning space, etc.). The canvas pixels (the dots that make up the picture) trigger a user-selectable (and definable) virtual instrument. When MetaSynth encounters a non-black pixel, it starts playing the current instrument at a volume determined by the pixels brightness and panned to a position determined by the pixels color (red represents left, green represents right, blue is ignored and is used for creating grids and guides). As the pixel color and brightness change so does the pan and amplitude. The vertical position determines the pitch. The Image Synths tuning/frequency map determines the pitches represented by the different vertical positions. The number of voices that can be played in real-time will be determined by the computers CPU speed. When sounds are rendered in non-real-time, there is no limit to the number of simultaneous voices that can play. How you set up the Image Synth canvas (tuning, tempo/duration, instrument) has as much of an impact on the - 17 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth sound as the image itself. The same image (score) can be made to sound very different by changing the Image Synth settings. An image that creates a majestic passage played by a string orchestra can become a cacophonous transient explosion by changing its settings. MetaSynth provides a variety of virtual instruments for use in both the Image Synth and Sequencer rooms: single and multi-oscillator wavetable synths, FM synths, multi-samplers and more. MetaSynth instruments are covered in detail in a later tutorial chapter.

PREsETs & PREsET LIBRARIEs

When you are done creating a sound picture, you add it to the current preset library and can render and save it as a sound file. An Image Synth preset contains both the image and the Image Synth settings. Preset libraries can be used to store random sound pictures that you create or be used to store the parts for a musical composition. MetaSynths Montage Room, which you will explore in a later tutorial chapter, allows you to create complex compositions and mixes by dragging sound pictures from preset libraries onto the Montage Rooms 16 tracks.

Lessons
The Image Synth Room is capable of creating a huge range of sounds much more than we can teach in this tutorial chapter. This tutorial is designed to provide you with a basic knowledge of the Image Synth Room. It is assumed that you have already completed the QuickTour tutorial.

SET-Up
Turn on comments. To ensure that Image Synth comments are visible, to the Effects Room. Choose Preferences

from the File menu. Turn on the Show comments in main window preference if it is not already on. Go to the Image Synth Room. NOTE! When the Show Comments preference is changed, you must leave the Image Synth Room and return before the change takes effect. Turn off anti-aliasing. In the Preferences dialog, make sure that Anti-Alias Transforms is turned off.
Turn

off the grid. If the grid is turned on (if the Grid icon to the left of the canvas is green), turn it off by clicking on it. Open MetaSynth.presets. Choose MetaSynth.presets from the File popup menu.

01: Preset Tour

Before getting to know the Image Synth Room in detail, it is useful to become acquainted with a range of the sounds that you can create. Dont worry if you dont understand why the presets sound the way that they do. How the Image Synth Room works is covered later in this chapter.
Getting

acquainted. To get started, there are a few features of the Image Synths XEditor with which you need to be familiar. Take a look at the diagram below. The appearance of a couple of the items may change depending on the Image Synths settings.

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TUTORIAL: Image Synth

Select Preset Add Preset Apply Filter Stereo/Mono Toggle Choose Instrument / Edit Instrument Set Tuning Space Brush Mode Brush Palette Canvas (Content Area) Amplitude Map

Effect Grid Set the spacing used when applying the Grid Effects. Tempo/Duration Drag to change the tempo/duration of the canvas. Double-click to open the Tempo & Duration Dialog.

The

Preset Library. We have created a preset library that demonstrates a wide variety of sounds that can be

created in the Image Synth. Click on the Select Preset icon to pop up the preset library display. Thumbnails of the presets appear in the popup. Click on the first thumbnail and keep the mouse button held down. At the bottom of the library popup, you will see information about selected preset: the presets name, its comment, and the name of the instrument it uses. Keep the mouse button held down and drag the mouse over the thumbnails to display each presets information. Activate the first preset. Activate the first preset from the library by selecting it in the popup and releasing the mouse button. A few items in the user interface change to reflect the selected presets settings. The presets comment (if there is one) appears in the comments area. The Choose Instrument popup icon of the presets instrument. The Mono/Stereo toggle displays whether the preset is white) or displays the mono (black and

stereo (color). The name of the presets tuning appears as the title of the Set Tuning Space popup

. And the Size x and Size y popups display the images dimensions. Preview the preset. Press the spacebar to start the preview playing. A red play dot progresses across the top of the canvas as the image plays. Playback loops until it is stopped (by pressing the spacebar again or clicking . Preview a selection. Hold down the command key (to get the selection cursor) and drag over an area in the canvas to select it. Type command-spacebar to preview just the selected region. Or press the Preview Selection button . on the Preview icon). You can also start/stop the preview by clicking on the Preview icon

Synthesize

the preset. Press the Synthesize icon or your computer keyboards Return key to render the sound picture to the Sample Editor. Save the rendered sound. Save the rendered sound by choosing Save from the File menu (of the main menu bar). Rendering makes the sound available to the Image Filter Room, Effects Room, and the Spectrum Synth, but you have to save the audio file to use it with other applications. Tour the presets. Start the preview playback. Type ]. This is the shortcut to go to the next preset. (Type [ to go to the previous preset.) The next preset in the library is displayed. If playback stops, start the preview again. Use the ] plus key to advance through all of the presets and make note of changes in the display when the instrument, tuning space or stereo/mono mode change. Preview the presets as you go. If any preset stutters during preview, render it by clicking on the Synthesize button. Some presets may not preview in realtime without - 19 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth stuttering on slower computers. MetaSynth presets can have hundreds of simultaneous voices.

02: Basic Image Synth Concepts and Tools

This part of the lesson introduces and demonstrates the basic Image Synth concepts.
Tool

tips. Every graphical item in the user interface is active. The Tool Tips area at the bottom center of the window displays information about whatever is under the cursor. Take a little bit of time to mouse over all of the Image Synths tools and notice how the Tool Tips display changes as you mouse over the interface. Create new preset library. Before creating a new preset library, select the first preset of the current library from the Select Preset popup . Choose New from the File popup . MetaSynth will prompt you for a library name. If you save the new library into the folder named More Presets in MetaSynths home folder, it will appear in the File popup menu each time that you launch MetaSynth. Each time MetaSynth is launched, it loads the names of the libraries found in the More Presets folder at the end of the Image Synth Rooms File popup.
Set

the canvas size. Just above the canvas, on the right side of the upper toolbar, are the

and

popups. They set the canvas width (X) and height (Y). Set the canvas to (X) 256 pixels wide and (Y) 128 pixels high.
Set the tuning space and master tuning. The Master Tuning pitch and Master Tuning octave

determine the base pitch for the sound picture. (The bottom row of pixels will be about two octaves below the Master Tuning pitch where space permits.) Choose C from the Master Tuning popup. Set the octave to 2 by clicking on the up or down arrows that appear next to the Master Tuning popup. The tuning space (also called the frequency map) determines the mapping of vertical position to pitch. Choose Semitones from the Set Tuning Space popup. TIP! Option-click on the arrows to increment/decrement the pitch by a semitone.

Create

a simple sound picture. Clear the canvas by pressing the backspace key. (If the canvas is not cleared, type a to select all then press the backspace key.) Type the . key (a shortcut for the Add Fundamental command) to add a single line at the Master Tuning pitch. Press the spacebar to start the preview playing. Press the spacebar again to stop playback.

Add

The canvas image after performing the previous step. a comment and add the preset. Type ? to invoke the Preset Info dialog. Click in the Preset Name field and type First Preset. Click in the Comment field and type a comment in the Edit Text dialog that appears. Click OK to save the comment, and click the OK icon to dismiss the Preset Info dialog. Add the preset to the

library by clicking on the Add Preset icon . NOTE The comment will be displayed the next time that the preset is selected. You can use the Preset Info dialog to see a presets comments when the Show Comments preference is turned off.
Transpose

the image. Click on the Octave Transpose tools

up arrow to transpose the image up one octave. down

Preview the picture. Nudge the picture down one pixel by clicking on the Transpose/Nudge tools - 20 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth arrow. Use the up and down arrow keys to nudge the picture up and down (when the grid is on, nudging is done by the vertical grid interval). Use the left and right arrow keys to nudge the image left and right.
Rotate

the image. Click on the Rotate icon and drag right to rotate the image. You can rotate by precise increments by double-clicking the tool (to invoke the Rotate dialog). Preview the sound. Dont worry if some pixels sound is not audible. They may be out of audible range. Set the tempo/duration. The time that it takes to play the sound picture is determined by the Tempo/Duration setting. Mouse over the Tempo/Duration icon and notice that the Tool Tips displays a tempo (in beats per minute) and a duration (in minutes:seconds:milliseconds). Click on the Tempo/Duration icon and drag to decrease (by dragging left) or increase (by dragging right) the tempo. Pixel pitch and time. When the cursor is over the canvas, the Tool Tips displays the pitch and time associated with the pixel. Move the mouse just inside the top and bottom edges of the active canvas area. Note that the bottom edges pitch is C0 (which may not be within the audible range of your speakers) and that -- is displayed for the pitch of the top edge. Preview a pixel. Hold down the control key and click anywhere in the canvas to hear the sound played by any location in the canvas. The higher that you control-click, the higher the pitch is. Change Tuning Space. The Tuning Space determines how the vertical position is mapped to pitch. In the Semitones tuning space each pixel up or down represents a semitone (half-step) up or down. Choose Micro 50 from the Set Tuning Space popup. In the Micro 50 tuning space, each pixel up or down represents 1/50th of a tone (step). So, it takes 50 pixels of vertical movement to get from C2 to D2. Preview the picture. Try the other built-in tuning spaces. You need to stop the preview before changing the tuning space for the preview to reflect the change. Custom tunings are covered later in this chapter. Notice that the choice of tuning space can radically change the pitch range in the canvas. With the Micro50 tuning, the 128 vertical pixels of the current canvas has a range of only a few tones while in the Semitones tuning space the range of these 128 vertical pixels is more than 9 octaves. Stereo / Mono Mode The Stereo/Mono Toggle is used to switch between mono and stereo modes . The toggle displays the rooms current setting. In stereo (color mode), MetaSynth interprets pixel color as stereo position. Green represents the right channel. Red represents the left channel. Yellow (being an equal mix of red and green) represents the center. The Stereo/Mono toggle indicates whether the picture is rendered as stereo or mono sound. In mono mode, the canvas uses gray only. In both modes there is a blue grid layer that is used for comments and grids. The blue layer is ignored by the Image Synth when synthesizing sound. Filters. When you paint, you can choose the brush color and you can use the brushes and tools to refine the image colors (the sounds panning), but it is also possible to apply preset filter pictures to the canvas (or canvas selection). MetaSynth provides a library of images for applying as filters. When MetaSynth is launched, the preset library named MetaSynth.filters is automatically opened as the filter library. You can also choose a filter library of your own creation. When a filter picture is chosen from the Filter Library , it is applied as a filter by multiplying the canvas pixels with the filters pixels. When two pictures are multiplied with each other, the brightness (scaled from 0 to 1) of the corresponding pixels are multiplied. When pixels are multiplied, their red, green and blue components are multiplied independently. So, pure yellow (which is made up of equal parts red + green) multiplied by pure red (which has no green component) results in pure red. Pure red (which has no green component) multiplied by pure green (which has no red component) results in black (silence). When applying a grayscale filter to a color picture, the filter is applied equally to the red and green channels. When a color filter is applied to a mono image, the color - 21 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth channels are summed before the filter is applied.
Applying

Filters. Select the preset that we added earlier using the Select Preset popup. (The preset is a single

yellow horizontal line.) Click on the Apply Filter icon and select the stereo pan filter shown below to apply it. Preview the result. Notice the panning of the sound and its relation to the colors in the image. Applying complex filters to an image or a selected part of an image is a great way to create stereo interest.

Filter to apply

Image after applying the filter

Instruments. The Image Synth plays the pixels using an instrument. MetaSynth provides several different programmable instrument types that include a sampler, simple wavetable synth and multi-oscillator FM synth and others. Instruments are covered in a later tutorial chapter since they can be used in both the Image Synth and Sequencer Rooms and are a topic unto themselves. Complex sounds can be created with even the simplest wavetable synth. Many of the tours presets use simple sine-wave-based instruments. The Choose Instrument popup and Edit Instrument icon appear next to each other in the Image Synths upper toolbar. The Choose Instrument popup displays the icon of the current instrument. The popup always contains entries for the generic instruments and may also include entries for recently used or opened instruments.

The Choose Instrument icon (at left) and the Edit Instrument icon. The Choose Instrument icon indicates that the current instrument is a WaveSynth.

Change

the Instrument. Click on the Choose Instrument popup icon and drag to select an instrument from the popup. Preview the picture. Choose Open from the popup. In the Open Instrument dialog that appears, navigate to MetaSynths Instruments 5.0 folder and choose any instrument. (TIP! The Open dialogs Favorites popup features a shortcut to the Instruments 5.0 folder.)

Edit

the Instrument. Click on the Edit Instrument icon to invoke the instrument editing window. This window will be explored in a later tutorial. Feel free to make changes to the instrument. Click the OK button to close the window. Preview the preset if you made changes to the instrument. Adjust the Gain. Next to the Preview icon is the Gain field. Start the preview playing. As the preview plays, adjust the gain by clicking on the gain field and dragging up or down. Make note of the level indicators found in the lower-right corner of the MetaSynth window. Set the gain as loud as possible without clipping. The meaning of the level indicator colors depends on the Overflow Handler. By default, MetaSynths internal compressor (Preferences->Overflow Handler->Continuous Ceil) is turned on and will generally prevent distortion/clipping even when the meters go into the red. Amplitude Map. At the right side of the Image Synth is the Amplitude Map which is like a graphic eq for the canvas pixels. It allows the Image Synth to remap pixel volume based on vertical position in the picture which is - 22 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth especially useful for rolling off the response of high-frequency pixels without having to change their brightness which allows the full-brightness range to be used. The vertical axis of the map determines how the volume is altered; at maximum height the volume is amplified and at minimum height the result is silence. The horizontal axis represents the vertical pixel position. The column on the left represents the bottom row of pixels and the column at the right edge is the top pixel row. So, when the map has a downward slope, it means that the pixels of higher rows will have their volumes attenuated more than pixels in the lower rows. When a preset is saved, its amplitude map is saved with it. For more information see the Image Synth chapter of the reference manual.
This amplitude map does no remapping. The response is flat. This amplitude map rolls off the volume of the pixels high in the picture.

Edit

the amplitude map. Hold down the command key and click on the Select Preset tool. The presets from the previously opened library listed in File popup menu are displayed. Choose a preset that has pixels both high and low in the picture. Press preview to start the preview playing. Click and drag in the amplitude map to explore how the amplitude map influences the sound. Click on the Linear Amplitude Map tool and drag right until the map is level. Click on the Rotate Amplitude Map and drag left and right.

03: Brushes and Tools

Set-up. Re-select the first preset from the preset library you created earlier in this chapter. (The preset is a single

horizontal line.) Clear the canvas by pressing backspace.

Brush Mode Selector Click on a modes icon to set the Brush Mode. The modes are dot repeat . , line and

Choose Brush Popup Click and hold the mouse to pop up the brush palette. The Choose Brush popup displays the icon of the currently selected brush. Brush Size Popup Click and hold the mouse to pop up the brush size palette. This popup is replaced by the Transfer Mode popup when the Selection Tool is active. Brush presets Brush indicator - The area on the right displays the brush with its current settings

Tool Grid Controls Click on the Tool Grid icon to turn the grid on and off. The grid is on when the icon appears in color. The numerical controls below it set the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) grid intervals. Left-side Tools Use Choose Brush Popup

Freeform Brush Selector Drag in this area to choose an arbitrary brush size up to 64 X 64.

the Air Brush. Click on Line Mode

in the Brush Mode Selector (see illustration above). Choose the

Air Brush from the Choose Brush Popup. Set the brush size to approximately 5 pixels wide and 3 pixels wide using the Brush Size Popup. You can set the size to any size up to 64 by 64 by dragging in the bottom-left part of the popup. Draw. Draw a few simple lines and curves, periodically changing the brush color by choosing a color from the - 23 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth Brush Color selector found below the Choose Brush popup. (Image 1).

Change

Image 1

Image 1 after applying Echo & Reverb

the tuning space. Choose Micro32 from the Set Tuning Space popup and preview the sound. Adjust the duration to be somewhere between 10 and 15 seconds. Set the Effects Grid. Click in the Effects Grid field to the right of the canvas and type 32. The Effects Grid interval is used by most of the righthand toolbars graphics effects. Apply graphic effects. Press Echo once or twice in the graphics effects list. Press Reverb. Preview the result. These are graphic processes that have similar effects to their audio counterparts. Use a custom tuning. MetaSynth allows you to create your own custom tunings or to use any of the tunings from the library we provide. Choose Custom Tuning from the Set Tuning Space popup. Enter 16 for the Divisions Per Octave. Click on the Harmonic Series button. This creates a custom tuning based on the first 16 harmonics of the harmonic series. Click OK to accept the tuning. Preview the image. Change the Master Tuning. Experiment with different master tuning settings. To transpose the master tuning by octave, click on the Master Tuning Octave up and down arrows. To transpose the master tuning by a semitone, option-click the Master Tuning Octave Transpose arrows. Explore the lower toolbars tools. Start the preview playing. Use the various tools in the lower toolbar as the image plays. Most of these tools are fairly self-explanatory. You can learn more about them in the reference section of the manual. Double-clicking many of these tools invokes a dialog box that allows numerical entry. The Displacement Tool bends the canvas against the picture chosen as the displacement map. Option-click the Displacement Tool to change the picture used as the displacement map.

Use

Dot Mode. Change the brush mode to dot mode - 24 -

(which is the default brush mode). Choose a 3 X 3

TUTORIAL: Image Synth brush. Delete the current picture by pressing backspace. Paint on the canvas in various colors. Notice how the spacing of the dots changes with the speed of the brush. When you drag the brush quickly, the dots are widely spaced. Hold down the shift key while you drag, and the stroke is constrained horizontally.
Use

the Tool Grid. Turn the Tool Grid on and set the horizontal grid (Tool Tip: Tool Grid X) to 16 and the vertical grid (Tool Grid Y) to 1. Drag the brush across the canvas and notice how the horizontal grid influences the dot spacing. Experiment with different grid settings and brush colors. Click on the Normalize tool to brighten the image if it is dim. The image will look something like this:

Blur.

Image

Image After Blurring

Choose Blur More from the lefthand toolbars Processes popup. Blurring will dim the picture. So, click on the Normalize tool to normalize the image (which assigns maximum brightness to the images brightest pixels and scales the rest of the pixel brightness accordingly). NOTE! Thick pixel clusters like this work well with Custom Tunings based on the harmonic series and sometimes with close tunings like Micro32.

Apply

Echo and Reverb. Apply the Reverb and Echo graphic effects and preview the sound. Explore the Processes and Pitch & Harmonics commands. Explore the commands available in the Processes and Pitch & Harmonics popups. You can always undo a step by typing z (XEditor shortcuts are typed without the command key).

04: Grids & Layers & Stereo Edit Modes

The Image Synth Room allows you to create images with multiple layers. By default, there are two layers for all Image Synth presets: the image layer and the grid layer. The grid layer is a special monochrome blue layer that MetaSynth ignores when synthesizing sound. The grid layer allows you to have rhythmic and harmonic grids or other guide graphics that you want to see while painting but which you want ignored when the sound is synthesized. There are also grid commands that allow the grid to be used as a filter; this capability can be useful for eliminating discordant notes or harmonics or for creating special effects. An image may have up to 6 content layers, but there is only one grid layer.

GRID LAYERs
Set-up.

Set up the Image Synth to use the following settings: 256 wide by 64 tall. Frequency Map: Semitones. Stereo Mode. Master Tuning: A2. Choose Open from the Choose Instrument popup and choose any instrument from MetaSynths Instruments 5.0 folder. Set the tempo. Double-click on the Tempo/Duration icon to open the Tempo & Duration dialog. Set the tempo to 120 beats per minute (bpm). Set the pixels per beat to 32 and beats per measure to 4. Since our picture is 256 pixels wide and a beat is being defined as 32 pixels, the picture represents eight beats (which is two measures).
Add

. The Add X Grid command draws the grid. Choose Add X Grid from the Grid Layer popup menu vertical lines on the first beat of each measure and fainter lines for each beat (as determined by the pixels per - 25 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth beat setting in Tempo/Duration).

Draw

. The drawing commands can now in the grid layer. Choose Grid Layer from the Layer popup menu be used to draw into the grid layer. Draw something in the grid layer. When a layer is active all other layers are drawn in blue to make it easier to concentrate on the active layer. Activate Layer 1. Choose Layer 1 from the Layer popup menu to make the layer the target of the drawing commands and tools.
Use

the attack brush. Choose the Attack Brush from the Brush popup. Choose the preset brush that is 12 pixels wide and 1 pixel high from the Brush Size popup.

Set

the Tool Grid. Turn on the Tool Grid . Set the horizontal grid (Tool Grid X) to 16 which is an eight note (half a beat) since we specified our beats as 32 pixels wide. Set the vertical grid (Tool Grid Y) to 1 so that we can draw any note. Draw notes. Start drawing notes by clicking in the canvas. Change the brush color to add dynamics. Use dim colors for unaccented notes and brighter colors for accented notes. If you would like, start the preview playing and paint as the preview plays. Fit to Scale. Because we are using a semitone tuning, it is easy to create discordant melodies. We could have used the Major Scale tuning space to restrict ourselves to the major scale to make things easier, but that would prevent us from having chromaticism that we might like. There are several ways to make our notes fit into a scale. Choose any scale from the Fit to Scale popup . Any notes in our image that are not in the selected scale are moved to the closest note that is in the scale. NOTE! The Fit To Scale menu also lets you create your own custom scales. Filter to Scale. Hold down the option key and mouse over the Fit to Scale popup menu. The Tool Tip now reads Filter to Scale. Choose any scale from the popup. Observe that any notes not found in the scale are removed. Harmonic Grid Using Fit To Scale. Choose Delete Grid from the Grid Layer popup. Activate the Grid Layer by choosing Grid Layer from the Layer popup menu. Type i to invert the canvas. (This is a shortcut for the Edit popup menus Invert command.) Choose any scale from the Fit To Scale popup. The grid layer now displays all of the notes in our scale. Activate Layer 1 and draw notes. To zoom in, click on the zoom icon or press the h key of your keyboard and (with h still held down) press j to zoom in or g to zoom out. Harmonic Grid By Drawing. Delete the grid channel. Activate the grid layer. Set the brush mode to Repeat Mode. Choose the pen brush. Turn on Caps Lock on your keyboard. (Caps Lock causes all octaves of the painted notes to be drawn when in Repeat Mode.) Set the brush size to 32 pixels wide and 1 pixel high. Set the Tool Grids horizontal (X) interval to 32. Set the Effects Grid interval to 64. The Effects Grid interval is the interval over which strokes are repeated when painting in Repeat Mode. Move the mouse near the left edge of the canvas. Find an A by watching the Tool Tips as you mouse over the canvas.
The Tool Tips area displays information about the cursor position when the mouse is over the canvas. The display indicates Pitch & Octave | Distance (in semitones) from the Master Tuning Pitch | Frequency (Hz) | Time (in minutes: seconds: milliseconds).
Click

in the canvas to paint an A. Every A in the column where you clicked is drawn and the pattern is repeated every 64 pixels (the Effects Grid interval). Find a C in the same column, and click. Click on any E in the same column. In the next column, enter the notes: D F# and A. You now have a simple harmonic grid that alternates between A minor and D major chords.

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TUTORIAL: Image Synth

Grid created with the above steps Using

Canvas before filtering

Canvas after applying Grid Filter

the Grid as a Filter. Activate Layer 1. Choose a brush that is several pixels thick. Set the Brush Mode to Dot Mode or Line Mode. Paint freely in the canvas while previewing. The sound will be pretty cacophonous. Click on Grid Filter in the righthand toolbar. Notes that do not intersect the grid are removed, leaving you with notes that fit the simple chord change programmed in the grid. You can remove the grid by choosing Delete Grid Channel from the Grid Layer popup. Add the sound picture to the preset library. Apply a filter from the Apply Filter popup to refine the image. Optional: use the Amplitude Map to roll off some of the high frequencies. Further exploration. Try the following experiments either now or when you have completed the tutorials: open a sound into the Sample Editor, choose Analyze Spectrum To Grid (from the Grid Layer popup), set the duration of the canvas to the duration of the source sound, paint in the canvas and then apply the Grid Filter. Explore the other commands in the Grid Layer menu as they perform functions that you will frequently find useful.

ImAgE LAYERs
Image layers make it easy to build a sound picture with distinct parts which makes it easy to process and/or copy the individual layers. For example, you might create a drum loop and put the kick drum, snare drum, and hi-hats on different layers. This makes it easy to create variations by modifying individual layers. All layers share the same Image Synth setup. If you need to layer presets that use different instruments, you create separate sound pictures and mix them in the Montage Room. When your sound picture has multiple layers, the active layer is drawn in full color and the other layers are drawn in a shade of blue.

A single layer preset

Set-up.

The same preset layered

Open the Layer Tutorial.presets preset library. Select the first preset. This preset is a simple drum loop. Press the backspace key to delete the images pixels. The grid layer is left. The grid layer in this preset indicates the range of the samples that make up the multisample drum instrument. Move the mouse over the grids lines and control-click to hear the different samples that make up the instrument. Paint in layer one. Paint a sparse rhythm (perhaps just bass drum notes) into layer one. Use the Tool Grid to restrict your notes to rhythmically meaningful locations. One beat it is 32 pixels. A grid of 8 pixels will let you paint sixteenth notes. A grid of 32 pixels will restrict painting to beats. The Attack Brush use.
Add

is a good brush to

a layer. Choose New Layer from the Layer popup menu . The new layer becomes active and the notes in layer one are drawn with dim blue. Draw more notes into layer two. Add a third layer. Add a third layer and draw notes into it. Add a fourth layer. Add a fourth layer and draw notes into it. - 27 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth

Switching

between layers. There are two ways to switch between layers. Choose a layer from the Layer popup menu to activate a layer directly. Use the + key of your keyboard or numeric keypad to activate the next layer. The + key will cycle to the first layer if the last layer is active. Merging layers. Sometimes you will want to merge two layers. You can merge a layer with the one above it in the hierarchy (layer three merges with layer two, for instance). Activate layer three. Choose Merge Layers from the Layer popup. Layer three is merged with layer two. Deleting layers. To delete a layer, hold down the option key and choose a layer from the Layer popup. Further exploration. Explore the usefulness of building a sound picture in layers by putting different elements into different layers and then applying graphic filters and processes to individual layers. Use the Duplicate Layer command to break up a single layer preset into multiple layers. Do this by duplicating layer one several times and then removing notes in different ranges from the different layers. Preset two in Layer Tutorial.presets was created this way.

STEREO EDIT MODE

When working in stereo (color), a picture has three color channels (sublayers): red, green and blue. A picture is really made up of red, green and blue pixels which you can think of as being on their own layers or sublayers that we call color channels. A picture is actually a composite of the three color layers/channels. Non-primary colors are combinations of these colors when you are working in RGB (red/green/blue) color space. The Stereo Edit Mode popup determines which color channel (or channels) is edited by the Image Synth tools. By default, the Stereo Edit Mode is set to Edit Stereo mode which targets both the red and green layers. By changing the Stereo Edit mode, you can edit only the red pixels, green pixels or blue pixels or all of the images pixels. Working with only the blue pixels, allows you to use a layers blue channel as a template or for comments. (The blue channel of a non-active layer is hidden). Independent editing of the red and green channels enables the creation of great spatial effects.
The Stere Edit Mode popup appears to the left of the Stereo/Mono toggle (the rightmost tool in the illustration). It allows you to determine which color channels are affected by the edit commands. This makes it possible to independently apply filters and graphic effects to the left (red) and right (green) channels and to draw templates or grids into the blue channel. The Stereo/Edit Mode popup is only available when the Image Synth is in stereo mode. The upper toolbars appearance changes to reflect the Stereo Edit Mode. The Stereo Edit Mode popups icon changes to reflect the edit mode.

Stereo Edit Mode Popup

The upper toolbar (section as it appears in stereo mode (left) and mono mode.

The tutorial preset library features a sequence of presets that were created using the techniques covered in this section. The Image Synth allows you to switch between compatible presets during playback. To be compatible, presets must have the same canvas size, stereo/mono setting and instrument type. The tempo cannot change during realtime previewing. So, any difference in tempo settings is ignored when switching in realtime.
Set-up.

Be sure to listen in stereo. If you are using a laptop, headphones are recommended. Choose preset three from the Layer Tutorial.presets preset library. Audition the edit mode examples. Press the spacebar to start preview playback. Let the preview play once or twice through the canvas. With the preview still playing, press ] to advance to the next preset. You can use the [ and ] keys to move back and forth between the presets in this series while previewing. The last preset in the series has a comment indicating that it is the last one. - 28 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth TIP! Live previewing makes it possible to play the Image Synth in realtime by sequencing your presets and switching between them using the [ and ] keys. When switching presets in realtime, MetaSynth maintains the playback position so you can switch between similar presets in the middle of a measure. Capture the performance to disk using the Preview to Disk command.

Stereo

edits of preset three. Choose preset three. Choose Edit Right Channel from the Stereo Edit Mode popup. Start the preview playing if you would like to hear your edits in realtime. Click on the Octave Transpose Up arrow to transpose the green pixels up one octave. Click on the Smooth Right Only icon to smooth the release of the green pixels. Choose Edit Left Channel. Hold down the option key and click on the Smooth Right icon. Note that the Tool Tips indicate Smooth Left Only. Many tools perform a different operation when the option key is pressed. This smooths the attacks of the red notes. (See preset four.) Finally, transpose the green pixels back to the original pitch by choosing Edit Right Channel and clicking on the Octave Transpose Down icon. (See preset five.) Further exploration. Take some time to try applying different effects and processes to the green and red channels with presets of your own creation or with any of our supplied presets. Simply shifting the left or right channel one pixel can create a rich stereo spread (as demonstrated by presets six and seven).

06: THE SELECTION TOOL AND TRANsFER MODEs

When the Selection Tool is active, many manipulations are possible other than simply copying and pasting. The Image Synth allows you to filter the selection with the brush color and to use transfer modes for combining a pasted selection with the underlying canvas image.
Filtering

with the Brush Color. Sometimes you might want to change the color of the selected region (or of the entire canvas). This is useful for either making the selected pixels dimmer (less loud), or for panning them.

Choose a preset from the library. Choose the Selection Tool from the Choose Brush popup. Make a selection by dragging in the canvas area. Now, choose a color from the Brush Color selector. The selection is filtered with the selected color by multiplying the selected color with each pixel of the selection. Move the selected area. Choose a preset from the library. Select a portion of the canvas. Click in the selected area and drag. This moves the selected area. (TIP! You can use the Tool Grid to restrict dragging to rhythmically significant areas.) Duplicating the selection. Select a portion of the canvas using the selection tool. Hold down the option key. Click in the selected area and drag the mouse (while the option key is still down). Release the mouse button. A copy of the selection has been dragged, leaving the original selection intact. Exploring Transfer Modes and Copy/Paste When the Selection Tool is active. The Brush Size popup is replaced by the Transfer Mode popup . The Transfer Mode determines how the pixels in the marqueed area are combined with the pixels in the image.
Set-up.

Choose preset 9 from the Layer Tutorial.presets preset library. Type a to Select All (or choose Select All from the Edit popup). Type v to paste into the selected region. Notice that the Brush Tool is now the selection tool and that the Transfer Mode popup has replaced the Brush Size popup. The default Brush Mode is Erase which erases all of the pixels beneath the selection. Differences Transfer Mode. Choose Differences from the Transfer Mode popup. The Differences transfer mode subtracts the luminances of the pixels in the selection from the pixels in the underlying image and displays the absolute value of the difference. When the selection and image are identical, the result is black. By offsetting the selection, it is possible to create interesting effects. Use the arrow keys to nudge the image up and over to the - 29 -

TUTORIAL: Image Synth right and explore the patterns that develop as the selection moves. Explore the other modes. Explore the other transfer modes. The Image Synth Reference chapter provides detailed illustrated descriptions of the transfer modes. De-selecting. Type d to remove the marquee and commit the transfer to the canvas. Pasting with Transfer Mode. The Edit popup menu provides a number of variations of the paste command, such as Subtract Pict, that make use of a transfer mode to perform the paste. Choose any preset. Type c to copy the image to the clipboard. Choose a different preset. Choose Crossfade Pict from the Edit popup. The pixels in the clipboard are faded in while the pixels of the underlying image are faded out. Pasting into a selection. Using the Selection Tool, drag out a selection in a portion of the canvas. Type v to paste. Notice that the clipboards contents are scaled to the selection marquee. Inserting the clipboard. When using the v command (Paste Pict), the clipboards contents are scaled to the selected area. If there is no selected area, the clipboard contents are scaled to fill the entire canvas. When there is no selection, you can add the clipboard contents without resizing by typing b which is a shortcut for the Insert Pict command. Drag a selection over a portion of the canvas. Type c to copy the selection. Type d to get rid of the selection marquee. Type b to add the clipboard without resizing. It is possible to change the transfer mode after inserting the pict while the selection is still floating. Type d to remove the selection marquee.

07: TRICKs OF THE TRADE

There are a number of tricks, tips and shortcuts that will make your time in the Image Synth more fruitful. The list is by no means complete. Be sure to read the Image Synth chapter of the reference manual, and take a look at the shortcuts appendix for a complete list of MetaSynths many shortcuts.
h

to scroll. If you are zoomed far in, hold down the h key to invoke the hand cursor that allows you to drag the canvas to scroll it. Zoom shortcuts. To zoom in and out, hold down the h key (which will give you the hand cursor) then hold down j to zoom in or g to zoom out. Command-drag to make a selection. It is possible to drag out a selection in the canvas without switching to the Selection Tool. With the mouse in the canvas, hold down the command key, press the mouse button and drag to create a selection. This shortcut makes it possible to make a selection without switching brushes. Option-drag to copy. Option-drag a selection to copy it. Choose Brush palette shortcut. With the mouse over the canvas, hold down the command and option keys, and press the mouse button to pop up the Choose Brush palette. The palette makes it possible to change the brush without moving the mouse to the toolbar. Constrain painting to a horizontal line. When using any of the brushes, you can constrain your strokes to horizontal lines by clicking in the canvas then holding down the shift key to constrain the stroke to the horizontal line where the stroke was begun. Interpolation. Oftentimes, you want to extend the fade of a note or selected area or interpolate between to colors. The Interpolation Tool interpolates the colors in the selected region to blend them from right to left. To extend a notes fade, drag out a selection from the notes current end to where you would like it to end (the ending pixel must be black) and click on the interpolation tool. You can use the same technique to create smooth fades, pans and transitions.

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TUTORIAL: Image Synth

Before Interpolation
Choose

After Interpolation

a color from the canvas or another picture. When the Choose Color popup is open, the cursor becomes the eyedropper. When the cursor is the eyedropper, it picks up the color beneath it when the mouse button is released. You can use this to match a color already in the picture. Delete a preset from the library. To delete a preset from the library, hold down the option key, and choose the preset from the library to delete it. Replace a preset (to save changes). If you select a preset and make changes that you want to save, hold down the option key and click on the Add Preset icon . The new version replaces the old version. Import from the Sequencer. To import the Sequencer Rooms current sequence, type q. When importing a sequence, the Image Synth will scale the sequence to fill the canvas width where possibleadjusting the Pixels Per Beat setting as needed. The Image Synth uses a maximum setting of 32 pixels per beat when importing from the Sequencer. So, if the Image Synth canvas is wide and the sequence is short, the image may not fill the canvas. Constraining the lower tools. Some of the lower tools (such as the Scale Tool and the Rotate Tool) can be constrained by holding down either the shift or the option keys. If you hold down shift or option and mouse over the tool, the Tool Tips will indicate the tools behavior. For example, shift-Scale Tool restricts scaling to the horizontal dimension. Shift-Rotate constrains rotation to increments of 45 degrees. Matching tempo/duration. If you need to set the canvas tempo or duration to that of a sound loaded into the Sample Editor, choose Fit Tempo (shortcut: shift-f) from the Edit popup menu. Phase randomization. By default, when the Image Synth renders a picture, it randomizes the phase of the instrument waveforms. This phase randomization is controlled by a preference found in the Preferences dialog. When the picture is stereo, using either of the stereo phase randomization modes will create a more expansive, lusher stereo field. This is great when you are trying to create fat sounds. Use small or large mono mode if you do not want the stereo field to be influenced by phase. See the Prefrences chapter of the Reference Manual for more information about phase randomization.

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Tutorial: Image Filter Room

About the Image Filter Room
The Image Filter Room provides powerful, highly customizable, high resolution filtering of the Sample Editor sound with a unique interface that can be used to process the sample editor sound. The Image Filter can also be used to create realtime performances using its Preview to Disk feature. Like the Image Synth, the room uses a painting metaphor where color represents left/right position and pixel brightness represents amplitude (volume). The image in the canvas acts as a filter (actually a sequence of filters) rather than as a synthesizer. This room is capable of a very wide range of applications.

Background
The canvas image acts as a filter that is applied to the sound displayed in the Sample Editor Waveform Display. If there is a selection, the filter is applied only to the selection. The image is interpreted as a filter by only letting through frequencies that correspond to non-black pixels. As in the Image Synth, a pixels vertical position determines its frequency and its horizontal position determines its position in time, but, rather than act as oscillators, the pixels act as highly accurate filter/eq bands. The filters duration is the length of the sound (or selection) to which it is being applied. (Unlike the Image Synth, there is no independent duration setting.) The height and width of the canvas can be set to give you the desired resolution. Wide canvases provide the greatest time resolution. The frequency mapping is set using the same mechanism as the Image Synth. Think of a column of pixels as the settings for a high resolution stereo graphic EQ. Each pixel in the column determines the gain (or reduction) applied to the frequencies in its range with the brightness of the pixels green portion determining the gain/reduction on the right channel and the brightness of the pixels red portion determining the left-channel gain/reduction. As the play dot proceeds from left to right, it uses the pixel column below it as the eq settings. Gloriously complex, dynamic filters can be created. It is possible to set-up the canvas so that its frequency range is less than that of the sound being filtered. In this case, frequencies below the canvas range are filtered according to the pixels in the bottom row of the image. Frequencies above the canvas range are filtered according to the top row of pixels in the image. If either row is black, the corresponding frequencies will be removed entirely.

Tutorial
This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with the Image Synth/Image Filter tools. If you have not performed the Image Synth tutorials, we recommend that you perform them before proceeding as familiarity with Image Synth concepts and tools are required to understand the Image Filter Room.
Go

to the Image Filter Room Generate Stereo White Noise. Choose White Noise from the Sound menu. Because white noise contains sound equally distributed in all frequencies, it is a great sound source for exploring the Image Filter. - 32 -

TUTORIAL: Image Filter Room

Set

the mode to stereo. Make sure that the Image Filter is set to stereo mode by clicking on the Stereo/Mono

toggle, if necessary. (The toggles appearance indicates its current state: stereo or mono.) Clear the canvas. Type a and press backspace to delete the canvas areas contents (if there are any). Canvas set-up. Set the canvas height to 64 pixels high using the Size y popup. Choose Semitones from the (Frequency) Map popup . Turn the grid off (if it is on). Because the canvas is only 64 pixels high, the frequency range of the canvas (with Master Tuning set to A2) is roughly 55 to 2100 Hz.
Start

the preview. Press the spacebar (or click the preview icon

) to start the preview. Because the canvas

is empty, there will be no sound. A bandpass filter. Hold down the command key (which turns the cursor to the selection cursor) and drag a somewhat narrow selection across entire width of the canvas. Type i to invert the selection. Type d to deselect. You should now be hearing filtered noise. The filter should resemble the image shown below.

Transposing

Canvas after performing the previous step

the image. Press the down arrow on your keyboard a few times and listen as the filter pitch is lowered. Press the up arrow a few times. Because the upper and lower edges of the canvas are blank, the only frequencies that pass through the filter are those explicitly represented by the images pixels. (TIP: Mouse over any pixel to see its frequency displayed in the Tool Tips area.) Filtering outside of the image range. Zoom in so that you can see the top edge of the canvas area clearly. Press the arrow key until the top row of pixels is no longer black. Since the images top row of pixels is yellow, the frequencies above 2100 Hz (the frequency represented by the top edge of the canvas) pass through without filtering. This rule also applies to the lower edge of the image. Frequencies below the images range are filtered using the bottom row of pixels. Paint harmonics. To hear the Image Filters precision, we will paint a filter that lets individual frequencies (harmonics) through. Clear the canvas by pressing the backspace. (If that does not clear the canvas, type a to select all and then delete the image). Choose the Harmonics brush from the Choose Brush popup. Choose green from the Choose Color popup found below the Choose Brush popup. Paint some harmonics in the canvas. Choose red from the color palette and paint some red harmonics. Make the filter dynamic. The filter we have created is constant because it does not change over time (the horizontal axis). Image Filters can be wildly dynamic. As the sound plays, paint in the canvas with any of the brushes available from the Choose Brush popup. As you paint, change the brush color to provide spatial dynamics. Filter the image. As in the Image Synth Room, it is possible to filter the image displayed in the canvas by choosing an image from the Filter Library. Choose an image from the filter library popup to modify the image displayed in the canvas (which in turn filters the sound). The default Filter Library provides a broad range of filters from the practical (simple fades and pans) to the fanciful.
Using

presets. Choose the first preset from the library by using the Select Preset popup . If the preview stops, start it playing again. (If the filter size or tuning changes MetaSynth stops the preview.) Tour the filter presets by using the ] key to advance through the presets. If the filter stops playing, press the spacebar to restart the preview. - 33 -

TUTORIAL: Image Filter Room Analyzing sounds and filtering The Image Filter can analyze the current sound and create a picture that represents it in either the blue grid channel (in which case it provides a guide that shows you the content of the current sound) or in the active channel(s) (in which case it creates a filter with the harmonic content of the source sound).
Set-up.

Open the sound Ana MetaSynth speech that is found in MetaSynths Sounds folder. Set the canvas height to 128, the width to 512, and the Frequency Map to Semitones. Clear the canvas.

Analyze

to grid. Choose Analyze Spectrum to Grid from the Grid Layer popup . MetaSynth analyzes the sound and draws an image of it in the grid channel. Use any of the brushes and tools to paint in the canvas using the grid as your guide. Analyze to active filter. By analyzing the sound to the active filter channels, it is possible to create a filter that you can use to filter another sound. Click on the Analyze Spectrum icon . MetaSynth paints the canvas with a representation of Ana MetaSynth speech. Choose the Generate White Noise command from the Sounds menu. Start the preview. Set the canvas edit mode to the left (red) channel. Nudge the red channel up a few pixels by pressing the up arrow key. Nudge it a few pixels to the right by pressing the right arrow a few times. Try using different frequency maps by using the Set Tuning Space popup. Apply the filter to other sources. Open a variety of different sounds and preview the results. (TIP: if you open short sounds, you may want to use the Sample Editors Repeat tool to double or quadruple the length of the source sound. To preserve the original sounds tempo/duration, you need to apply it to a sound with the same duration as the original). Creating a drum loop filter. Open StereoDrums133.caf from the MetaSynth Sounds folder. In the Image Filter Room, click on the Analyze Spectrum icon . Open a continuous sound (such as any of the Orch. Grain samples found in MetaSynths Instruments 5.0:MultiSamplers: Slow Orch) and preview the filter. (TIP: repeat and/or trim the sound in the sample editor to match the drum loops duration in order to preserve the tempo).

Further Explorations The Image Filter Room has a vast range of applications. By analyzing to the grid and making the sonic content visible, this room can be used to eliminate or isolate particular sonic features. It can also be used to create dynamic performances. Create a live performance by using the Preview to Disk command and painting in the canvas as the sound plays. Explore the example filters. In addition to MetaSynths default filters, there are additional filter presets that are well worth exploring. We recommend taking time to explore the libraries supplied in MetaSynths More Filters folder. They appear in the File popup menu. Notes about the supplied files are found in the Read Me - Presets and Filters file found in the MetaSynth folder. Build a filter by starting with a neutral filter and accentuating or eliminating frequencies by painting/filtering the neutral canvas. To create a neutral filter that attenuates all of the frequencies equally:
Clear

the canvas. Select all (type a). Invert the canvas (type !) to create an all pass filter. - 34 -

TUTORIAL: Image Filter Room

Choose

from the Choose Brush popup. Choose a dark gray color. This will render the selected area dark gray. Modify the canvas. Paint in bright colors where you want to open the filter up and remove paint where you want to eliminate frequencies.

the Selection Tool

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Tutorial: Spectrum Synth

Spectrum Synthesis is one of MetaSynths most powerful and unique features. It combines granular synthesis techniques and harmonic analysis to analyze sounds and construct a series of spectrum events that contain the source sounds harmonic spectrum that can be manipulated and re-sequenced. The result is a much higher resolution analysis than is possible in the Image Synth. A wide variety of sounds can be created with the Spectrum Synth: intriguing grooves and loops, mysterious abstract sounds, and invented sounds for use in Sampler and MultiSampler instruments. Analyze the decay of a piano and turn it into a killer groove, or create hybrid instruments of your own invention. Want to create a flugel-vio-piano-horn? The Spectrum Synth Room is the place to go.

SpECTRUm sYNTHEsIs & FFTs?

It was discovered long ago that any sound can be represented as a combination of sine waves of different frequencies and loudness (amplitude). FFTs (fast-fourier-transforms) are a way of analyzing and representing these component sine waves that are also known as harmonics or partials. The Spectrum Synth can analyze the Sample Editor sound and create a spectrum sequence that is a series of spectrum events (FFT events) that recreates the source sounds harmonics. You can edit, re-arrange and transform these spectrum events and combine them with spectrum events from other sounds to create sounds not easily created with traditional synthesis tools. Spectrum events can also be saved and used as frequency maps in the Image Synth and Image Filter Rooms.

SpECTRUm sEQUENCINg WORKFLOW

The Spectrum Synth is a very flexible tool. The outline below introduces the most common workflow. As you become more familiar with the Spectrum Room, you will discover many different ways of working and exploring.
Open

a sound. Any sound can be used as a source. Determine the number of slices (events) to be created. Setting the measures and beats determines the number of slices used for analysis (and the number of resulting events). The more events that are created the closer the result will be to capturing the original sounds harmonic changes. Auto-build. Auto-build creates a series of events (the number of events is determined by the measures and beats entered in the previous step) that represent the sounds changing harmonic structure. Edit Spectrum and Sequence. The Spectrum Synth provides a number of tools for editing spectrum sequences and events. The events can be re-arranged and their harmonics edited. Individual events can be replaced with events from other sounds (by either using cut/copy/paste or the Replace Spectrum Region tool). The events interpolation mode (which determines the events volume envelope and crossfades) can be edited as can the sequence tempo (which can turn the decay of a timpani into a dynamic rhythmic sequence). Save and Synthesize: as sound or sample series. Finally, save your sequence and render it as either a single sound file or as a sample series to use as the source of a MultiSampler instrument.

- 36 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth

Quick Tour
Before proceeding with the lesson, take a tour of the spectrum synthesis samples that we have provided. The Spectrum Rooms File popup menu lists all of the spectrum sequences found in MetaSynths Spectrums folder.
Copy

the Tutorial Samples. Copy the files whose names start Lesson 0 from the Spectrum Room Tutorials to MetaSynths Spectrums folder. Quit and re-start MetaSynth. MetaSynth builds the spectrum sequence list when the application starts up. the sequences. Click on the File popup icon in the Spectrum Synth Room. At the bottom of the popup, you will see a list of all the sequences in the Spectrums folder. For each sequence listed in the Spectrum Rooms File popup, choose the sequence from the list and press the Play/Stop Preview button . Make sure

Tour

to stop playback before loading another sequence. The Lesson 0 sequences. The Lesson 0 sequences were designed to demonstrate that a wide variety of sounds can be created from very simple sources. Only two sources were used for these sequences, Ana Welcome and Piano short ff A0, which are both found in the Spectrum Tutorials folder. The only techniques used are those covered in this chapter. The Lesson X sequences. These are a few simple sequences made by using Auto-Build to create a sequence from a violin and then using Replace Spectrum to replace some events with trumpet and piano harmonics.

First lesson: Auto-Build, Resynthesis, Building a MultiSampler

In the first tutorial lesson, you will create a spectrum sequence from a sample, manipulate the harmonics and create a sample series from which you will build a MultiSampler instrument.
Open

the source. Choose the File Menus Open command (command-O) to open the sound Ana Welcome that is found in Spectrum Tutorials -> Sounds. Set the measures and beats. The measures and beats determine the number of events/slices created when Auto-Build creates a sequence. Set the number of measures to 1 (type 1 and then press the Enter key to complete the entry) and the number of beats to 2 which will build two events. This will be a very coarse analysis since only two slices will be created. Set the tempo to match the source duration. Choose Fit Tempo (shortcut key: shift-f) from the Edit popup menu . The sequences tempo is set to match the duration of the Sample Editor sound.

Auto-Build. Click on the Auto-Build tool

. Two events are created, and the Reference and Synthesis pitches are set. MetaSynth does its best to identify the pitch of the source sample. If the source sample has changing pitches or a lot of noise, MetaSynth may have difficulty in identifying the correct pitch.

What do the lines in the events represent? The default color table uses a shade of orange do display harmonics. Each orange line represents a harmonic whose brightness represents its amplitude (loudness). When the mouse is in the content area of the Spectrum Room (where the events are displayed) the Tool Tips area displays the exact frequency as well as the name of the closest note. The alternate color table uses different colors to display harmonics of different amplitude (loudness). The lowest amplitude harmonics are displayed in green and the loudest are displayed with yellow. When sounds have a lot of low-amplitude harmonics, this view makes them easier to see.
Toggle

between the color tables. Click on the Switch Amplitude Color Table toggle (which will show either - 37 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth or depending on which color table is in use) to view the events using the two alternate color tables. You will see that Ana Welcome has many low amplitude harmonics. Play an event. Hold down the control key and click on either of the events to hear the spectrum it represents.
Preview.

Preview the crude sequence we created by clicking on the Play/Stop Preview button the spacebar).

(or pressing

Interpolation Mode. Each event has an interpolation mode (automatically set to Slow when using AutoBuild) that determines how the transition is made between an event and the event that precedes it. When the mode is Slow, there is a long transition between the events in which their harmonics are crossfaded to make a slow smooth transition; the pitch of close (but not identical) harmonics is also interpolated when the mode is Slow, Medium, or Fast which will result in a glissando or pitch bend between the harmonics. At the other extreme is Attack Fast which does not blend an events harmonics and fades them out quickly.
Explore

interpolation modes. While the preview is playing, type the + key on your computer keyboard to advance through the interpolation modes. If you want to hear the effect of the interpolation mode clearly, set the tempo very low. Create a more accurate sequence. The original sequence isnt very accurate because it only has two events to represent about a second of changing sound. Using more slices (the number of slices is: measures * beats) results in a more accurate representation of the source sound. Set the measures and beats to 2 measures and 8 beats. Click Auto-Build . Type F (shift-f), the Fit Tempo shortcut. Preview it. Try Auto-Build with more and fewer measures and beats to hear how the number of events (slices) influences the result. Remember to adjust the tempo to match the source duration. Because each event takes a fair amount of memory, MetaSynth currently allows a maximum of 64 spectrum events. An example sequence has been provided as Lesson 1 - 1 - Ana Welcome Spectrum Size MetaSynth provides control over a few parameters that influence the accuracy/resolution of spectrum synthesis. The number of events created when performing an Auto-Build influences resolution as does increasing the spectrum size. The spectrum size determines the number of frequency bands for each event. Increasing the spectrum size increases the frequency resolution as well as the amount of computing required to preview and render the sequence. Many computers will not be able to smoothly preview sequences created with the 2048 spectrum size. If you find that you need the maximum spectrum size but cannot preview smoothly, lower the preview sample rate. To hear the spectrum size influence, use Auto-Build with Ana Welcome at both spectrum sizes. For each size, render the sequence and play it back by pressing the upper-panes Play button. Increasing the spectrum size increases the time required to render the sequence and the size of the sequence file. In most cases, a sample size of 1024 is more than adequate. When switching from a spectrum size of 2048 to 1024, it is important to note that data is lostevery other harmonic is thrown away. It is a good idea to save a copy of a spectrum before changing the spectrum size. It is also advisable to do the analysis at the preferred size to start with as the analysis is optimized for the spectrum size.
Pitch

the voice. The final goal is to create a pitched sample series to use in a MultiSampler. The Ana Welcome sample does not have a strong pitch component, but it is rich in harmonics. To strengthen the pitch, click on the Tune With Reference Pitch Harmonics tool and drag to the right. This tool eliminates the noisy harmonics - 38 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth that are not part of the natural harmonic series and strengthens the pitch. By removing these harmonics, we are also removing the natural characteristics of the voice. (The ideal harmonic series is made up of the whole number multiples of the reference pitch.) An example sequence with 16 events has been provided as Lesson 1 - 2 - Ana Welcome
Set Create

popup. a sample series. Choose Render Sample Series by 3 from the File popup menu and save the sample series into its own folder in MetaSynths Instruments 5.0/MultiSamplers folder. This command renders two octaves of samples spaced three semitones apart. TIP! You can create more samples by setting the synthesis pitch two octaves higher (leave the reference pitch alone) and choosing Render Sample Series 3 again. and test a MultiSampler. Use the following steps to create a MetaSynth MultiSampler: Go to the Sequencer Room Choose Build MultiSampler from the Choose Instrument Popup Choose one of the samples from the sample series created earlier (it doesnt matter which one) Click on the Save Instrument button to give the instrument a name Audition the instrument using any of the available preset sequences

the loop options. Choose Dont Loop from the Loop Sequence

Build

Second lesson: Spectrum Event Editing Basics

Highlighted features: replace spectrum , make stereo, shift, transpose The Spectrum Synth provides many powerful tools for editing event harmonics and ordering events. This lesson covers a few basic techniques that you will use in most of your sessions. The possibilities are endless. This lesson aims to get you pointed in the right direction so that you can explore fruitfully on your own. SET-UP Open the sound file Ana Welcome. It will be listed in the Recent Files menu along with all of the other sound files that you have opened recently. Select All of the sound. The shortcut is command-a Auto-Build a spectrum sequence. Set the measures to 2 and the beats to 8. Set the tempo to 1000.

LEssON - UsINg SELECT BY, REpLACE SpECTRUm REgION AND, STEREOIZINg EVENTs In this lesson, you process a portion of the source sample and replace the corresponding events using the Replace tool by doing the following:
Select

the first half of the Sample Editor sound. Command-drag in the Sample Editor sound display to select about half of the sound. Image Filter. Go to the Image Filter Room. Apply a panning preset (Image Filter). Choose a preset that performs panning such as the one pictured below from the Select Preset popup . Click the render button . Apply the panning filter again by clicking the render button and repeat once or twice more to exaggerate the shifting balance of the left and right channels.

Choose a Filter Preset like this and apply it to the sound. - 39 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth

Return

to the Spectrum Synth. Choose Stereo Spectrum from the Edit popup. This command converts a sequence derived from a mono sound into stereo sequence. Select the first eight events in the sequence.
Click

Replace Spectrum Region . The selected region of the sample will be analyzed and the selected spectrum events will be replaced with an analysis of the Sample Editor selection. Preview the result.

MORE EVENT EDITING TECHNIQUES. SELECTION TRICKs AND EXpLORINg HARmONIC ADJUsTmENTs. If your computer is fast enough to comfortably preview the sequence, you may want to start the preview playing and leave it playing as you edit. Turn previewing off and on as needed to check the results.
De-select Select

all events. Type d (without the command key) with the lower-pane active to de-select all events.

to make it active. the Offset tool. In the lefthand toolbar, click on the Offset tool Select every fourth event. Click on the first event to select it. Hold down the shift key and click on every fourth event. Increase Contrast and Filter Low Amplitude harmonics. Click on the Increase Contrast and Filter Low Amp tool and drag to the right. You might want to click on the tool and drag to the right a few times. This deemphasizes the quietest harmonics (which are frequently noisy). TIP To maximize the available range: click on the tool and drag to the lower-left edge of the screen (which anchors the zero point to that corner), with the mouse button still held down, drag to the right as far as you would like. This tip applies to any tool that is active in only one direction.

Offset

in the lower toolbar and drag up or Spectrum Region. Click on the Offset Spectrum Region tool down to shift the harmonics while previewing. Offset Spectrum non-destructively shifts the harmonics up or down non-proportionally. Because the shift is non-proportional, you get some interesting unusual non-harmonic timbres. (See the Spectrum Synth chapter of the reference manual for information on this topic.) Spectrum offset. Click on the Reset Spectrum Offset tool events to their original setting. to reset the spectrum of the selected

Reset

Transpose selected events. Hold down the option key, click on the Offset Spectrum Region tool

(whose Tool Tip will now read Transpose Spectrum Content) and drag up and/or down. The harmonics are now transposed proportionally rather than simply offset. This is a destructive edit. A transpose action can be undone (like most editing events), but it cannot be reset by clicking on Reset Spectrum Offset since it changes the actual spectrum content. Explore tempos. Explore faster and slower tempos, and find one that you like. Set Attack. To give the selected events a percussive attack, choose Attack S from the Interpolation Mode popup.
Transpose

the selected events. Option-drag the Offset Spectrum Region tool to transpose the selected events slightly. Transpose other events. Select some different events and transpose or offset them slightly.
Adjust

the volume. Type a to select all of the events. Click on the velocity (event volume) tool and drag to the right to increase the volume of all the events. Now, adjust the volume of individual events or groups of events to make them quieter. An example of the tutorial at this stage has been provided as Lesson 2 - 1 - Ana - 40 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth Welcome Re-open Ana Welcome and Select All. Choose Ana Welcome from the Recent Sounds menu to reload it into the Sample Editor. Choose Select All from the Edit menu to ensure that the entire sound is selected. Copy all events. Click in the lower pane (the Spectrum Synth) to make it the target of the keyboard. Copy all of the events in the sequence by typing a to select them then c to copy them.
Replace

Spectrum. Click on the Replace Spectrum Region button . The selected portion of the Sample Editor sound is re-analyzed and the selected events are updated to reflect the new analysis. Merge Events in Place. Type m or choose Merge in Place from the Edit popup menu to merge the clipboards events with the selected events. Merge combines the harmonics of the clipboard events and the selected events using a 50% blend of the harmonics. Use Max in Place to merge the harmonics using a maximum algorithm that keeps the brightest harmonics. An example of the tutorial at this stage has been provided as Lesson 2 - 3a - Ana Welcome and a 32 event version as Lesson 2 - 3b - Ana Welcome Applying tools to a pitch region. Command drag over a region in the harmonics display to select a range of the harmonics. Tools such as Tune with Reference Pitch Harmonics will just be applied to the selected pitch range. To remove the pitch range selection, click underneath any event in the timeline to select it.

Third lesson: Event duration and ordering

SET-Up - Create a rhythm loop to use as our source to the Sequencer Room Render Drum Pattern B (in the Sequencer Room). Choose Drum Pattern B.mseq from the Sequencer Rooms File popup menu. Choose Dont Loop from the Loop Options popup menu. Click the Render Sequence button. Note the sequences length and tempo: 4 measures of 4 beats at 133 bpm. Save the rendered sound. Save the rendered sound as Drum Pattern B Sound. Return to the Spectrum Room. Set the measures and beats. Set the measures to 4 and the beats to 16. 16 is used because that is the number of events per measure into which the source sound will be sliced and analyzed. Setting the beats to 16 allows sixteenth notes to be captured. If we used the same number of beats (4) as the original sequence, we would only get 4 events per measures. Think of the beats as slices per measure. Calculate the tempo. Because we are using 16 beats per measure (in order to capture sixteenth notes in our sequence) rather than 4, we need to calculate the tempo to use so that our spectrum sequence has the same apparent tempo as the source sequence. Since we are using four times as many beats in our spectrum sequence as the original sequence, we multiply the source tempo (133) by four. Set the tempo to 532, Auto-Build and preview to confirm that the tempo matches. LEssON
Set interpolation mode for the first beats. The beginning of each measure is displayed in the timeline (the hash Go

marks just below the sequence) as a full-height vertical line. Select the first event in the sequence. Shift-click the first beat of each measure and choose the Attack S interpolation mode. Assign interpolation modes to other events. Choose individual events and clusters of events and assign Attack S, Attack M or Attack F in order to vary the event attacks. An example sequence has been supplied as Lesson 3 - 1 Drum Seq Start previewing. Click on the preview button to start previewing -- if possible leave the preview running as you edit. You may need to reduce the preview sample rate (in the Preferences dialog) if your computer stutters - 41 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth frequently during the preview. Delete some events. Click on individual events or clusters of events and press backspace to delete them. Notice that removing an event does not result in a hole in the sequence. Due to the nature of spectrum sequencing, all events must be contiguous. An event may be rendered silent by removing all its harmonics (by using the filter or eraser tools).
Set

edit mode to Offset Harmonic. Click on the Offset tool events and drag up or down to offset the event harmonics.

in the left-hand tool bar. Click on individual

Set

edit mode to Reorder. Click on the Reorder tool to set the sequencer edit mode. Click on an event and drag it to the left or right. The event will be moved to a new location while preserving its duration. The event that occupies the space where the mouse is released will be pushed to the left.

Set

edit mode to Offset mode . Click on an event and drag slowly to the left. In offset mode, dragging an event moves its start position. If you drag far enough to the right, the event will move also. Option-drag to copy. While in Offset mode, hold down the option key, click on any event and drag to the left or right to duplicate the event.
Harmonic

Scale Brush. Click on the Harmonic Scale Brush to activate it. Click on an event and drag the brush up and down to brighten the (increase the amplitude) of the harmonics over which the brush passes. Hold down the option key and drag the brush over bright harmonics to lower their amplitude; notice that the cursor display changes to indicate whether harmonics will be made louder or quieter. (TIP! Hold down the shift key when using the brush to apply the changes to all events in the sequence.) Scroll. There are likely to be many more harmonics than can be seen in the window on most screens. Hold down the h key, click in the sequence area (the cursor will be displayed as a hand) and drag down to display the higher harmonics. Edit some of the high harmonics with the Harmonic Scale Brush or the eraser tool then scroll back down. Interpolation mode refinement. As the sequence plays, set the interpolation modes of different events. An example of the tutorial at this stage has been provided as Lesson 3 - 2 - Drum Seq NOTE Interpolation and looping. When a spectrum sequence loops, the last event will be interpolated (crossfaded) with the first event if the last event ends after the sequences nominal ending point. This creates nice smooth loops. If you want the first event to have its attack when the sequence loops, make sure that the last event ends slightly before the sequence end marker in the timeline (the last measure marker).
Use

the grid. Turn on the grid and set the spacing to 480. 240 represents one beat (which in this example is actually a 16th note in the original drum sequence). Edit some events in both offset mode and reorder mode to see how the grid effects event dragging. Quantize events. Set the grid spacing to 240. Type a to select all of the sequences events, and type q or click on the Quantize tool quantize the event start positions. PASTE MODES Copy event. Click on an event to select it. Type c to copy the event to the clipboard. Paste and Insert. Click below the timeline and note the position of the blue insertion line. Type v or chose Paste & Insert from the Edit popup menu to insert the copied event at the insertion line. Note that the item is pasted after the insertion line. If you click on an event to select it, the insertion line may be placed at the end of the selected event. (Note: if the sequence has 64 events, you wont be able to paste. If that happens, delete an event and repeat the step.) - 42 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth

Paste

in Place. Click on any event to select it. Type b or choose Paste in Place from the Edit popup to replace the selected event (or events) with the clipboard contents. Merge in Place. It is also possible to merge the harmonics of events in the clipboard with events in a sequence. Click on any event in the sequence and type m or choose Merge In Place from the Edit menu to merge the event harmonics. Merge in Place performs a 50% blend of the event harmonics. Use Max in Place to merge the events so that the brightest harmonic is kept where there are coincident harmonics. Randomize. Drag in the timeline to select some events. Click on the Randomize tool to randomly shuffle the selected events. Click again to randomize the events again. Merge with source. It can be great fun to crossfade a rhythm-derived spectrum sequence with the source loop. Render the spectrum sequence that you have created in this lesson. Type command-a to select all of the rendered sound. Type command-c to copy the Sample Editor selection to the clipboard. Open the source sound file (which should be listed in the Recent Sounds menu). Choose Merge from the Edit menu. MetaSynth will save the clipboard sound to disk, set it as the Auxiliary file and take you to the Effects editor with the Crossfade effect selected. Have fun!

Fourth Lesson: Formants

The Spectrum Synth provides a number of very powerful features for shifting, transposing, filtering and re-tuning harmonics with or without formants. This tutorial section provides some background information and guides you through a series of experiments that demonstrate some of these features.

FORmANTs
What are formants? Most natural sounds especially those that involve a resonating body have formants: resonances at fixed frequencies that do not change with the pitch of the generated sound. Mathematically-speaking, formants are a mapping of harmonic-amplitude to pitch. They determine how much resonance or attenuation harmonics of a specific pitch receive. Formant-sensitive actions allow naturalistic effects when transposing harmonics by altering the loudness of the harmonics according to a formant map rather than simply transposing all of the harmonics without any amplitude change. Formants occur because the sound produced by an instrument (including the human voice) are the result of both a vibrating membrane of some sort (vocal cords, strings, drum head, etc.) and a space or body in which the membrane vibrates. The space or body in which the membrane vibrates has its own resonances which are independent of the pitch of the vibrating membrane. The resonance of the body results in certain harmonics (pitches) being emphasized or de-emphasized regardless of the pitch of the note. As a result of this combination of fixed (or semi-fixed) resonances and variable pitch vibration, you cannot take the analysis of an A3 played on a guitar and transpose all the harmonics one octave to generate a natural sounding A4; because, the guitars body has some fixed resonances that amplify some specific frequencies more than others. Imagine that we have a guitar that has a natural resonance around 660 Hz (E4) that boosts the volume of anything around that pitch and has a dampening effect at 1320 Hz (E5). If we play an A2 (220 Hz) on the guitar, there will be an emphasis of the notes third harmonic because that harmonic is 660 Hz. If we play a note one octave higher (A3) there will be a de-emphasis of the third harmonic because it is 1320 Hz. If we analyzed the A2 note with its accented third harmonic and simply transposed all the harmonics up one octave without adjusting the amplitude, we would end up with an A3 with an accented harmonic at 1320 Hz. This would be different from what an actual A3 would sound like on our guitar because the real A3s harmonic at 1320 Hz would have been de-emphasized. - 43 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth So, if we want to imitate the guitar when we transpose harmonics, we need to imitate its formants and give a little extra emphasis to harmonics around 660 Hz but attenuate harmonics around 1320 Hz. Real formants are quite a bit more complex than those of our imaginary guitar, and some instruments (like the human voice) have bodies that are not entirely fixed and so their formants can change (as the body changes or is manipulated). In fact, the human voice can change formants while vocal pitch remains constant (These shifting formants are responsible for the vowels of human speech). MetaSynth allows you to create formant envelopes from spectrum events that can be applied to other events. Formant envelopes make a vast variety of effects and timbres possible. They can be used either to imitate naturalistic formants (such as human vowels) or to remap harmonic amplitudes to create complex timbres.

FORmANT QUICKTOUR
We have provided a few spectrum sequences created using formant filters. Listen to Raphael a e i o, Female Fat, and Female Filtered to hear examples created using formant filters. In MetaSynths Spectrum folder there is a special folder, Formant filters, in which a library of formant envelopes is stored for instant access. Many of the supplied formants are vowel sounds derived from the analysis of human speech. APPlYING FORMaNTs
Generate

White Noise. Choose White Noise from the Sound menu. Set-up. Measures: 2. Beats: 4. Tempo: 200. Reference Pitch and Synthesis Pitch: D2 Auto-build the sequence
Apply

the formants. Select the first two events. Choose Raph Low A from the Formants Filter popup menu . Select the next two events and choose Raph Low O. Select the next two events and apply another of the Raph formants and apply yet another one of the Raph formants to the final two events. Preview the sequence. The sequence sounds very noisy. Tune the harmonics. While the sequence is previewing, select all the events (shortcut: a). Hold down the option key, click on the Filter and Tune icon and drag some to the right until a pitch starts to emerge. A filter amount (as displayed in the Tool Tips area) between 80% and 90% generally works well. (The tools behavior and description changes with the modifier key that is held down.) MORE FuN WITH FORMaNTs Here are a few additional exercises for those interested in exploring formants.
Create

a formant envelope. A formant envelope can be created from any event in the Spectrum Synth. Simply

select an event and choose Define Formant Envelope from the Formant Filters popup menu . If you save the formant filter into the folder named Formant Filters found in the Spectrum folder, the formant will be available from the Formant Filters popup. (Note: the popup is loaded at startup. So, you will have to quit and relaunch before the new item appears in the menu). Examine a formant envelope. Formant envelopes are a special case of MetaSynth envelope. You can examine a formant filter by going to the Sample Editor Room and choosing Read Envelope from the Effect Editors Edit popup menu. What you see is a plotting of amplitude (vertical axis) vs. frequency. The horizontal scale is nonlinear. If you know how to change Macintosh file types, you can change the file type of a standard MetaSynth envelope file to fenv, and it will be accessible when using the Apply Formant Filter menu command. - 44 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth

Fifth Lesson : More Harmonic Manipulation BACKgROUND

Sounds are generally very complex and are likely to contain harmonics that are not strict multiples or divisions of the fundamental frequency. Even a sample of a single sustained piano note will have harmonics that are slight variations of the ideal harmonics. When a sample contains more than one pitch or more than one instrument or contains noisy sounds like drums or wind (breath), there are likely to be a great many harmonics found that are not even related to the fundamental. A very noisy instrument, such as snare drum, may not even have a fundamental. MetaSynth provides a great many tools to refine the harmonic content of spectrum events. These tools can be used to make sounds more natural sounding or more synthetic sounding or simply to make them more pleasing or interesting. These tools provide frequency-based tuning and filtering where harmonics are adjusted according to their pitch and amplitude-based filtering where harmonics are adjusted according to their amplitude (loudness). There are additional tools that allow you to manually attenuate, amplify or erase individual harmonics or harmonic clusters. A note about the Reference Pitch. Ideal harmonics are defined in relation to a fundamental (or base) pitch since they are multiples of that pitch. As a result, the frequency-related tools are all influenced by the Spectrum Synths Reference Pitch setting. Using the correct Reference Pitch allows you to use these tools to fine-tune the event harmonics using the built-in tools. MetaSynth does its best to correctly identify the correct fundamental, but some sounds can fool it. Check whether the assignment is accurate by mousing over the brightest harmonic and seeing if it matches the Reference Pitch. If the pitch does not match the Reference Pitch, set the reference pitch manually by clicking on the tuning fork icon and choosing a pitch from the popup menu. Set the octave using the up and down arrows next to the tuning icon. The pitch can be changed chromatically by option-clicking the up/ down arrows. Hold down the shift key while making changes to the Reference Pitch to make the same change to the Synthesis Pitch. The Reference and Synthesis pitches should be kept the same unless you want to pitch-shift the sequence. There are times when you will set the reference pitch in order to set the spacing of the harmonics affected by the frequency-based harmonic tools as since lower Reference Pitches result in closer harmonic spacing. See the reference manual for more information related to this topic. The tune tool performs three different functions depending on which modifier keys are pressed:

Tune with Reference Pitch harmonics (no modifier key) progressively retunes the event harmonics to the set of ideal harmonics (whole number multiples of the reference pitch). The result is generally synthetic sounding and pitched. Filter & Tune with Reference Pitch harmonics (option key) progressively retunes harmonics that are reasonably close to the ideal harmonics and filters out harmonics that are far from the ideal. Repeatedly applying the tool results in pure harmonics but judicious use of this tool preserves the richness of the original sound Filter out unrelated harmonics (option-control) fades out harmonics that are not in the ideal series without retuning any harmonics. The farther from the ideal a harmonic is, the more that it is attenuated. So, harmonics that are close to ideal are preserved without being retuned and those that are far off can be removed entirely. - 45 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth Oftentimes, it is useful to use this function and then use it with the option-key only to refine the harmonics.

The attenuate tool has two different functions:

Attenuate high frequencies (no modifier key) progressively filters out high harmonics Filter out high frequencies (option) sharply filter out higher harmonics

LEssON FREQUENCY-BAsED TOOLs

Below are a few quick exercises that will help you to become familiar with the harmonic filtering and tuning functions and show you how to use the reference pitch to influence the tools behavior. Repeat the following exercises with a variety of sources.
Set-up. Choose White Noise from the Sounds menu. White noise is made up of harmonics at all frequencies with

random amplitudes. White noise though pitchless contains all frequencies which makes it useful for exploring harmonic filtering and tuning. Set measures to 1, beats to 2 and tempo to 250. Click on the Auto-Build tool to generate a spectrum sequence with two events. Tune with reference pitch harmonics. Select only the first event. Set both the reference and synthesis pitch to C2. Click on the Tune with reference pitch harmonics tool and drag to the right. Apply the tool repeatedly and notice the spacing of the harmonics. The lowest harmonic is the fundamental; the second harmonic is an octave higher. When White Noise is the source, there will be some high frequency noise because the highest order harmonics are close together in pitch. You can remove them by using the Attenuate High Frequency tool. Select only the second event, and set the reference and synthesis pitch to C5. Apply Tune with reference pitch harmonics. Notice the huge difference between the two events. By selectively changing the reference pitch, you can filter out different harmonics. The lower you set the reference pitch, the more closely spaced the harmonics will be. If you are working with a pitched source, it is often useful to filter with the reference pitch set an octave too low or an octave too high. Explore this tool with a few different sources, both pitched and unpitched. Leave the preview running if possible. TIP To filter out the odd harmonics of a pitched sound, set the reference pitch one octave too high then apply the Tune tool.

Filter and tune with reference pitch harmonics (option). Select all of the sequence events (shortcut: a). Click

the Replace Spectrum tool to restore the noise (note: unlike Auto-Build, Replace Spectrum re-analyzes the sound without changing the reference pitch or interpolation). Set the reference and synthesis pitch to C3. Select the first event and apply the Tune tool to re-tune all of the harmonics. Select the second event. Hold down the option key and apply the Tune tool (which becomes Filter and tune with reference pitch harmonics). Notice that some non-ideal harmonics remain. This tool will retain the richness of the original source but reduce some of the harmonic clutter noticeable in noisy sounds. Repeat this experiment with different reference pitches to see how the spacing of the harmonics influences the result. Filter out unrelated harmonics (option-control). Open the Ana Welcome sound (it will probably be listed in the Recent Sounds menu if you have performed the earlier lessons of this tutorial). Select a portion of the sound that is reasonably loud. Click on the Auto-Build tool. Delete one of the events so that there is only one event in the sequence. Hold down the option and control keys and apply the tool labeled Filter out unrelated harmonics judiciously to tighten up the pitch. Now, hold down the option key and apply the Tune tool as you preview. - 46 -

TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth

Transpose

Spectrum Content with Formant Filter (option-control). Click Auto-Build to rebuild the two event sequence. Select one of the events and copy it. Select the other event and replace it by typing b. Hold down

the option and control keys and apply the Offset/Transpose tool (which will be labelled Transpose Spectrum Content with Formant Filter) by dragging up. Notice that as the harmonics are transposed, the amplitudes are adjusted as if the original event were a formant filter. So, the amplitude of the harmonics changes as they are transposed. Compare the untransposed and the transposed events, and you will see that where the original event has bright harmonics the transposed sound will have brightened harmonics and where the original event had dampened harmonics, the transposed harmonics will be dampened thus retaining some of the resonances of the original sound even though the harmonics have been transposed.

AmpLITUDE-BAsED TOOLs
Oftentimes, it is useful to reduce or eliminate quiet harmonics that are distracting or noisy, and other times, it is helpful to reduce the contrast between harmonics (such as when you want to create noisy or percussive sounds). Use both of the tools described below with sequences built from Ana Welcome and other recorded sounds to see how increasing and decreasing the contrast between harmonics can change the sound. After increasing or decreasing contrast, apply the Tune tool (or its variants) to refining the result. Increase contrast & filter low amp. This tool increases the difference in volume between harmonics and removes low amplitude harmonics entirely. This is especially useful when creating instruments from human voices and other instruments that tend to have noisy low-level harmonics. This is also great for smoothing the timbre of a buzzy source. Decrease contrast. Decrease Contrast reduces the difference in volume between harmonics. If the source sound has buzzy low-level harmonics, they can be brought out as can noisy harmonics. This tool can turn a human voice into an industrial cacophony.

Tips and Further Exploration QUICKTIps

Shift

key global changes - Hold down the shift key when using the Harmonic Scale Brush, Harmonic Brush and Eraser to apply the changes to all of the events in the sequence. Arrow keys - in any mode, you can use the arrow keys to offset the harmonics. Use the up/down arrow keys to nudge by a small amount and page up/down to offset (not transpose) the fundamental by one octave. Selections - When the Selection Tool is active, click and drag to add to the selection. Shift-drag to toggle the selection. In the other editing modes, hold down the command-key and drag in the event area to extend the selection or shift-command-drag to invert the selection status. Shift-click events to toggle their selection status. Brushes - The Eraser and Harmonic Scale Brush make use of the rooms brush. The Brush Size Tool controls the brush size. Use the Eraser to erase individual harmonics. Use Harmonic Scale Brush to emphasize or deemphasize existing harmonics. Hold down the option key when using the tool to de-emphasize harmonics and use it without the option key to brighten them.

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TUTORIAL: Spectrum Synth

IDEAs FOR FURTHER EXpLORATION

Randomization Fun - The Randomize tool can create interesting rhythmic variations and accents and is very useful for creating grooves from static sources such as a single-sustained piano note. Try using Randomize with the provided Drum Shuffle B and Violin Shuffle spectrum sequences. Spectrum Tunings - The Image Synth can create a custom tuning from the harmonics in an Instant Spectrum file. Use the Save Instant Spectrum command to export an Instant Spectrum file. In the Image Synths custom tuning dialog, click on the Build From Spectrum button and select an Instant Spectrum file. Groove Recipe - Take a look at the Piano Short Randomized spectrum sequence for a groove derived from a single sustained piano note. Below is the recipe used to create the spectrum sequence. You can use it to create grooves from just about any sample of a sustained note:
Open Type

Auto-Build

the source sample into 8 or 16 slices

< to halve the event durations Type r to repeat the events Select some events and randomize
Explore

different tempos

EXpLORE THE REsT OF THE TOOLs

The Spectrum Synth provides a number of tools not covered in these tutorials. Be sure to explore the rest of the tools on your own and to take a look at the Reference Manual for details about all of the tools.

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Tutorial: Sequencer
About the Sequencer
The Sequencer Room will seem familiar to users of Xx our MIDI-sequencer and algorithmic composition tool. The room is designed for quickly creating melodic and rhythmic motifs that can be imported into the Image Synth or used directly in the Montage Room. If you find the Image Synths paint-like approach to composition cumbersome, you can compose your music in the sequencer and import it into the Image Synth for further processing.

Getting Acquainted - QuickTour

The Sequencers content area is a piano-roll style display of the sequence. Sequences contain one track and can be up to 16 measures long. You will notice that one measure more than the official sequence length is displayed. When you loop or render a sound, only the official number of measures are rendered/looped.

PREsET SEQUENCEs, INsTRUmENTs, ImpORTINg INTO THE ImAgE SYNTH

Choose

a sequence. Choose one of the sequences from the File popup . The listed sequences are those found in MetaSynths Sequences folder Choose Open from the Choose Instrument popup. Choose any instrument from MetaSynths Instruments 5.0 folder. HINT: to get to the Instruments 5.0 directory, choose Instruments 5.0 from the Open dialogs Favorites popup.
The Choose Instrument (at left) and the Edit Instrument popups. The Choose Instrument popups icon depends on the type of instrument in use.

Preview. Editing

Press the Play Loop button to start the sequence looping.

instruments during preview. Click on the Edit Instrument icon to invoke the Edit Instrument floating window. Move the window so that the File popup is visible. Choose another preset from the File popup. Playback continues using the open instrument. This makes it possible to edit the instrument and hear it in different contexts. Dismiss the Edit Instrument window by clicking its close box Stop playback by pressing the spacebar or the play button Save the sequence. Choose Save As and save the sequence. If you save the sequence to MetaSynths Sequences folder, the sequence will always appear in the File popup. In any case, the sequence will appear in the File popup during your current work session. Make sure playback is stopped. Play a Drum sequence. Choose one of the sequences from the File popup whose name starts with DRUM. Press Play. Notice that the instrument has changed to a multisample drum instrument and that blue dots appear on the keyboard display to the left of the content area.

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TUTORIAL: Sequencer

MultiSampler Samples. The Sequencer Room indicates the samples that make up MultiSampler instruments with blue dots on the keyboard.

Stop

play. Click on the keys that have blue dots. These dots indicate the samples that make up the multisampler instrument. Scroll the sequence vertically. Sequences are only one windowful wide, but they may contain notes below or above what is visible in the content area. Depending on how large the window is, there may be notes not visible in the window. Move the mouse vertically in the content area or on the keyboard icon and watch the Tool Tips to see the pitch associated with the mouse location. To scroll, hold down the h key and drag the content area up or down Importing into the Image Synth. Switch to the Image Synth. Activate the XEditor by clicking in the lower-pane. Choose a canvas width. Type q or choose Import Current Sequence from the File popup menu. NOTE: If the sequence notes dont span the width of the canvas, type d to clear the selection, then type q to re-import. Choose the Drum Instrument from the Choose Instrument popup. Press the preview button or spacebar to preview. Return to the Sequencer. When importing a sequence, the Image Synth will scale the sequence to fill the canvas width where possibleadjusting the Pixels Per Beat setting as needed. The Image Synth uses a maximum setting of 32 pixels per beat when importing from the Sequencer. So, if the Image Synth canvas is wide and the sequence is short, the image may not fill the canvas.

SEQUENCER BAsICs
Set

the tempo, measures and beats (per measure). This determines the length of the sequence. The entire sequences width is displayed in the window. Turn the grid on and set the grid size to 240 (one beat). The grid is on when the grid icon appears in color. Use the Dance Drum instrument. Choose Open from instrument popup. Choose Instruments 5.0 from the
Clear

Favorites popup . In the MultiSamplers directory, find and open the Dance Drum multisampler. the content area. Type a to select all then press the backspace or delete key of your computer keyboard. the Pencil Tool. Select the pencil tool by clicking on it. Click in the content area to place some notes. Control-click in the content area to audition notes without placing them. Click and drag to the right to place a note and increase its duration. The duration is quantized to the grid. - 50 -

Use

TUTORIAL: Sequencer
Use

the Pulse/Rhythm tool. Select the Pulse/Rhythm Tool by clicking on it. Set the grid to 60 (sixteenth notes). Find a cymbal sound (by control-clicking in the canvas and scrolling up or down as needed). Click near a beat boundary. The Rhythm Tool alternates notes and spaces with the current grid spacing. Click near the offbeat on a different line to add alternating notes as shown in the picture below:

Change

Duration. Click on the Change Duration tool and drag slightly to the left to shorten the notes (which should still be selected from the previous steps. Change instrument and clear the canvas. Choose Open from the Choose Instrument popup. Choose a nondrum instrument from any subfolder of the MetaSynth Instruments folder. Clear the content area by choosing select all from the Edit popup menu and press backspace.
Use

the note brush. Activate the Note Brush by clicking on its icon. Set the Grid to 60 (sixteenth note) or 120 (eighth note). Choose Pentatonic from the Scale popup .menu. Click in the content area and drag the across the canvas to paint notes in a continuous trail. Click and drag again to paint more notes.

Use

the Selection Tool. Activate the Selection Tool by clicking on it. Select some notes by clicking and dragging. Add to the selection by holding down the shift key and clicking on some more notes. TIP! No matter what tool is active, you can hold down the command key and drag to select notes. To deselect individual notes hold down the shift key and drag a selection around the note (dont just shift-click on the note).

Make

chord. Click on the Make Chord tool to make chords of the selected notes using the current scale. You can also paint chords using the Chord Brush. Scale and Mode. Choose a scale from the popup menu, and change the key using the key popup. The notes are adjusted to fit the scale and mode (key). NOTE: You can define your own custom scales by choosing the Custom Scale item. The Sequencer is very simple. The key and mode are applied to all the notes in the sequence. Use a 12-tone (dodecaphonic) scale if you do not want MetaSynth to impose a scale. Adjusting note volume. Select notes in the sequence by either command-dragging or using the selection tool. Click on the Change Velocity Tool and drag left or right to change the note volumes. You can create crescendos and decrescendos using the velocity ramp tools found at either side of Change Velocity. (NOTE: For historical reasons, namely the connection between the Sequencer Room and Xx, our MIDI sequencer, we use
Save

the MIDI term velocity to refer to note volume.) the sequence. Choose Save Sequence As from the File popup. If you save it into MetaSynths Sequences folder, the sequence will be available every time you launch MetaSynth - 51 -

TUTORIAL: Sequencer

EXpLORE THE OTHER TOOLs

Explore the rest of the rooms tools. The Sequencer Room was designed to be simple and easy to learn. If you have questions, refer to the reference manuals Sequencer Room chapter.

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Tutorial: Instruments
MetaSynth instruments are built-in soft synths used in the Image Synth Room and the Sequencer Room that provide a vast array of timbres while being simple to use, edit and program. The instruments include wavetable synths, multi-oscillator FM synths, a unique granular synthesis-based instrument, and samplers. The instruments have been optimized for real-time playback since Image Synth sound pictures can often have hundreds of simultaneous voices. This tutorial provides a cursory introduction to the instruments that should be enough to get you started on your own explorations.

Background INsTRUmENT TYpEs

There are several types of instrument built into MetaSynth, and we plan to expand the options in the future.
WaveSynth.

The WaveSynth is a simple one-oscillator wavetable synthesizer. GrainSynth. GrainSynth is a synthesizer of our own invention. It is a unique synthesizer that applies granular synthesis techniques to a single-oscillator wavetable. It is capable of producing richer more complex sounds than the WaveSynth and its parameters create filter sweep-like effects that are great for techno music and electronica. MultiWaves. MultiWaves uses three wavetables that can be arranged in a variety of configurations that include several FM-synthesis modes, Phase Distortion synthesis, Pulse Width Modulation and several variations of traditional wavetable-based subtractive synthesis. Sampler. A single sample (sound file) instrument. MultiSampler. A multi-sample (sound file) instrument that maps different samples (sound files) to different note ranges.

INsTRUmENT ARCHITECTURE
MetaSynth instruments share a basic architecture.
Set-up

Parameters. This section covers the master volume, attack and release envelope, fine tuning and other settings. Sound source/oscillators. This section includes the instruments samples or oscillators . Modulations. This section includes vibrato and filter settings. Global Effect. This is an effect or filter setting that is applied to the instruments output.

Tutorial OpENINg & EXpLORINg INsTRUmENTs

Go

to the Sequencer Room. The Sequencer Room is often the most convenient room to use when auditioning and designing instruments as it allows you to switch between sequences while editing an instrument which allows you to hear the instrument in a variety of contexts. Choose any sequence from the File popup.
The Choose Instrument icon (at left) and the Edit Instrument icon. The Choose Instrument icon indicates that the current instrument is a WaveSynth.

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TUTORIAL: Instruments
Open

an instrument. Choose Open from Choose Instrument popup. The Choose Instrument popup has an icon that represents the type of instrument currently in use. So, it may not have the same icon you see in the illustration above. In the open dialog that appears navigate to MetaSynths instruments folder by choosing Instruments 5.0 from the Favorites popup. Open any instrument found in that folder (or its subfolders). When instruments are opened, they are added to the Choose Instrument popup which makes it easy to switch between the instruments used during a session.

Explore the instruments. Start looped playback by clicking on the Play Loop icon

and listen to the instrument. Audition more instruments by opening them and previewing. Make sure to explore a variety of instruments from the various instrument subfolders.

EXpLORE A WAVESYNTH INsTRUmENT

Edit

a WaveSynth instrument. Choose WaveSynth.syns from the Choose Instrument popup. The WaveSynth is the simplest of MetaSynths built-in instruments. It is a single oscillator wavetable synthesizer. Click on the Edit

Instrument icon to open the instrument editor. Loop play while editing. The instrument editor is a floating window. While it is open you can click on the buttons and icons in MetaSynths main window. Click on the Play Lop button . While the sequence is playing, choose other sequences from the File popup to hear what the instrument sounds like in those contexts. When you change sequence during playback, MetaSynth does not change the instrument which is convenient for exploring how an instrument sounds in different contexts.
Open

another instrument during playback. Click on the instrument dialogs Open Instrument button and open another WaveSynth instrument from the Instruments 5.0 folder. (Only WaveSynth instruments will be able

to be opened from the dialog.) Modify the waveform. Use the wavetables shaping tools to modify the synthesizers waveform. Click and drag in the waveform to manipulate the shape directly. Adjust the Set-Up parameters. Explore changes in the attack and release times of the instrument. Change the instruments overall volume with the Global Volume slider. (NOTE: In the Image Synth, the Attack time is treated slightly differently than in the Sequencer room. In the Image Synth, the Attack time cannot be longer than a pixels durationslow attacks in the Image Synth are generally provided by blurring the image pixels using the Smooth or Smooth Left tools.) Modulations & Global Filter Set-up. To emphasize the features provided by the Modulations section, set the Attack Time to 1, the Release Time to 1, and choose None from the Filter popup. Vibrato. Explore the vibrato parameters: Vibrato Rate, Vibrato Delay (the time between the note attack and when the vibrato starts) and Vibrato Amount. Attack Mode and Filter Time. The Attack Mode popup provides envelope-based filters that contour the sound. The Attack Mode (like the vibrato) is applied to each note played independently. The Filter Time parameter determines the length of the filter envelope used by the attack mode. Try each of the attack modes. Be sure to experiment with the Filter Time parameter for each attack mode. The Attack Modes are: Constant - no filter Sharper Attacks - sharpens the note attacks by making them brighter HF filter hard - contour the attack by filtering out high frequencies (i.e. using a low pass filter). This filter is great for creating analog-synth-like percussive sounds. HF filter soft - contour the attack by filtering out high frequencies - 54 -

TUTORIAL: Instruments

Bell Curve - open and close the filter using a bell curve shaped envelope.

Filter.

The Filter section of the instrument editor provides an effect/filter that is applied at the instrument output and is applied to all of the notes being played cumulatively at the synths output stage. Try each of the available effects. Be sure to check out the Distortion effect. Distortion effect hint: try a low value for the drive amplitude, a high value for the feedback and slightly different values for the left and right delay with the Dry/Wet slider at

about 60. Export the Instrument. Click on the Export File button to export the instrument. (Note: when you save a sequence or Image Synth preset, the instrument is saved with the preset or sequence and does not need to be exported). Close the editor. To close the editor window, click on the checkmark icon or click on the close box.

EXpLORE THE GRAIN SYNTH

The GrainSynth (also called the Granular Synth) is complicated to explain but easy to use and capable of creating a great variety of sounds. The GrainSynth architecture is especially great for creating sounds with intriguing sounds reminiscent of filter sweeps. For more information about this synth, see the Instruments chapter of the MetaSynth Reference manual.
Edit a GrainSynth while previewing. Choose the synth with the GrainSynth icon

from the Choose Instrument popup. The name that appears in the menu will be that of the most recently opened GrainSynth. Start a sequence playing by clicking on the Play Loop button. Click on the Edit Instrument icon.
The GrainSynths Set-Up and Modulations settings are quite different from most of the other instruments. Because the underlying technology is complex, the settings are difficult to explain with words but with a little experimentation they are easy to understand.

Set

the waveform to a sine wave. Click on the sine wave icon and drag to the right. The GrainSynth can create interesting sounds even with a sine wave source. Set the Global Filter to None. Set the Global Filter to None to ensure that you can clearly hear the effect of the parameters explored in this lesson. Adjust the Set-up parameters (TIP: tab to advance through the fields): Attack: 5 Release 100 Grain Attack Time: 0.5 Grain Bandwidth: 1 Static - Follow Pitch: 0 Formant position: 800 Adjust the Modulation settings Vibrato Amount: 0 Note Sweep: 800 Sweep Amount: 245 Explore the Note Sweep time and Sweep Amount. Try different values for the Note Sweep parameter from small to large. The Note Sweep setting is the time over which the sweep is done. Explore the Sweep Amount - 55 -

TUTORIAL: Instruments setting to hear its influence. Explore the Mode options. The Granular Synths mode determines the wave shape of the grains that are used to modulate the displayed waveform. They can have a profound effect on the sound of the synth. Whenever you make changes in the Granular Synth, it is worth seeing how they sound with different grain modes.
Explore

the Grain Attack Time and Grain Bandwidth settings. Explore the Formant Position and Static-Follow Pitch settings. Try different values for each of these settings. The Static-Follow Pitch parameter determines whether the note pitch influences the synths filter effects. You may want to change sequences while editing in order to hear how the settings influence notes in different pitch ranges. The Formant Position is the synths resonant frequency. The Static-Follow Pitch setting determines whether the resonance is transposed with the note pitch or whether it stays constant or whether it is a mixture of transposed and untransposed resonances. Explore. Now, explore by changing all of the different settings (but keeping the waveform the same). There are surprisingly rich interactions between the parameters. Changing Grain Attack Time and Grain Bandwidth can have a dramatic effect on what happens when the sweep parameters or formant position parameters are changed. Repeat the explorations with complex waveforms. With just a sine wave, it was able to create intriguing sounds. Now, reset the GrainSynth settings to those in the first steps of this lesson and use the wave shaping tools to create a richer waveform. Repeat the explorations of Note Sweep (time), Sweep Amount, Formant Position, etc. Dismiss the Edit Instrument dialog and stop playback.

EXpLORE MULTIWAVEs
The MultiWaves synth is the most versatile of the built-in synthesizers. MultiWaves synths have three oscillators, but there are several different modes. The Mode determines whether this synth behaves like a subtractive wavetable synth or an FM Synth. The three oscillators can be crossfaded to create complex timbres that change over time. MultiWaves uses oscillator-crossfading rather than complex filter envelopes to create rich tones. This architecture provides a balance of rich tones with low CPUoverhead which is necessary to accommodate the hundreds of voices sometimes required in the Image Synth.

The MultiWaves instrument is a three oscillator synthesizer with many different modes. It is really several synths in one. The MultiWaves instrument uses a unique method to make the most of its simple architecture. The three oscillators can crossfaded to create different timbres during the attack and release portions of a note. The instrument mode determines not only whether the instrument uses FM synthesis or some other synthesis type but also the relationship between the three oscillators. The A, B, and C used in the mode names refer to the first, second and third oscillators, and indicate what portion of the timbre the oscillators provide. For example AB Attack C Sustain means that oscillators A and B provide the attack timbre and that oscillator C provides the sustain/release timbre. The available modes are:

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TUTORIAL: Instruments MultiWaveSynth Modes: Basic 3-oscillator synths AB Attack C sustain AB Attack C constant C Attack AB sustain C Attack AB constant Parallel Fuzzy FM Synths FM C FM C lfo FM AB FM AB lfo FM Sweep FM Cascade WaveShaper Synths WaveShaper WaveShaper LFO DualWaveShaper Sweep WaveShaper FM Other Synths Parallel Sweep Phase Distorted PW Modulated PW Mix

Set-up. Choose the instrument with the MultiWaves icon

and set the Filter to none. Started looped playback,

and open the instrument editing window (by clicking on the Edit Instrument icon).

FM EXpLORATION
Choose

FM C from the Mode popup. FM C is a simple FM synthesizer where oscillators A and B are the carriers for the attack and sustain portions of the sound while oscillator C acts as the modulator. Set all oscillators to sine waves. Use Wave As sine wave tool to make Wave A s sine wave. Type c to copy the waveform. Click in Wave Bs display, and type v to paste the sine wave. Click in Wave Cs display, and type v to paste. Parameter set-up. Set the following parameters to: Attack to Sustain time: 10 (the minimum value) Constant - Follow: 100 Modulation Frequency: 50 FM Feedback: 0 Attack Mode: Constant Change Wave B. Use the waveshaping tools to change the shape of Wave B (the oscillator that supplies the sustain/release portion of the note). Explore the Attack to Sustain time. The Attack to Sustain time determines how long it takes to crossfade from Wave A (the attack) to Wave B. Explore the full range of values. Modulation Frequency. The Modulation Frequency parameter defines the frequency relationship between the modulator (oscillator c in this case) and the carriers. The setting is the ratio (expressed as a percentage) of the carrier pitch to the modulator pitch. 50% sets the modulator one octave lower than the carrier. 100% sets the carrier and modulator to the same pitch. 200% sets the modulator one octave higher than the carrier (doubling a frequency makes it one octave higher). Different ratios result in different timbres. Even multiples (100, 200, 400) and odd multiples (300, 500) have distinctly different characteristics. Values that are not simple multiples (or divisions) tend to create noisy and/or clangorous tones with lots of sidebands.
Explore

Modulation Frequency. Set Wave B back to a sine wave. Set the modulation frequency to 50. Set the modulation frequency to 51. Notice how clangorous the timbre is. Try each of these modulation frequencies:

100, 200, 250, 300, 400 Explore FM Feedback. Click on the FM Feedback parameters right arrow repeatedly to increment the feedback setting. This setting allows the synths output to be fed back as an additional carrier. With some combinations of settings, feedback can add a little bit of dirt or bite. Generally a low value is best. High values tend to be too distorted or noisy to be useful. Values less than 30 tend to work best. Even a setting of 1 or 2 can provide a nice effect. - 57 -

TUTORIAL: Instruments
Set

FM Feedback back to 0 Set the Constant - Follow Parameter to 0. The tone becomes clangorous because the modulator has stopped following the note being played. This parameter determines whether the modulator tracks the carrier frequency (note pitch) or not. When set to 0, the modulator does not track the carrier and 100% represents A2 (440 Hz), 200% represents A3, etc. Constant-Follow at 0 is good for creating metallic unpitched tones. Constant-Follow settings between 0 and 100 result in a hybrid tone created by using both the fixed and non-fixed modulator. Set Constant - Follow to 97.5. Settings close to 100 can add little bit of noise, dirt that is sometimes desirable when you want to dirty up the sound. Click on the right side of the parameters numeric display and drag down to adjust the fractional part of the number. Explore the Attack Modes. Explore each of the Attack Modes (in the Modulations section of the dialog) with different filter time settings to further contour the sound. Explore the other FM Modes. The other FM modes set up the relationship between the oscillators differently. Explore each of them: FM C lfo - waves A and B are carriers and C is the modulator. Waves and B are crossfaded with an lfo that cycles freely (i.e. the LFO is not re-triggered with each note attack). FM AB - wave A is the modulator during the attack portion of a note, wave B is the modulator during the sustain portion, and wave C is carrier waveform. FM AB lfo - wave A and wave B are modulators crossfaded using an LFO, and wave C is the carrier waveform. FM Sweep - Wave A is the modulator. Waves B and C are carriers crossfaded using an LFO. Wave A is squeezed (using the technique described in the section on the Pulse Width Modulated Synths) using the Modulation frequency control. At 200%, the wave is squeezed so that it is half the normal width which essentially raises the harmonics by one octave without changing the base frequency. FM Cascade - Wavetable A modulates Wavetable B and the result modulates the carrier (wavetable C).

NON-FM MULTIWAVE SYNTHs

Set-up.

Stop playback. Open the sequence file MultiWave Seq found in Tutorial Files:Instrument Tutorials. Start looped playback. (Open the instrument editing dialog if it is not still open). This sequence uses a MultiWaves instrument whose mode is set to AB Attack C Sustain. The attack portion is created by crossfading oscillators A and B (under the control of a sine wave LFO) and the sustain portion is provided by oscillator C. The sequences tempo is slow and the notes sustained so that the note contours are easy to hear.
The MultiWaves instrument used in this part of the lesson. Notice that the three waveforms are quite distinct to make easy to distinguish their contributions to the sound.

Explore

Blend A/B period. The Blend A/B period setting controls the speed of an LFO that crossfades between - 58 -

TUTORIAL: Instruments the A and B waveforms that provide the attack. Set the slider to the minimal value and gradually increase it as the sequence loops. Note how the attack portion crossfades back and forth between the two attack waves. Explore Attack to Sustain time. Set the Attack to Sustain time to its maximum value. This parameter determines the transition time from the attack to the sustain. Explore the full range of this parameters settings. Explore Attack Mode. Explore different Attack Mode settings and FIlter Time settings. Explore FM Feedback. All of the MultiWave synths (even the non-FM synths) provide FM feedback. Explore how modest use of FM Feedback adds some nice dirt to the sound. Explore the other MultiWave synths. Explore the other non-FM modes of this instrument. They are: AB Attack C Constant - wave C sound during the entire note with A and B being crossfaded during the attack C Attack AB Sustain - wave C provides the attack and A and B are crossfaded for the sustain C Attack AB constant - wave C sounds during the attack while A and B are active during the entire duration Parallel - three parallel oscillators that can be slightly detuned for richly chorused timbres. Close the Edit Instrument dialog. See the Instruments chapter of the Reference Manual for descriptions of the other MultiWaveSynth modes and explore them.

EXpLORE A SAmpLER
Sampler and MultiSampler instruments are very similar and have the same settings. Sampler instruments trigger the same sample throughout their range, and MultiSampler instruments can have different samples mapped to different frequency ranges.
Set-up.

Go to the Image Synth Room. Open the preset file Instruments 5.0/Instrument Tutorials/Instrument Tutorial.presets. Select the first preset in the library. the preview. Click on the Preview icon to start the preview. The instrument icon displayed in the Image Synth (or Sequencer) indicates that the sampler instrument uses a looped sample. Unlooped Samplers are indicated with the following icon:

Start

Open

Edit Instrument window. Click on the Edit Instrument icon to open the instrument editing window.
The Sampler Instrument Edit dialog. A Sampler uses a single sound file as its source. The sound file is pitch-shifted according to the note being played. Early versions of MetaSynth played the sound loaded into the Sample Editor. Samplers now always use a disk file in order to make them independent of MetaSynths internal structures.

Change

the base pitch. Click in the base pitch octave display (the base pitch is initially set to A 2). Drag up or down to change it. Set it back to 2. The base pitch tells MetaSynth what incoming pitch should trigger the sample without pitch shifting. - 59 -

TUTORIAL: Instruments
Change

the Loop Mode. Samplers (and MultiSamplers) have three loop modes: Normal, Crossfaded Loop, Natural Loop. Normal will not loop the sample. Natural Loop will observe internal looping points (if any have been set) or loop the entire sample end-to-end. Crossfaded Loop will crossfade the beginning and end of the loop to ensure that it loops smoothly. Open the Ana MetaSynth Speech file and make it stereo. Choose File->Open in the main menubar and open the file Ana MetaSynth Speech found in MetaSynths Sounds folder. Click on the Mono-Stereo Toggle to make the sound stereo. Play Preset 2. Choose preset 2. Start the preview playing. ( The instrument editing dialog should still be open) Get From MetaSynth. Click on the Get From MetaSynth button. Get From MetaSynth saves the contents of the Sample Editor buffer to a file on disk called Sampler Sound (and will replace the old Sampler Sound file if there was one) and load it into the current Sampler instrument. The instrument references the file it created called Sampler Sound and not the sound in memory. So if you make changes in the Sample Editor, they will not be reflected by the instrument. TIP! You should consider Sampler Sound to be a temporary file. Get From MetaSynth is a command that you mostly use when you are temporarily trying something out. It is a quick and convenient way to get the sample editor sound into the current sampler and is useful when exploring. It can also be useful if you are creating a general-purpose sound-processing preset in the Image Synth intended to process whatever sound is loaded into the Sample Editor. Generally, you should explicitly save the sound file that you want to use in your samplers with meaningful names and load them into the sampler using the open/load file button rather than using the temporary file created by Get From MetaSynth. Otherwise, when you reload the sampler, it will use whatever sound happened to be the last one loaded with Get From MetaSynth.

Sample Start. MetaSynth has a sophisticated series of options that allows the instrument to start sample playback from a point other than the beginning. The start point can even cycle during playback. Ana MetaSynth Speech is a good file to use for experimentation since it is easy to hear where in the file the playback is starting.
Fixed

Offset. Set the Sample Start popup to Fixed Offset. This shifts the sample start point. Explore the entire range of the offset amplitude setting. (Offset Amplitude represents the offset as a percentage of the total duration). Cycle. Set Sample Start to Cycle. Explore different values for this parameter. This will cause the start point to be cycled. The first time the instrument is triggered it will start at the beginning and will cycle to later and later offsets up until the value set with the offset amplitude parameter. Randomized. Choose Randomized from the Sample Start popup. Explore a wide range of offset amplitudes. The start point will be chosen at random each time the sampler is triggered. The start point will be anywhere between the start and the point specified by the offset amplitude. Random Cycle 8. Choose Random Cycle 8 from the Sample Start popup. Random Cycle 8 and Random Cycle 16 cycle through a table of random offsets when notes are triggered. Try offset amplitudes of 0, 20, 40, and 60. New random table. Click on the New Random Table button and notice that the graphic representation of the offsets changes. Each time you click on the button, a new random table is generated. (When an instrument is saved, the random table is saved with it so that sequences and presets rendered from it will render the same every time). Edit the random table. Click on the random tables bars to set them to different heights. The higher the bar, the greater the sample offset (within the range determined by the offset amplitude parameter). Randomized Offset. Choose Randomized Offset. Explore different offset values. This option modulates the sample start time by the offset + a random value ranging from +-1/8 the sample length). The left and right - 60 -

TUTORIAL: Instruments channels are randomized independently. Global Time. Choose Global Time and explore different offsets. MetaSynth picks a start time for each note by using an offset that corresponds to the time being played back. For example, if a note occurs two seconds into the Image Synth preset, the note use the audio that occurs 2 seconds into the source sample. The Offset Amplitude parameter determines the range of start times as a percentage of the source sounds duration. When it is set to 100, MetaSynth will choose start times from the entire length of the sound. If it is set to 50, start times will be limited to the first half of the source sound. Attack Mode. Explore the different attack modes. Be sure to vary Filter Time setting to hear how it influences the sound.
Choose

another sound file. Click on the dialogs Open Sample button

. Choose any sound file. Load the

sound file being used by the instrument into the Sample Editor by clicking the Load Sample button . Explore the parameters. Explore the other settings in the Edit Instrument window. Add the preset. Click on the Image Synths Add Preset icon to add the preset with the current instrument settings. The instrument settings are automatically stored with the preset. Close the instrument editing window.

EXpLORE A MULTISAmpLER
MultiSamplers and Samplers are nearly identical. The user interface features the items required to assign different samples to different key ranges.
The MultiSampler Instrument Edit dialog. MultiSamplers are nearly identical to Samplers with the additional capability of mapping different samples to different ranges.

Preview

Preset 3. Choose preset 3 from this tutorials preset library and start the preview playing. Click on the

Edit Instrument icon. Next/Previous. A multisampler can use more samples than can be displayed in the window. Use the next and previous buttons to flip back and forth between the pages. Close the Instrument Edit window. Build a MultiSampler. Choose Build MultiSampler from the Choose Instrument popup. Navigate to MetaSynths Instruments 5.0/MultiSamplers/Slow Orch. Choose any sample found in the Slow Orch folder and click Open. MetaSynth builds an instrument from the samples found in the folder and assigns the note ranges automatically. MetaSynth can automatically assign note ranges when the samples are labeled with the note name and octave. - 61 -

Tutorial: Montage Room

The Montage Room is a streamlined, easy-to-use 24-track audio sequencing, recording and layering environment. Use it to layer and export your MetaSynth sounds or to record and mix entire compositions. While it is possible to do complete mixes in the Montage Room, you dont have to use it to mix full-length compositions. If you prefer working with another audio sequencer, the Montage Room is a convenient place to create richly layered sounds that you export for use in your preferred sequencing environment. When used with our VTrack audio sequencer, you can synch MetaSynth to VTrack in order to facilitate composing for video/film. This tutorial requires that you have completed the previous tutorial chapters since the Montage Room is, in essence, the room that ties it all together.

In a montage, sounds are represented by the graphic element that will give the clearest possible representation of the sounds content (such as an Image Synth sound picture, or Sequencer sequence graphic) which makes it easy to have visualize your mix/composition.

The Montage Room tutorials take you through the basics of montage creation:
Getting

Acquainted. The basics of montage room events, navigation and playback. Basic Editing. Adding and editing events, fade envelopes, adjusting track levels, track effects. Mixing. Mixing a montage to disk. Mixing selections to memory. Recording. A short lesson on recording on audio in the Montage Room. Creating and managing montage projects. The basics of creating and managing montage projects.

Getting Oriented
When you open MetaSynth, it automatically opens the montage file named is MetaSynth.mont found in the - 62 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room MetaSynth folder. This guarantees that you always have a montage available for quick tasks like layering or compositing sounds. (MetaSynth will automatically create a new empty MetaSynth.mont file if you rename or delete MetaSynth.mont.) The default montage that is installed with MetaSynth is an Eric Wenger composition that demonstrates a full-length composition that uses all the kinds of elements MetaSynth can create. It is a good place to start acquainting yourself with the Montage Room and MetaSynth in general.
Go

to the Montage Room. You should see the default montage that was installed with MetaSynth. If you deleted, edited or renamed the original default montage, you should restore the default montage (by copying it to the top level of the MetaSynth folder) from the copy found in MetaSynths Tutorial Files/Default Montage Backup folder. Make a backup copy. Choose Save As from the File popup and give the montage a name like MetaSynthBKUP. mont. It is a good idea to periodically use Save As when working on a montage to create a snapshot of the montages current state. IMPORTANT! Make sure that you save the montage into the MetaSynth folder. Montages need to be in the folder that contains the elements they use (as will be explained in more detail later). Re-open the original montage. Choose MetaSynth.mont from the File popup to re-open the original montage. on Scroll in Play. Make sure that Scroll In Play is turned on in the Montage Rooms Edit popup. Expand the window size. When working in a large montage, it is useful to expand the window size to the largest convenient size. Press the play button and listen to the montage. Let the montage play all the way through and notice that different events are represented by different kinds of graphics and have different colored backgrounds that indicate the event type (Image Synth preset, sequencer sequence, spectrum sequence, audio file).
Turn Move

to Start/Move to End. When playback is complete, click on the Move to Start button

in the transport

controls to rewind to the beginning. You can use the Move to End montage.

button to scroll to the end of the

The Start Measure indicator indicates which measure is visible at the left-edge of the screen which is also where playback starts when you press the play button.
Start Measure Timeline

You can drag in the timeline to create a time selection.

Scroll

the montage. Click anywhere in the scroll region (below the timeline) to scroll the montage to that position. The Start Measure indicator will update to display the measure number of the leftmost visible measure. Press play; playback starts from the start measure you scrolled to. You can also scroll the montage by clicking on the red scroll dot and dragging. Make a timeline Selection. Click and drag in the timeline to create a time selection. All of the events in the selected region become selected. - 63 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room

Loop

the Time Selection. Click on the Play and Loop Time Selection button . All of the events in the selected time region will loop (regardless of whether the events are selected or not). Loop play is convenient when adjusting volume envelopes (described later), track volumes and effects. Press the spacebar to stop playback. Loop Selected Events in Time Range. Shift-click some events in the selected time region (which will toggle their selection state). Hold down the command-key and click the loop play button. Now, only the selected events in the time region play. Shift-click to select or de-select events in the time range as the range loops. Press the spacebar to stop playback. Play Selected Events. Sometimes it is useful to play selected events regardless of the time range selection. Click on any event to select it. Shift-click on another event (preferably one that plays at the same time as the one you selected) to select it. Click on the Play Event Selection button. Press the spacebar to stop playback. The shortcut for Play Event Selection is command-spacebar. See the Keyboard Shortcuts chapter of the Reference Manual if command-space does not work as there may be a system-wide global shortcut that needs to be turned off. Looping selection play. To loop playback of selected events, command-click the Play Event Selection button . This loops selected events rather than the time range. Event Types & Display MetaSynth uses different event types for the different categories of sounds that it knows about: Image Synth presets, Sequencer Room sequences, Spectrum Synth sequences, and audio-only events (any audio file not associated with the Image Synth, Sequencer or Spectrum Synth). There are two display modes:
Icon+Text Graphic

mode. MetaSynth displays a graphic icon plus the event name. mode. MetaSynth displays events without event names. Audio-only events are displayed with an accurate (but coarse) representation of audio events which recalculated when the event is split or its duration is changed. (In Icon+Text mode, audio-only events are represented by the waveform of the entire audio file -- even if the event represents just a portion of it.)

Each event type (MetaSynth Preset, Spectrum Sequence, Sequencer Sequence, Sound file) has a distinct appearance to make them easy to distinguish. The table below shows the event types and their representations.
Event Type Image Synth Preset Icon+Text Mode Graphic Mode

Sequencer File

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TUTORIAL: Montage Room

Spectrum Sequence

Audio Event In graphic mode, the event displayed is updated when an audio event is edited.

the display mode. Toggle the display mode by clicking on the Display Mode Toggle . Use whichever display mode you prefer. Zoom in/out. To zoom in or out on the montage, click on the Zoom In /Zoom Out icon. To zoom out with the keyboardk type hg (at the same time); to zoom in type hj. Scrolling with the hand cursor. Press and hold h to get the hand cursor. Drag up, down, left or right to scroll the montage. On all but the largest monitors, some tracks wont be visible unless you scroll down to them. Edit event sources For Image Synth, Sequencer and Spectrum Sequence events, there is an easy way to get back to the source preset or sequence so that you can edit it. You can also easily load the audio file associated with any event into the Sample Editor for editing.
Edit

Toggle

an events Image Synth preset. Click on any Image Synth preset event to select it. Click on the Edit

Source Preset or Sequence button . The source preset is loaded into the Image Synth. You can now make a change to the preset and choose Render & Save from the File menu to save the preset and re-render its audio. You can use Edit Source Preset or Sequence to edit any Image Synth, Sequencer Room sequence or Spectrum Sequence in the montage. Edit Source Audio. All events in a montage have an associated audio file. To load the audio file into the Sample Editor, select the event and click on the Load Sound File button or type f.

Lesson: Montage Editing Basics

Before learning to create a montage project from scratch, it is useful to learn the basics of editing a montage. SETUP: Choose Save As from the File popup menu and save the montage with a name like Tutorial.mont. Make sure that you save it into folder that contains the MetaSynth application. Montage files must be in the same folder as their source files. All of our source files are in the MetaSynth applications folder. (If you are using the demo version, make a copy of the MetaSynth.mont file in the Finder and rename the copy Tutorial.mont.
Examining

the library. The Montage Room maintains a library of the elements available to the current montage. (How you add elements to the library is covered later in this chapter.) There are popup menus for the different types of elements that can be added to a montage:

The Insert Preset popup The Insert Sound popup Spectrum Synth. The Insert Sequence popup

displays the presets of the montages Image Synth preset library. displays those audio files not associated with the Image Synth, Sequencer or displays the sequencer and spectrum synth sequences in the library. - 65 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room

INsERTINg EVENTs
This part of the lesson is very simple. We will be inserting events into the sequence with and without the grid since the grid influences the movement of the insertion point. This behavior is especially important to understand when building sequences from Image Synth presets. NOTE: The tutorial provides instructions about particular presets and sequences to add so that the tutorial can be followed whether you are working with MetaSynth or the MetaSynth DEMO. If you are using the full-version, you can insert any elements into the tutorial montage that appear in the library popups. If you insert an element that has not already been rendered as a sound file, MetaSynth will ask permission to render them when you press play. Inserting Events with the Grid On
Set

the grid spacing and zoom. Turn the grid on (if it is not already on) by clicking on its icon . Set the grid spacing to 960 ticks. 960 ticks is one measure. (240 ticks equals one beat.) Set the zoom level so that about eight measures are visible. The Zoom tool is found at the left edge of the lower toolbar.

The insertion bar set to the beginning of track one.

Add

an Image Synth event to the sequence. Set the insertion bar to the beginning of track one by clicking at

the desired location. Click and hold the Insert Preset tool . Drag the mouse over the fifth preset. The preset number will be visible at the bottom left of the popup and the instrument name will be visible on the bottom right. Release the mouse to insert the preset as an event in the montage. The insertion bar moves to closest grid point to the events end--which is the beginning of measure 3. Add another Image Synth Event. Choose Sound 6 from the Image Synth popup. Notice that this event extends slightly beyond the measure boundary. But, since we have the grid on, the insertion point is set to the beginning of the measure. It is ok to overlap events in a montage. Both events will play without cutting each other off.
When an event is inserted with the grid on, the insertion point (the yellow line) moves to the grid point closest to the events end. This ensures that the next event will be inserted at an appropriate time. When the grid is off, the insertion point moves to the events end (which might not correspond to a grid point). In this case, the sound rendered from the preset extends just beyond the measure boundary because the instrument from which it was rendered had a release time. The next inserted event will start at the measures beginning.

Insert

more presets and preview. Insert any of the following presets: 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 26, 64, 70, 89, 93, 94. 95, 96, 97. These presets have been pre-rendered so that the tutorial can be performed by demo users. If you are using the full version, you can insert any presets that you would like. Insert sound on track 2. Click at the beginning of track two to set the insertion point. Insert the sound from the library by choosing it from the Insert Sound popup . Insert Sequences and Spectrum Sequences. Insert any of the following pre-rendered items from the Insert Sequence popup : PSMO, PSMO B, PSMO Bass, H attk B0, Oioi inv E0, SPS darkdrum E-2. Sequencer - 66 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room room files are represented by a thumbnail view of the sequence. Spectrum Sequences that have been rendered are represented by the rendered sounds waveform. Unrendered Spectrum Sequences appear as an orange rectangle. Moving events. Click on any event and drag it to a new position or track. Your dragging is restricted to the grid which we set earlier to 960 (which is one measure when there 4 Beats Per Measure). Inserting Events with the Grid Off
Turn

the grid off by clicking on its icon. The icon is dimmed when the grid is off. Insert Image Synth presets on an empty track. Click at the beginning of an empty track. Insert the first preset from the Image Synth library. Note the position of the insertion point. Rather than being positioned at the beginning of the nearest measure, it is positioned at the very end of the inserted event. Insert the next preset. Insert the second preset from the library by choosing it from the Insert Preset popup. Notice that it begins where the previous event ends and is not placed on a measure boundary. When inserting a series of presets and sequences, the grid should be left on so that the events will be aligned rhythmically. Generally, MetaSynth presets and sequences will be slightly longer than their nominal length due to the release time of their instruments. Remove the events that you just inserted. There are several ways to remove events: using the backspace key, the erase tool or the Edit popups Clear command. Save the montage. To save the montage, type s (make sure that the XEditorthe lower pane of the windowis selected) or choose Save Montage from the File popup. (Demo users will not be able to perform this step).

TRACKs, EVENT EDITINg, FADEs AND DIspLAY mODEs

Set-up. In the Finder, find the MetaSynth.mont file in the MetaSynth folder and copy it. Rename the copy Tutorial2. mont. Open the montage either by double-clicking on it in the Finder or choosing Open Montage from the Montage Rooms File popup. Tracks and Track Set-Up Each track has its own global volume, pan and effect setting. When first starting work on a montage, it is a good idea to set up the basic settings for your tracks. The steps below walk you through some simple techniques that you can use to get set-up and later to refine your mix.
Mute

tracks. Mute all of the tracks except the first by clicking on the Track Mute buttons that appear at the left-edge of each track. Loop a time region. Drag in the timeline to select a time region that has events on several tracks. Click on the
Adjust

Loop Play button. the first tracks volume & pan. Select the first track by clicking anywhere in the track or on the track select button. The volume slider is found at the bottom center of the window below the tracks area. This is the maximum volume setting for events on the track. Later, you will learn how to set events to lower volume levels using fades.

The Track Volume Slider adjusts the volume of the selected track.

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TUTORIAL: Montage Room

The Track Pan slider sets the tracks pan/balance setting.

Add a track effect. Each track can have a track effect. Add an Effect to the track by clicking on the tracks Effect

button. Choose an effect from the popup menu, adjust the settings to your liking and click the OK button. the rest of the tracks. Set the track level, pan and effect for the rest of the tracks. Mute and unmute the other tracks as needed. You may find it useful to stop playback, select a time region with events on the tracks that you are adjusting and restarting Loop Playback. Adjusting the volume of all tracks. It is possible to make a relative volume change to all tracks. To change the volume level of all tracks, select a track then hold down the shift-key and make a change to the volume slider. The faders of all tracks will be adjusted relative to the change. For example, if you increase the volume level 20%, the volume of all tracks will be increased by 20%. Stop playback. Stop playback by pressing the spacebar of your computer keyboard.
Adjust

EVENT EDITINg
Selecting Events Drag selecting events. Drag select several events by clicking in an empty region of a track and dragging out a rectangle that includes the events you want to select.

Command-dragging a selection. Hold down the command key and drag out a rectangle to select the enclosed

events. When you command-drag, you can start the selection by clicking on an event; you do not have to start the selection in an empty area when command dragging. Shift-click to toggle an event selection. Hold down the shift key and click on any event to toggle its selection state. Use shift-click to add or remove events from a selection. Drag in the timeline. You can select events in a time region by clicking and dragging in the timeline. All events that start in the selected time region will be selected. You can add events to the selection by shift-clicking the events. Replacing Events. There are times when you want to replace a particular event with another item in the library. Click on any event to select it, and release the mouse. Click on the event (again) and hold down the mouse button until the library popup appears. Select an event from the library popup. The events fade (if there is one) is preserved. NOTE: the new event will have the duration of its source material. If the replaced event was cut, the cut is not preserved. Moving events & quantizing. Events in the timeline can be moved by clicking and dragging them. Turn the grid off. Click on an event to select it and drag it to a new location. Click on the Quantize Selection button - 68 to

TUTORIAL: Montage Room align the event with the nearest grid point. The grid and moving/nudging. Nudge the event left or right using the arrow keys so that it is no longer lined up with the grid. Turn the grid on and use the arrow keys. The event is moved by the grid interval. Drag the event. Notice that the event moves by grid intervals and does not snap to the grid. If you need to align the event to the grid, use the quantize button. Duplicating and pasting events Set the grid. Turn the grid on and set it to 960 ticks (one measure). Option-drag to duplicate. Hold down the option key, click on any event, and drag to copy the event. Paste Merge. Click on track 3s Ana MetaSynth speech event to select it. Type c (without the command key) to copy the event. Click on track 3 at the beginning of measure seven. Type v (the shortcut for the Edit popup menus Paste Merge command). The new event is pasted over the end of a pre-existing event. When events overlap, both events play back. Paste Insert. Click at the beginning of track 3. Type i or choose Paste Insert from the Edit popup menu. Time is inserted into the sequence (moving all events after the insertion point) and copied events are inserted on their original tracks. Use Paste Insert when you want to duplicate a section of your montage or if you want to insert a countoff event. Fades Event Fades adjust event volumes and fade an event in and/or out.
Fade

an event. Click on any event to select it. Choose Linear In from the Choose Fades popup . A blue line appears in the event to indicate the fade. Audition the fade by typing command-spacebar. You may also audition the selected event by clicking the Play Event Selection button .

Edit

the fade. Click the Edit Fades button which invokes the Fade Editor. Adjust the start and stop level. Click OK and audition the fade by playing the selection. To hear the fade in context, select a region in the timeline

that includes the faded event and click on the Play & Loop Time Selection button . Remove the fade. To remove the fade, select the desired event(s) and type the = key Experiment with different fade types. MetaSynth provides several different fade types, including multilevel fades. Slightly different settings are available for different fade types. Some fades allow the start and end volume to be set. Others let you set the amount of slope and maximum level. Choose different fade curves for different events, and explore the settings available for the different fade types
More

fade editing. Select any event. Click on the Fade In Slope tool

and drag to the left or right to adjust

the fade slope. If the event does not have a fade envelope, one is added. Use the Fade Level tool to adjust the fade level. Use this tool if you need to make an individual event quieter than the other events on its track. Use the Fade Out Slope tool to adjust the slope of an existing fade envelope.

Dividing events & Multi-level fades Divide an event. Insert Ana MetaSynth Speech from the Sound library popup. Divide the event in half by holding down the option and command keys and clicking on the event where you want it to be divided. You can also cut an event in two by placing the insertion point where you want the division to be made and clicking on the Cut Event tool . Create a multi-level fade. Select both of the events created in the previous step. Choose Linear In from the Choose Fades popup. Shift-click the second event to deselect it. Edit the first events fade. Set the start level to - 69 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room 10% and the end level to 20% and click OK. Edit the second events fade. Set its start level to 20%.
Multi-level fade as it appears in graphic mode Multi-level fade as it appears in icon+text mode Notice that in graphic mode, the display for each event is a representation of the audio in the event itself. In icon+text mode, both events are displayed with an overview of the whole audio file.

A note about cross-event fades. This technique allows you to create more complex level adjustments than simple single-event fade envelopes allow. In some cases a click may appear at the event transition in such cases you may need to experiment with where the cut is made since MetaSynth does not guarantee that cuts are made at zero crossings.

MIXINg TO DIsK & MEmORY

In addition to being able to render the montage to disk as a stereo mix, it is possible to mix selections to memory which can be used to create submixes or as a launching point for new explorations.
Mixing

the montage to disk. Mix the montage to disk by pressing the Mix Sequence button (shortcut: Return). Choose the location to which you would like to save the file. Mixing selected events to memory. It is often desirable to mix selected events to memory, especially for creating material for use in the spectrum synth or Effects Room. Select several events using any of the methods described earlier. Choose Mix Selection to Memory from the File popup. The events are mixed to memory and loaded into the Sample Editors waveform display but not saved to disk. Mixing selected time to memory. It is often desirable to mix or submix the audio in a particular time range. Drag out a selection in the timeline area at the bottom of the montage (Tool Tip: Select By Measure). Choose Mix Measures to memory. All of the audio in the selected time region (regardless of event selection) is mixed to memory. Mixing time/selection intersection to memory. It is sometimes convenient to mix only selected events in a time range. In the timeline, select some measures that have several or many audio events. De-select some of the audio events by shift-clicking. Hold down the command key, and choose Mix Measures to Memory from the File popup to mix only the selected events in the time range.

RECORDINg
You can record audio in the Montage Room. To record, simply record-enable a track and press the Record button. You can record in mono or stereo subject to the limitations of your audio input device. The File popup provides a Record Input Setup command for setting your recording preferences. The illustration below shows a record-enabled track. Clicking in the area Recording requirements. MetaSynth can record using any audio driver that can record and playback simultaneously (full-duplex drivers). MetaSynth uses Apples CoreAudio HAL architecture for recording. This provides very efficient CPU use but requires that the audio driver allow both recording and playback at the same time. Most audio drivers are full-duplex. However, the built-in audio on MacBook and MacBook Pros are half-duplex (different drivers are responsible for playback and recording). Such drivers cant currently be used directly. However - 70 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room Recording with half-duplex drivers. Apples Audio MIDI Setup application has an Aggregate Device Editor that allows you to create a full-duplex driver that is a composite of different input/output devices. Aggregate Devices have an inherent lag time between when you press record and when playback starts. The recording and playback will be in synch but there is a delay getting started which is inherent in how the OS implements aggregate devices. To record:
Find

an empty track that you want to record onto. Record enable the track. Click in the light-gray area to the left of the track option.
Click here to enable/disable recording for a track

Start

Recording. Click on the Start Recording button . Stop recording. Press the spacebar (or click on Start Recording). Tips: Recording starts (just as playback does) from the measure at the left edge of the window. To start recording from a point other than the montages beginning, scroll to the measure that you want to start from or use the Start Measure # tool found at the lower-left corner of the tracks area.

Creating & Managing Montage Projects

So far, we have worked with MetaSynths default montage and copies of it. You can, of course, create your own montages and montage projects. The default montage is convenient for quickly mixing together elements from the MetaSynth folder. However, you will generally create your own montage projects rather than just use the default montage. Below is background about montage projects and their libraries followed by a brief lesson. Montage files and montage projects. A montage file is the .mont file. It is an audio sequencer file. Montage files need to be in a folder with a special structure that we call a montage project or project folder that contains all of the resources used by the montage. You can create new montage project folders with the File popups New Project command. The MetaSynth folder itself is a montage project folder (which is required in order for the default montage to find all its elements). If you have compositions that share elements, you may want to keep them in the same project folder in order to avoid duplication of shared resources.
A typical montage project folder and its required elements: Effects & Resources: store effects settings and other resources here. IS Sounds: rendered Image Synth sounds are automatically put here. Sequences. Sequencer Room files for the montage. Sounds. Recommended location for audio files that dont correspond to Image Synth presets, Sequencer Room or Spectrum Synth files. Spectrums. Spectrum Synth files used by the montage.

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TUTORIAL: Montage Room When you choose New Project, MetaSynth prompts you for the location where you want to create the project and for project name and tempo; you can change the tempo later. MetaSynth creates a folder with the required elements as shown above. Montage Resources Image Synth preset library. A montage is linked to a single Image Synth preset library (this is a change from version 4.0)which needs to be at the top level of the montage project folder (as shown in the previous illustration). When MetaSynth creates a new project, it creates a Image Synth preset library with a single preset. You can replace this preset library with another one, if you already have a preset library that you want to use. As long as there is only one preset library at the top level of the project folder, MetaSynth will use that as the projects preset library regardless of its name. You can only use Image Synth presets from the projects Image Synth preset library. Once you have added Image Synth events to the montage, you should not change the projects preset library. When you use Render & Save to render an Image Synth preset or when you press play for a montage with unrendered Image Synth events, MetaSynth will render the presets for you and store the sounds in the projects IS Sounds folder. Importing Image Synth Presets. If you have presets from other Image Synth preset libraries that you want to use in your project. Use the File popups Import Presets command. It allows you to import presets from other libraries into the projects library. Sequences and Spectrums. Like Image Synth presets, Sequencer Room sequences and Spectrum Synth sequences must reside in the project folder. The Sequences library (reflected by the Insert Sequence popup) is built dynamically from the contents fo the projects Sequences and Spectrums folders. The rendered sound files of these elements need to be in the same folder as the elements themselves. If you use the File menus Render & Save command or let MetaSynth render the elements for you, they will automatically be saved to the right folder. There are a few ways to add these elements to the montage projects library:

Finder Move/Copy. In the Finder, you can drag sequencer room sequences into the Sequences folder and spectrum synth sequences into the Spectrums folder in order to add them to the project library. The library contents are updated when switching to the Montage Room. If you drag a spectrum sequence or sequence into the appropriate folder in the Finder while the Montage Room is open, switch to another room and back in order to force the library to be updated. Save As. In the Sequencer Room or Spectrum Synth Room, choose Save As and save the file into the approriate project folder. Save Sequence to Montage. While in the Sequencer Room or Spectrum Synth Room, choose Save Sequence to Montage from the File menu (in the main menubar) to save the rooms contents into a new file in the appropriate folder of the current montage project. This command is not available until you have visited the Montage Room.

Sound files and the Sounds folder. Montages can also include audio files. Any non-compressed audio file that MetaSynth can read can be a part of a montage. These files are available from the Insert Sound popup. The projects Sounds folder is the recommended place for storing a projects audio files not created in the Image Synth, Sequencer Room or Spectrum Synth. The sounds library is not updated dynamically from the Sounds folder (unlike sequences and spectrum sequences). There are a few ways to add sounds to the projects library:
Drag

and Drop. While the Montage Room is active, drag and drop audio files onto the MetaSynth icon. It is highly recommended that you move/copy files into the projects Sounds folder before adding them to the - 72 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room montage in order to assure that they can be found (and to be sure that they arent inadvertently edited in a way that would adversely affect the montage). Selecting an empty slot in the popup. When you select an empty slot in the Insert Sound popup, MetaSynth prompts you to choose the audio file to add. It is recommended that you move/copy files to the Sounds folder. Sound to Montage (command-@). This command in the File menu moves the disk file of the currently open Sample Editor sound to the montage projects Sounds folder and adds it to the library. If you use Save As to first save the sound to the sounds folder, this command is a convenient way to add it to the library. There are a couple of things to note: This command moves the file on disk. It should not be used if moving the file from its current location is not desired. If the file is used by other projects, use Save As to save a copy of the file into the Sounds folder and then use the Move Sound to Montage command to add it to the library. The sound is not saved before moving. You should choose Save or Save As to save the sound file before choosing this command. No checking is done for name collision. If there is already a sound file with the same name in the library, nothing happens. If this happens, use Save As to save the file to the library and then use Move Sound to Montage to add it to the library. Save Sound to Montage (command-&). This is similar to Move Sound to Montage except that it saves the
Move

Sample Editor sound in memory to a new file in the Sounds folder and adds it to the library. It does not move a disk file. NOTE! MetaSynth does not check for duplicate names. If you use this command and there is already a file with the same name, the old file will be replaced. It is safest to use Save As to save the sound to the Sounds folder and then use this command as a shortcut for adding it to the library. A note about using audio files not in the project folder. MetaSynth will allow you to use audio files even if they are not in the projects Sounds folder. However, this is not recommended as MetaSynth may have trouble finding the audio files if they move or if a disk or folder name changes or if you ever have to erase and restore your hard drive. You are strongly encouraged to keep all the audio files in the montage project folder. When files are used from outside the project folder, it is easy to accidentally edit them in a way that undermines their use in the montage. Instruments & Sampler/MultiSampler Samples. There is one exception to the suggestion that all project resources be kept in the project folder. Samples referenced by Sampler and MultiSampler instruments should be kept in MetaSynths Instruments 5.0 folder or in a folder to which there is an alias in the Instruments 5.0 folder. The MultiSampler and Sampler instruments themselves will be stored in the Image Synth Preset library (which is true of all Image Synth Preset libraries) for Image Synth presets, or in the Sequences folder (for instruments used by Sequencer Room sequences). But, the samples they reference are best kept in the Instruments 5.0 folder. Technically, you can keep those samples in the same folder as the instrument file (which means inside of an Image Synth Preset librarys Synths folder for Image Synth presets), but this is not recommended if you are likely to use the sampler/multisampler in other projects. Sample Rate Requirements. All events in a montage must have the same sample rate. Different bit-depths, however, can be mixed in the same project. Workflow
Create

a montage project. Usually, you will use the Montage Rooms New Project command (found in the File popup) to create a new empty montage project. In some cases, you might make a copy of an existing montage project. - 73 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room

(Optional)

Replace Image Synth Preset library. In some cases, you want to use a preset library that you have already created rather than the new empty one created when you choose New Project. If this is the case, simply move/copy the Image Synth Preset library that you want to use into the project folder and move/delete the empty preset library. As long as there is only one preset library at the top level of the project folder, MetaSynth will use it as the projects Image Synth library. (Optional) Add elements to the project folder. If you have elements (audio files, Sequencer Room sequences, etc.) that you know you want to use in the montage. You move/copy them to the appropriate folder in the project folder. Audio files need to be added to the library -- usually by using drag and drop as described in the previous section. (Optional) Import Presets. If you have Image Synth presets in other libraries that you want to use in the montage, use the Import Presets command. Create elements for the montage. When you are working in MetaSynth, you can add new elements to the project as you create them. Add events to the montage. Once you have items in the project library, it is time to add events to the montage. Mix to Disk/Memory. Once you have completed your montage, mix it to disk or memory. Creating additional montages in the project. There may be occasions when you want to create several different montages that share the same resources. If you are working on a montage and want to create another montage in the same project (that will share the same resources) use the Save As command from the File popup to create a new montage file in the project folder.

LESSON If you are running the MetaSynth demo, you will not be able to perform some steps of this lesson since saving and rendering functions are disabled in the demo.
Create

a new project. Choose New Project from the file popup. You will be prompted for the project name and some other information that will be used to create the project. Enter the name My First Montage. Click OK. You will then be prompted for the location where you want MetaSynth to create the project folder. Click OK after navigating to the place where you want the project folder to be created. MetaSynth will create a folder named My First Montage f with the required folder and Image Synth preset library as shown below.
The montage project folder created by the New Project command

Add

a spectrum sequence. Go to the Spectrum Synth Room. Either choose a file listed in the File popup or choose Open from the File popup and open a spectrum sequence. Choose File->Save Sequence to Montage (or type command-$). Return to the Montage Room and add event. Go back to the Montage Room and click where you want to - 74 -

TUTORIAL: Montage Room add the spectrum sequence. Select the spectrum sequence you added from the Insert Sequence popup. Notice that it inserts an event with a red frame. This indicates that the event has not yet been rendered as an audio file. MetaSynth will automatically render the audio file when you click play. Insert Image Synth preset. When the project was created, an Image Synth library with one preset was created. The preset may be blank. (Whether it is blank depends on whether there was a preset open when New Project was selected). Insert the preset. Even though it is blank, this blank preset is a convenient way to open the library in the Image Synth. Use the preset to open the library in the Image Synth. Click on the event that you selected and type e or click on the Edit Source Preset button . MetaSynth opens the preset library and loads the preset onto the canvas. Edit and Render & Save. In the Image Synth, draw into the preset. Choose Render & Save (or type the F12 key) from the File menu. This command saves the updated preset and renders the audio file to the projects IS Sounds folder. Whenever you add a preset to the projects library, Render & Save is a convenient way to make sure that the preset is saved and the audio available. If you dont render, MetaSynth will automatically render for you when you go to play the montage. Return to the Montage Room and select the Image Synth event. Type f or click on the Load Sound File icon . This loads the audio file associated with the preset into the Sample Editor. Process the audio file and add to the library. Go to the Effects Room and apply various effects to the file. Choose Save Sound To Montage from the File menu. This saves the Sample Editor sound to a new file in the Sounds folder. Return to the Montage Room and insert the new sound. Click on a track to set the insertion point and insert the sound that was just added using the Insert Sound popup. (Optional) Finder move/copy sequences or spectrum sequences into the project folder. In the Finder, copy some sequencer room sequences into the projects Sequences folder. Copy some spectrum sequences into the Spectrums folder. Click on any other room and return to the Montage Room. Notice that the files you added are now available from the library popups. (Optional) Finder move/copy audio files into the project folder. Make sure that the Montage Room is the active room. In the Finder, copy some audio files into the projects Sounds folder. In the Finder, select the files you added and drop them onto the MetaSynth icon in the dock. Go back to the Montage Room. The audio files are now available from the Insert Sound Popup. (Optional) Import Presets. Choose Import Presets from the File popup and insert Image Synth presets from other Image Synth preset libraries. Finish adding and editing events. Add and edit events until you are ready to mix.
Mix.

Mix the montage to disk by pressing the Mix Sequence button

(shortcut: Return).

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