Xfer Serum Synthesiser - Part 1: Overview + Oscillators

1. Welcome to this Class: Hi there. It's Thomas George. Welcome to this part. One class, all about the X first serum synthesizer. So this class is really just an overview to get up and running so you can start using this serum synthesizer. So in this class, we're going to look at an overview off the serum symptoms. We're also going to have a look at the main oscillators. The sub annoys oscillators on also the walk venue. So this classes for anyone that has this amazing serum sent on one to learn an overview today. So join me in the first lecture where we're going to have a look at this simple. 2. Serum Introduction: Hello and welcome to this. Let's show I'm going to give you a quick introduction into serum to serum is a wave table simp. And with this wave table synth, you can actually import your own audio and create custom wave tables. Serum was developed by a guy called Steve dinner. And once you learn, the basis of this simple is actually quite simple and straightforward. So in this course, we're going to be showing you the features in serum. If you've ever used a scent like native instruments massive before, then you'll be able to pick up serum pretty fast. If not, don't worry. We're going to show you exactly how to use this synthesizer in this course. So it does have some similar features to other synthesizers, however, is also got some of its own unique features. So I'm excited to be presenting you this course. I hope you found it useful and join me in the next lecture. We're going to have an overview off this synthesizer 3. Serum Overview: So in this sense, therefore, different tubs up here oscillated up the effects tab the matrix on the global tap. So in this main oscillator section, we have four different oscillators. We have this sub us later. This noise oscillator Haslett's A on oscillator bay. We also have this filter section here and then we also have an envelope section on the LFO section. So it's really more than just oscillator section Ardmore. Call this the main section off serum. But the next few lectures, though, we're going to be covering all the main features and functions in all of these four different sections going along. We have this effect section so here we actually have 10 different effects. Where On the side weaken, Turn these on off. Your signal flow goes from the top to the bottom and you can actually drag to move these effects opal down. So we order you have these effects will make a difference to the signal. Okay, next is the matrix top. So this is a control assignments. So we have things like the source, the destination on the amount and then going along, we have this global tab. So here we actually have two more oscillators. We have these two chaos oscillators chaos one on the chaos to so These are chaos L A focus which create more complex LFO shapes. So Chaos one and two have slightly different sounds to each other and we can set these up in the mod matrix. So there's a kind of chaotic crazy L A focus, which is why they have called chaos. Also in the global tab, we have the unison section. This is for when you have unison enabled on any off the oscillators. So we've got some controls here. Then we have preferences for some more settings on also oscillator section here as well for some or settings for the oscillators at the top. Here we can save a preset. We also have this display here where you can click and choose from the presets and user is where we actually have our own custom made presets. So we have the right and left button here which jumps to the next preset in the folder. We can also view the presets in this list format as well. With this bottom over here. Then we have this menu button that has a few more options so we can look at what version of serum were using by hit in the about button. We can actually read the manual, which can be quite useful here. If you want to refer to the manual, we can also load a precept from our computer. We also have revert to saved, so this will actually discard any settings and go to your previously saved sound going down . We also have copy A to be a copy, be to eight. So if you go back to the main oscillator section, we can copy all slates eight. Also to bay and vice versa. It would be an ace. I'm just going to change some of the settings and be. And here, if you copy from being a, you notice is copied over, so that could be quite useful. Going down, we can hide the piano keyboard, but this will also hide the Porta Mento settings. And if we click on menu again, we can show the piano keyboard and you'll notice we have the port aumento settings and also the mod wheel. I like to have the piano keyboard there. If you want to save some space, you can always hide the piano keyboard and going across we have the master level. So this is actually saved with the preset. So if I scroll to the next pre second, those is the master level is actually changing. So I do have a lot of different presets sounds here. I have actually bought precept packs on made quite a few of my own presets. So if you don't have as many presets of this, don't worry, because in this course we're actually going to show you how you can make your own sounds. So thank you for watching this overview video. Join me in the next video. We'll be going to be looking at this main oscillator section. 4. Main Oscillators: Hello and welcome to this lecture where we're going to be looking at a slight A on a slow to be in this main oscillator tab. So both of these oscillators are actually identical. I have identical settings, but of course, within these different settings and Blenda sound off the both oscillators together. If you're just using one of the oscillators, though, I do recommend turning off the everyone as it will use up more CPU power. So in Oslo to a here, if you see what says default, if we click on this will have a drop down menu. So here we can choose different wave table libraries analog digital spectral user where you can put your own custom made wave tables on vowel. Okay, let's go up to analog, and I'm just going to choose basic shapes. So this just has the basic shape should expect on the default. One loaded is a simple sign wife. If you actually click on the wave table display here, you can swap to free D View. So this will show is the different wave shapes in the table you'll see in the side. We have this number at the moment. It's on number one. So this shows is the current frame selected. If we go over to this dial here, this is wave table position on Beacon Scroll through the different wave table positions and you can see the number here change when we scroll through. So now some 56 and seven. So the seven different ways shapes in this table. The yellow line here obviously shows the current one, and we can click on this Freedy view again to go back to the previous display. You also noticed in the top right of this wave, we have a small pencil tool. If we click on this, this will open up the table editor. So this actually allows us to have a lot more controls of our wave table. We can go back to the previous window by just clicking this X in the top left. And of course, we could go back to it again by hitting this pencil tool in the wave. Before we really explore the wave table editor, though, let's go back to this main tab and just have a look at some of the settings down here. So here we have a Judas and voice options, So we have a maximum of actually up to 16 different voices on your notice. Women click and drag coupledom, but these lines will appear or disappear. Higher voices, however, will use up more CPU power. So I just selected five voices on to the right. We have this de tune dial so this actually adjust the tuning off the different voices. So when we move this d tuned, I'll over you notice there's more space between the voices on when we decreased the style. You know, Sister space gets tighter, so this represents how far apart the tuning is from each other for each of the voices. So when do Tune is on zero on all of these lines Lineup. That means all the voices tuned exactly the same The D tuned. I'll also spreads the voices across the stereo spectrum, So let's just have a listen to this basic sound. I'm just going to drop the D tune all the way down and just play a court, and then I'm going to increase the D tune, play the court again with obviously you can hear this de tune Doll really does affect the tuning and the sound of these different voices. Okay, You're going along. We have blend. Did you notice when we increase blend, this yellow line will actually decrease. When we drive, blend all the way down the yellow line will increase on the green lines will go down. So this middle yellow line this actually represents The first voice on the green line is diva voices. So if blend, you can make the first voice even louder or quieter. And you can also make the other voices louder by putting blend up flash just but blend all the way down. So we're going to hear mostly the first voice and let's just increase blend. Obviously, now we can hear the other voices blended in with the first voice. So let's just drag unison down to one and you'll notice that ditching and blend don't actually do anything now because we only have one voice. So Dejan and blend only work when you have more than one voice. Okay, going along, we have phase. Before we look at this, let's just put the random dial down. So if this phase dial, we can set the initial phase off the way form. So all the way up at Max notice here. Little message will pop up saying phase memory. So this basically means that phase will continue where it was last left. You notice when you move this face dial up or down, this yellow line will change position on the way form. So it's going to set the initial phase of the way form. So it's gonna play from the start of the way form here, the middle of the way form here on the end of the wave form here, this can be quite difficult to hear. Just with one isolated, we really need to blend it with never one to hear the difference of where we set this initial phase. Okay, let's just turn on Oslo to be. And if we go over to menu, we can actually copy us later. A tow us late to be of this setting here and now Oslo to a on Oslo to be have identical settings. So both of the face styles are at the same point. So I'm not actually going to hear any difference right now. Let's just put the d tune down way. Okay, so now we can't hear any phase difference. Okay, Let's just change the D tune and I'm going to change the position off the initial face way . And then we can hear some phase between oscillator A on our slate to be because they do have different starting points or initial phase on these waves. Okay, we also have this random dial here, so this will actually add some random polarity shift so we can actually see the amount face change in this way form here of these yellow boxes around the line. Way to do this with even us later. Or both are Slater's. So this will add some randomness into the initial phase. So something to actually changing this face style on every single notes. However, the random dial will do this automatically for you. So let's just turn off Oslo to be now on. Let's just have a look at this wave table position dial in oscillator. A. So when this doll is all the way to the left, it will show is the first wife. However, with this, basic shapes were only actually have seven different waves. If I just click on this drop down menu here, goto analog, let's choose a more complex one How about this one here? P. W M Rizzo, you notice. Here we have a lot more. We have 208 different waves. We can play a chord and just scroll freedom here. So you actually see this wave morph and change, and we look at creating this in the future lecture. But like I said, this has a lot more waves in the basic shape, which just has seven Howard. But all this is really doing is just morphing between one way or another. And if you click on here again, we can see the Freedy view. If you consider small, we can have up to 256 different waves. So let's click on another one. Let's go to digital. Let's go to your prime. And here we have 256 different way. So this way shape is a lot more complex, and obviously the basic shapes were working with before. However, the basic shapes is a good one to start with, because we're just going through the basic wave shapes. Okay, going along. We have this option here, so this is actually for way form warp. So if we click on this, you'll notice we have this drop down menu with a load of different warp options on. We're going to look at these in a separate lecture. Okay, I'm going along. We have the standard pan on level controls and we have independent planning on level control for each of these oscillators in this main tap and you'll notice above the wave here we have a few different pitch controls. We have opted which will obviously increase or decrease by one active. And then we have semi tone. We can tune this ever 12 7 turns up or 12 7 tones down and then going along we have fine tune where you consume this 100 cents up for 100 cents down. So the difference between a semi tone and fine tune is semi tonal Tunis In a step like motion between each semi tone on, get smoother tuning with fine tune, a more gradual tune. So if you want to use an LFO on the tuning at some point later on and you want more gradual change, maybe fine tune could be more useful. However, if you want your tune in to change 17 tone at a time. Maybe you could use the LFO to control the semi tones. Well, look a telephones later on. I just wanted to give you a quick example off the difference between semi tone on fine shooting and going along. We have course pitch, so this allows us to transpose the pitch without actually snapping two semi tones. So this can be useful with modulating with telephones as well. And this allows us to actually transpose even 64 semi tones up all 64 semi tones down. Like I said, we'll look at modulating with telephones later on. I just wanted to give you an overview off these made oscillators in this main oscillator top. So that's the end of this lecture. I hope you found it useful in the next lecture. We're going to be looking at the sub and noise oscillators. 5. Sub + Noise Oscillators : Hello and welcome to this lecture where we're going to be looking at the sub and also the noise oscillator. So that's first of all, Have a look at the sub us later weaken. Turn on with this switch here, going down. We have a few different shapes. We have sign, have slightly distorted sine triangle sort If square on pulse, then going down. We also have operative control generally wants to set this lower than your main cost later . Though way you can really use this as a sub and get this nice thick sound was also a pan dial. However, generally you will want the sub in the middle. You won't really. Once upon this and then we also have a basic level control. You can also make this sub oscillator skip the filter on the effects section with this direct out bottom, so this will not be affected by the filter. Now, I will not also be affected by any effects, so this can be quite handy to if you don't want your sub to be affected by the filter or the effects. However, if you do want your sub to be affected by the filter or the effects. Make sure you do. Select this direct out butter the sub to be affected by the filter, we will have to slip this s button here in the filter section. However, we could always do so. Let that still be affected by the effects. We look at the filter and effects section later on. However, I just wanted to tell you what this direct out button, actually, this okay, moving then we have this noise oscillator. So this is a wave table based noise generator. So if we click on this button here, you noticed we have quite a lot of different noise wave tables. And if we go down to S O. R. On we go on Atmos, we can make this noise generator sound like another oscillator. You notice we have this button here of a keyboard which enables pitch tracking. So basically, it will track the pitch with midi notes, so the pictures will track with the notes on the keyboard. You also have another pitch control here. Let's use this more for a noise rather than as another oscillator. So let's go on to analog. Now let's select white noise so we can go on AARP White. So here we have typical white noise. So let's have a look at a few of these controls. So this person here, this will actually play the wave table once fruit. So if I select this on a holder called Life, you'll notice it stopped. I'm still playing the Midi notes. I'm still physically playing the notes on the keyboard, but it's stopped. So if you want the noise to be constant on to play more than once through, do slept this, however, this could be useful for one shot Sounds something like adding some noise onto a kick drum going along, we can control the face. So this is similar to the main oscillator. So you can set the initial face so determines where in the sample it will actually start playing and going across. We have this randomized control, so this will randomize the phase on every notes similar to the main oscillator. So the more random ization you want, the more you increase the style, okay. And then going down, we have pitch control, want to increase or decrease the bitch, and then we have planning on level control a lot of different noises you can generate here a de recommend going through and experimenting with them on these at must ones in SLR section could be quite interesting too. Okay, so that's the sub on the noise oscillator. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you in the next lecture. 6. Warp Menu: Hello and welcome to this lecture where we're going to be looking at the oscillator warp menu. So it's basically this dial here on this drop down menu. We can scroll between the different walk nodes with this left and right arrow here. What? We can click on this and go down to this list. So I'm just using a sign away from this basic shape wave table. Let's go through these different settings here, Obviously off will not apply any of this. Warping that to the US later on. The first on here, it's sink no window. So this will basically sink the oscillator to itself. So if we increase this single here, you can see this wave get tighter and tighter like a spring. And you could basically here upper harmonics being generated. Okay, The next one is sink window half. So this will sound a little bit cleaner. I can still see here. This fades at the start and the end of the shape just to make it sound a little cleaner, weigh them or increase the style. More of the warping began to go going down. We have sink window full. So this has more exaggerated fates on the way form will be a bit cleaner and softer. Okay. And going down, we have thes free, different Ben modes. We have been plus and minus on bend plus minus to the 1st 1 band. Plus. So when you increase this, this will bend the way form in words, so it will add some upper harmonics to this wave wave ended here, let's try band minus. So this basically works of way around. So it pulls the way of form outwards way have been plus minus. So this includes both of these Ben notes. So, towards the left, you get bent plus on towards the right. You get Ben Linus way. Okay, Going down. We have P W m. So this is pulse width modulation. This is often done on square shapes. However, this mode will still work on anyway of shape, and it will basically put pulse width modulation into it. Okay, Going down. We have some a similar asymmetry modes plus minus and plus minus. So in the 1st 1 asymmetry plus, so the first half of this shape will expand on. The second half will contract, so asymmetry Plus, when we increase this style I noticed the first half will contract on the second half will expand. Let's try a symmetry minus. This will obviously be the opposite. So the first half will expand on. The second half will contract. And now let's look at a cemetery. Plus and minus. So centered is the original and the left. It's a symmetry plus mode, and to the right, it's a symmetry minor smote Wa'el. Of course, we can use an LFO or low frequency oscillator to actually modulate this doll. And we've been looking at the L A phone in the telephone lecture in the schools. Okay, going down. We have a few more. We have flip when this is in the center, this will flip the original shape on all the way to the right. It will flip it back. So halfway through, it will basically phase. Invert the shape on in between, you get shifts into the shape. Okay, going down. We have nearer, so half way you get the exact mirrored shape. So when it's married, you actually get double the way. Okay, The next few modes are these remap Moz. So with these different modes, your notice you get this small little pencil icon here, or maybe of versions off serum. It may be a magnifying glass. And when you click on this, it will open up this little editor, and I notice it links up to this wave in real time so you can actually click and drag and change the way of shape in this editor here on When we have this dial all the way down, it will be the original shape on. When we increase this dull, it will change into this new shape that we just created here. We can also double collect to add some more notes on here. You can see it more into the shape when we increase this what style. And if you click on here, you'll notice we have a few different presets we can use. And you can also save our own in this user folder. Here we just click on save shapes to save a shape. Okay, Now let's have a look at remap to so it really up to this will actually double the shape. So if we look at the editor here, you can see it's doubled the shape. And if we go on to remap free this will actually give you free times the shape on then if we look at remarked for So this will give you four times a shape of this original. That joining here, that we can update it, and it will change in real time as well. Okay, let's have a look at the other modes as well. Here we have quantifies. So this will actually sample Reduce the shape you can see as you increase this dial. The more steps to actually get in your shape reducing the sample of the shape. Okay, going down. We have FM from Bay FM is frequency modulation. So for this to work, you will need us later. Be on. However, you can just have the level all the way down. It just needs to be enabled. So now us later be will actually act as a modulator on Oslo to a is the carrier. Oh, so get some interesting warping with this setting. Okay. Lets try. Am So says am from B or amplitude modulation. So this is similar to the FM one. However, in this mode it will sound a bit closer to the modulator or Oslo to be in this case, Let's just change this to a different shape. So if Oslo to be is a different kind of wave like this, you get more of that sound when you increase this dial. Okay, let's have a look at the next one, which is our Emma from B or ring modulation. So this is similar to the M one, the amplitude modulation. The main difference is that you actually lose the sound off the original shape. So this will sound even more like Oslo to bay going down. We have f M and noise oscillator, so this is basically using the noise oscillator as the modulator. So for this to work, the noise oscillator needs to be turned on. However, we can just turn the level down, go through the different noise sounds. Let's just try a classic white noise. So get some interesting sounds of this. Okay. And the last one is FM sub oscillator. So for this, we need to turn the sub us later on. You can also bring down the level. And now we're have some FM or frequency modulation via this sub oscillator, so you can get some really interesting effects of this war. Sam Port for driving LFO onto here around this. That the right high? 33333333333 Stories. Where, Where? Where where? We get some quite fund interesting sounds with this one. Okay, so that's the walk modes. This could be useful with the LFO. I recommend checking out the lecture all about their low frequency oscillator or LFO if you want to learn more about that. So thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next lecture.