Kubik Wavetable Sequencing Synthesizer

Transcript

Content Introduction Setting up Kubik Programs and Banks Using the controls Output Display 3 3 3 4 4 Creating your first preset Waveform Creation Wavetable Creation Wavetable Synthesis Wavetable Sequences 5 9 12 16 18 Oscillator Controls Filter Controls Control Panel FX Panel Envelope Panel LFO Panel Mod Panel 21 22 24 26 32 34 36 Wave Panel Wavetable Sequence Panel Program Panel Graphics Setup Panel 37 42 44 45 Kubik WaveTable Sequencing Synthesizer Introduction Kubik is a PC vst wavetable sequencing synthesizer, this method of synthesis uses waves which change over time to create a wide range of sounds Setting up and starting to using Kubik Run the Kubik installation program, when it asks for the installation directory select your VST plugin directory. The VST host software should then automatically detect it. Kubik should be shown as a VSTi synthesizer Loading programs and banks Kubik has 32 presets built in. You can select which one you want to use by either clicking on the preset menu at the bottom of the screen or clicking on the PRG button, this brings up the program panel where you can select which program to use from the large screen to the left, the current preset is shown in a different colour. To load in other banks you can either use the preset menu at the bottom of the screen and select load bank or in the program panel clicking on an entry in bank selector screen loads in that bank. The bank selector automatically shows any banks that are stored in the \Banks directory in Kubik’s installation path. Other things you might want to do with banks and presets are Load / Save Preset These commands allows you to load and save a single preset, they are saved as files with the extension .kkp Load / Save Bank This allows you to load or save banks of 32 presets, these are saved as files with the extension .kkb Set Def This allows you to set the last loaded bank as the default bank. This means that the next time you use Kubik, this bank will be automatically loaded in. Rename This allows you to rename the currently selected preset Copy / Paste / Clear Allows you to copy and paste presets. Clear sets the current preset to the default ‘blank’ preset Preset Description Below the preset selector in the Program panel there is a long area where you can enter in any text or description you want for the current preset Prev / Next The prev / next button next to the preset selector at the bottom of the screen allows you to scroll through the presets Using the controls Dials Clicking the left mouse button on a dial and moving change it’s value. Moving up/down causes large changes and left/ right causes small changes in the value of the control. Pressing ctrl + left mouse button sets the control to it’s default value. Midi Latching / Unlatching Right click on the control to be midi latched and click on latch. Then changing any midi control connected to Kubik will latch that midi control to that control in Kubik. Unlatch removes this connection Boxes Clicking on box either alters it current state or brings up a selection menu. Right clicking at the left hand side of box decreases it’s value and the right hand side increases it’s value Output Display At the bottom of the screen is the output display, this show the current control, it’s value and it’s midi cc controller (if any). Recall / Set and Undo Clicking on the recall button returns the current preset to it’s original setting (the settings the preset had when you selected it) or to the settings which it had when you last pressed the set button The Undo button undoes the last changes to Kubik Tutorials Creating you first preset – Basic Bass preset Here I’ll go through how you can create your first preset, in this case a bass synth sound The first step is to select a blank preset. Kubik comes with a blank bank of presets so you can use this to store the preset To do this click on the button called PRG, this brings up the program panel. Click on the Blank Bank in the bank screen and then click on preset 1. This will select the first blank preset so you can store the bass synth here. You can rename this preset by clicking on Rename and in this case calling it Bass1 The PRG panel should look something like this at this point Selecting Waveform In making this bass preset, you’ll be using Kubik like a traditional one oscillator subtractive synthesizer. So you need to set up the oscillators Firstly make sure the oscillator panel is shown in the top part of Kubik by pressing on the OSC button at the right hand side. Kubik uses two oscillators to make sound, these are known as Osc A and Osc B. Because Kubik is only uses one oscillator to create the sound, Osc A, you can turn the Osc B off, To do this you click on the button Osc, this will turn the oscillator from On to Mute The next step is to select the waveform that will be used to create the sound. To select the waveform, you have to first have the Wave panel open. To do this click on the Wave button in the bottom right hand side. For the bass sound you are only going to use one waveform, so the obvious place to put this is in waveform 1 slot. So select waveform 1 by clicking on the waveform selector box labelled 1 in the Wave panel. Next you want to load in a waveform into that slot, a good waveform for a bass sound would be a square wave. So you click on Square entry in the Waveform Selector box, this will bring up the square waveforms that are supplied with Kubik. For a basic square wave click on the Sqr entry, this will then be loaded into the first waveform slot. In the Wave screen a basic square wave should be shown The Wave panel should look like this at this point If you press any notes now you’ll be able to hear the square wave being played. Setting Volume Envelope The next step is to change the volume envelope of the wave, so that it decays always quite quickly. To do this you need to go into the Envelope panel To open the envelope panel, click on the ENV button in the middle of Kubik, this shows the Envelope panel. You then need to click on the button under the select label and select Volume A. This will then show Oscillator A volume envelope. For the volume we want an envelope that starts at the full amount and reduces to zero at the end. First click on the envelope edit screen near to the first envelope point, then drag this point to the top of the screen so it’s value is 100%. Next select the last envelope point by clicking near the last envelope point, move this down so it’s value is 0%. The envelope values are shown in readout display at the bottom of Kubik This has created an envelope that goes from 100 to 0%. Clicking in the middle of the envelope allows you to alter the curvature of the envelope Next you have to set the length of the envelope, clicking on the Length button brings up the length menu. All envelope lengths are in quarter beats (qb), these lengths are dependent on the current tempo. For the volume envelope, in this case, select a length of 4 qb The Envelope panel should look like this now If you now play some notes you should have a sound which decays quite quickly from it’s full volume to zero. This sound is still very static and bright, so the next step is to filter this sound to add more variation. Setting the Filter To do this once again have the OSC panel open and in the filter panel click on the Filter A button and select Low 12, this will set Osc A filter to be a 12db low pass filter. Set the filter Frequency to about 3Khz and set the filter’s Q to be about 80% and it’s distortion to be 0% (you do this by moving the small dial labelled Var to 0%) The Keytrack dial allows you to set how the filter frequency is altered by the note pressed, this means the filter frequency changes depending on the notes’ frequency to give more natural sounding effect, higher notes sound brighter than low notes. Setting this to 100% gives full filter key tracking The Osc panel should like this now If you now play the sound, still not much changes, so the next thing is to have the filters frequency being altered by an envelope. This envelope will be the same as the volume envelope so the sound will get less bright and less loud as time goes on So to do this, an easy way is to copy the Volume A’s envelope to Filter A’s envelope. In the envelope panel, select Volume A envelope using the Select button and then on the envelope edit screen right click and select copy from the pop-up menu. Click on the select button and select Filter A, this brings up Filter A’s envelope. Now right click on the envelope edit screen and select paste from the pop-up menu, this will copy the volume envelope into the filter envelope. If you press some keys now you should hear a much more interesting bass sound. You can alter how much the filter’s frequency is altered by the envelope by changing the Amount dial. Currently it’ll be at 100% but by changing this you can create a variety of different sounds. If the amount is a negative value then the envelope direction is negated so the filter frequency goes up instead of down Enhancements From this basic bass sound you can create a variety of different version of it. So firstly you want to copy this preset to another preset slot so you can experiment with this a new preset without altering this first one. Click on the PRG button, brings up the program screen, pressing copy copies this preset, then selecting Preset 2 and pressing paste copies this first preset to slot 2. The name is copied so you might want to change this name to say Bass2 Firstly you can fatten the sound up. Each oscillator in Kubik is composed of two suboscillators, a primary and a secondary one. The Unison controls allow you to alter the pitch of this seconday oscillator so as to create thicker sounding sounds. In the oscillator screen, click on the Unison Amount dial for Osc A, so it reads about 20%. This will create a thicker fattened sounding bass. The Speed dial controls how quickly this secondary oscillator pitch changes over time and Offset controls the coarse tuning of this secondary oscillator. Setting Offset for Osc A to –12 semitones, you then have two versions of the waveform playing, the second an octave below the first. Filter LFO Next you can use a LFO to the change the filter’s frequency to give an acid bass line effect. In the middle panel press the LFO button, this show the LFO screen. Press the Select button and select Filter A. This will select Filter A’s LFO Now we want to create an LFO that will alter the frequency of the filter but will not be reset every time you press a key. Click the reset button so that it reads Free, this means the filter’s LFO is not reset when you press a key but is running all the time. Next to you want to set the Amount dial to around 40%, the Sine Amount to 100% and the Sine Speed to 0.25hz. If you now press some key you can hear the bass sound changing in timber over time because the filter’s frequency changes Release and Portmento When you press a key and release it very quickly the sound stops very suddenly, sometimes with a popping sound. This because the sound has no release phase, no period after the key is release where the sound reduces in volumes to nothing. To add this you need to go to the Control page. Clicking on Ctrl brings up the control page, this contains the controls which alter how Kubik response to external controls. The dial labelled Rel controls the release time for the sound, setting this to around 100ms gives a nice release time and removing any popping sounds Next you can add portmento to the sound, this controls how quickly the pitch of the sound changes when you press different keys. Set the Port mode to H Time and set the Port dial to about 60%. This sets the portmento mode to be only triggered if more than one key is pressed down. Try pressing a couple of keys now and you’ll here the difference between the portmento and non-portmento notes Effects Finally we can some effects to further enhance the sound. Click on the FX button to bring up the FX panel The first thing you might want to do is to boost the bass of the sound, to do this Kubik has a 2band equalizer. Set the low band frequency to about 1 Khz and the low band boost to 10 decibels, this should give a sound with a much bigger bass but a word of warning it might be a lot louder and thus swamp the rest of the mix, so you might want to change the global volume using the Volume dial in the Ctrl page. Also can add a small amount of echo to the sound to give a bit more presence. Kubik has two sets of effects. The first set of effects is modulation and distortion effects, the second is delay type effects. By default the effects are set to chorus and xdelay (cross delay) To do this click on the On/Off button in FX B so it’s on, this turns on the stereo cross delay. The cross delay is a stereo delay so you can have different delay times on the left and right hand channels, but for this we are going to use the same left and right hand delay times. Set both left and right delay times to 4qb, set the Mix dial to around 50% /100% (this means the wet signal is 50% and the dry signal 100%) and the Feedback to about 20%, the sound now has quite a nice delay to it Waveform Creation The basic unit of sound generation for Kubik are waveforms. A waveform is a set of number that describes the waveform’s shape. To generate a sound, Kubik reads through this waveform outputting the value in the wave at the current position and looping to the start of wave when the end of the wave is reach. Kubik has lots of tools to help you to create waveforms; these are all shown in the Wave panel. So the first step is to open this up by clicking on Wave at the bottom The wave panel has several different parts as shown below Right at the top is a menu bar which allows you to access wave commands, below this is the Waveform Editor that shows the current waveform and below this the Waveform Slot Selector and the Additive Editor screen. The two screens at the side are the Waveform Selector and Wavetable Selector screens For the purpose of this tutorial all the waveform will be in slot 1, so you don’t need to alter the waveform slot selector position and because Osc A and B are set to play Waveform 1 as default, play the keyboard at any point will play the waveform in slot 1 Wave Presets The first way to access waveforms is to use the waveform selector screen at the top right hand corner. This screen lists all the waveforms supplied with Kubik and any you have saved here Initially the waveform directories are shown, clicking on ones of these directories opens up that directory and shows the waveforms stored in that directory. The bar at the side allows you to scroll up and down in the list of waveforms. If you put in your own sub directory in the waves directory it will be listed here. To load in a saw waveform, first click on the Saw label, this will then show you all the waveforms that are stored in the Saw directory. Clicking on one of these entries loads in that waveform. Moving the bar indicator to the right of the screen allows you to scroll up and down through the waveform files. For instance, if you click on FatSaw entry it loads in the FatSaw waveform. You can audition the current waveform by right clicking on the waveform editor screen Initial waveform selector Saw directory To return to the list of waveform directories click on the selectors top label, where ..Saw is shown; this returns you to the top level of directories. You can also load in these waveforms by clicking on File and then Load Waveform in the wave commands menu bar. This allows you to load in .awv files from disk Drawing Waves The next way to create a waveform is to draw your own. First you need to clear the waveform editor screen, to do this click on Select in the menu bar and then on Clear in the drop down menu To draw all you need to do is move your mouse on the Waveform editor screen with you left mouse button pressed down, this draws a wave depending on your mouse’s position When you release the mouse the drawn wave may change slightly, this is because the draw wave is converter into additive data. After drawing a wave you can audition it by right clicking on the waveform editor window. In the waveform editor screen, Left click + ctrl, allows you to move the waveform left and right, Left click + shift allows you to sub-select a small part of the waveform, pressing left click + shift and then moving the mouse allows you to select which part of the waveform to select, when you release the mouse that selected area is zoomed into Additive Editing After drawing a wave or loading one in you may have noticed that the additive screen at the bottom has changed. Kubik stored the waveforms as 64 additive partials, storing both the amplitude and phase of the additive partials. In order to understand about the partials a quick diversion into Additive Synthesis is needed Additive synthesis uses sine waves of different frequencies to create complex waves. The first sine wave is known as the fundamental or the first partial. The second sine wave is twice the frequency of the fundamental and is known as the second partial. The third sine wave is three times the frequency of the fundamental and is known as the third partial and so on, By changing the volume and phase of these partials different types of waves can be created. These partials are shown in the additive editor screen at the bottom of the screen. You can alter these partials yourself to create your own waves So once again clear the current waveform. Moving the mouse, with the left button pressed, over the additive editor screen allows you to change the amplitude and phase values of the partials. The details of the current partial are shown in the readout display at the bottom. To start with all the partials are set at zero. Change the value of the first partial by moving your mouse up and down over the first bar; will result in sine waves of different amplitudes being created. You can also alter the phase of this sine wave, by firstly right clicking on additive editor screen, this changes it from shown the amplitude of the partials to there phase. Now moving the first bar up and down moves the wave left and right, right clicking again returns you to the amplitude view So by altering the partial amplitude and phase values, you can create your own waveforms Loading Samples Finally you can load in short samples to be used as waveforms. To do this click on File and then either Load Wave or Load Raw depending on whether the sample is a .wav format file or .raw format file. Both can load in 16 bit mono or stereo samples It’s best to use very short samples with this method because the whole sample is loaded into the current waveform, the best samples to use single cycles waves After you have created a waveform you might then want to save it disk. To do this first click File and then Save Waveform. This brings up a dialog that allows you to saves the current wave as an .awv file. If you save this file in one of the directories in the waves directory, for instance in User, then the next time you use Kubik this wave will be shown in that directory in the waveform selector screen Wave Commands Also there are lots of commands to alter waveforms, these can be accessed by clicking on the Wave or Additive in the wave command menu bar. Important ones are Normalize – this normalizes the current waveform so it has its maximum volume Size - this allows you to create multiple version of the waveform, and thus changes the pitch of the waveform. Setting the size multiplier to 2 for instance increase the wave pitch by and octave and 0.5 decreases the pitch by an octave Move to zero – this moves the waveform so it starts with zero amplitude More information about the other commands are shown in the main manual Wavetable Creation The most interesting sounds are created from the wavetable. The wavetable is composed of 64 waveforms, and by mixing between these very complex sounds can be created In this part I’ll go through creating your own wavetable for use in Kubik In order to be able to test the wavetable you have created you first need to set up a default wave test setup. This will go through the waveforms in your wavetable in order, so you can hear what they sound like To do this, first Mute Osc B and then in the envelope screen select Wave A and set it’s length to 64 qb and turn the envelope amount to 100%. This will then set Osc A to slowly go through the waveforms in the wavetable Selecting Waveforms So firstly to create a wavetable you need to be able to select the different waveforms. You do this by clicking on the Waveform Slot Selector, for instance clicking on slot 20 selects waveform 20. You can select more than one waveform by keeping the mouse down and moving the mouse. The waveform range are shown in a different colour Waveform selection Loading Wavetables The first way to create a wavetable is to load one in from the wavetable selector screen. This is in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and shows the wavetables supplied with Kubik. Clicking on one of the entries selects that wavetable and double clicking loads it in . The bar at the side allows you to scroll up and down the wavetable selector screen So to load in a wavetable, first click on 10Addharm, this will load the 64 waveforms in that wavetable into the wavetable. If you press a key now then you should be able to hear the different waveforms in this wavetable as Osc A goes through them. You can also audition a wavetable by clicking on the Wavetable Selector label. You can also load in a wavetable by clicking File and then Load Wavetable. When you double click on a wavetable it is normally loaded in to all the waveforms, however if you select a region of waveforms by left clicking on waveform slot selector and moving the mouse, if you then load in a wavetable it will be loaded into the selected waveforms Creating Wavetables Another way of creating a wavetable is to put in your own waveforms by hand. You can set the waveforms used by each oscillator so you only need to put in a few waveforms if you want to. You can also use the full 64 waveforms to create your own wavetable, however creating the full 64 waveforms is very time consuming so you can create wavetable using only key waveform and Kubik will fill in the blank waveforms To do this first clear the wavetable, you do this by clicking on Edit and then Clear All. At this point you’ll have an empty wavetable For the example I’ll create a wavetable that starts as a saw wave, goes to triangle wave and then finally to sine wave To do this first select waveform number 1, by clicking on the 1 in a box in the waveform slot selector. Then click on the Saw directory in the Waveform selector and then click on Saw. This will load a saw wave into waveform 1 Then click on waveform 33 and in waveform selector return to the directory view and select the Other Shapes directory and then scroll down and select Tri 1, this loads a triangle wave into waveform 33 Finally click on waveform 64, return to the directory view in the waveform selector and then select the Sine directory and then Sine, this loads a sine wave in waveform 64 If you press a key now you’ll hear a brief saw wave, followed by silence then a brief triangle wave and then silence and finally a sine wave. What we need to do is to fill in these spaces with sounds that are in between these key waveforms To do this first select all the waves, the easiest way to do this is to click on Select and then Select All in the command menu bar. All the waveforms should be selected now In the Mix drop down menu select Fill Morph. This will fill in the empty waveforms by interpolating the additive data from the occupied waveforms. After doing this if you look at the waveforms now you’ll see they are all occupied. If you press a key now you’ll be able to hear that the spaces between the waveforms are now filled in and the sound goes smoothly from a saw wave to a triangle wave and then to a sine wave Alternatively you could have selected Fill Interpolate. This is similar to fill morph but instead of interpolating the additive data it interpolates the waveform themselves. This takes quite a bit longer and produces a different sound At the point if you press a key you’ll hear the sound go through the waveforms till it reaches the sine wave, which continues playing. You however may want this wavetable to be looped. The first step to doing this is to set up a loop region in the envelope, so make sure Wave A is selected and then right clicking on the envelope edit screen. Selecting loop all means that the envelope loops back to the first point after it has reached the end of the envelope. If you now press a key you’ll here the sound loop so that it reaches the sine wave and then immediately loop back to the saw wave. This is a bit abrupt at the end so it would be good idea to put in an intermediate wave at the end of the wavetable, so to smooth this jump. An easy way is to select the first waveform, right click and click copy, select the last waveform (64) and right click and select paste. This will paste waveform 1 to waveform 64 and will mean that waveform 63 can smoothly mix into waveform 64 which will sound the same when the envelope suddenly returns by to wave 1. If you play a note now it should have got rid of the very abrupt change in timbre, so it should sound smoother now. Resynthesis Finally another way of create a wavetable is resynthesis. Resynthesis attempts, with a varying degree of success to recreate samples by taking ‘representative’ parts of the sample and storing them in the wavetable. There are two different types of resynthesis The simplest method is split wave, to do this you need to select File and then click on Split Wave. Wave splitting takes in a sample and divides it between the waveforms, if you don’t select a range it will be split among all the 64 waveforms, if you have selected a range than it will be split between those selected waveforms Kubik will first bring up a load dialog so you can select which sample to use. Then it will ask if you want to normalize the sample, if you select yes then the sample is altered to be as loud as possible without any clipping. Finally Kubik will ask if you want to divide the sample, this means do you want to take only the first part of the split sample – this occurs if you set divide to 1, if you change this value than a smaller amount of the sample will be taken for instance if you set divide to 8 then only the first 1/8 th of the split sample is taken After all this the sample is loaded in and split between all the waveforms. The resulting sound (similarly for the other resynthesis method), is very dependant on the original sound, for instance speech sounds come out very ‘robotic’ and you may have to alter the pitch of the oscillator and the speed of the envelope to get the best results. Similarly there may well be glitches in the sound that you may want to smooth over. A simple way to smooth a glitchy waveform is to use morph. As well as filling the table the morph function allows you to select a region and the start and finish waveform’s additive data are interpolated to fill the waveforms in-between To do this first select a region and then select Mix and then Morph from the command menu, the interpolation occurs automatically. Similarly if you select Mix and then Interpolate the waveform itself is interpolated over the selected region. The other method is single cycle resynthesis. This method tries to extracts single wave cycles spread through out the sample. By mixing between these sounds a version of the original sound is recreated, though a word of warning, sometimes you might have to do quite a bit of post-resynth cleaning up, such as morphing over glitchy sounds or changing waves phase You can do this by clicking File and then Resynthesis, this brings up a load dialog where you can select the sample. Then Kubik asks if you want to normalize the sample, then if you want default resent set-up – this sets up Kubik so that only Osc A is on and wave A envelope is set to 16qb. Kubik then asks for the number of loops, this is the number of single cycle loops Kubik loads into each waveform, the default being 1. A higher value gives you more of the sample loaded in but will be higher in pitch After all this Kubik then loads the resynth waveforms into either into all the waveforms or into the selected waveforms Resynthesis seems to work best with relatively simple instruments which don’t vary in pitch, and also is quite fun with vocal sounds where it can create Vocoder type sounds. However it may be a matter of experimenting and for best effect you may have to do some morphing over waveforms that sound odd After creating a wavetable, you can save then by clicking on File and then Save Wavetable. If you save them in the Wavetable directory, then the next time Kubik starts the saved wavetable is added into the list of wavetables in the Wavetable Selector screen Editing Wavetables Kubik has lots of controls for changing wavetables and moving waveforms around, some of the most important ones are In the Select menu Select All - this selects all the waveforms Set A/B to selection – this sets the range of Osc A or B to the currently selected waveforms In the Edit menu Copy / Paste / Clear - these commands allow you to copy, paste and clear the select waveforms Clear All – this clears the current wavetable. Respan - this takes the selected waveforms and then respans then over another range. For instance you can select only a few waveforms and have them respanned so they occupy all the wavetable. In the Mix menu Set to First - sets all the selected waveforms to be the same as the first waveform Mix Sets – this brings up the mix wavetable screen, using this you can for instance mix between two saved wavetables so it starts as one wavetable and finishes as another one, plus lots of other things In the Wave menu Normalize Set – this normalizes the selected waveform, so they are as loud as possible but the relative volume remains the same as before. For instance if before Wave 1 was twice as loud as Wave 2, then after it Wave 1 will be still twice as loud as Wave 2, but the overall volume may be changed All the commands are explained in more detail in the technical manual Creating a preset using wavetable synthesis Here I’ll show how you can create a preset using wavetable synthesis, in this case it will be a pulse width modulation lead synth sound The first step is to set up the wavetable. To do this open the wave screen by clicking on the Wave button In the wavetable selector, scroll down till you see wavetable 30PWM, double click this to load this in the wavetable. If you clicking on the Wavetable Selector label you’ll here this sound, it’s a type of pulse width modulation; the wave goes from a very thin pulse to a normal square wave. This wavetable occupies waveforms 1 to 63 with 64 being a blank waveform. If you press a key you’ll only hear a very thin pulse sound, this is because only the first waveform is being played. So in order to get a more interesting sound you need to be able to move through the wavetable and so get the oscillators to play other waveforms. Initially I’ll only do this for Osc A so for the moment turn off Osc B One way to do this is via the Wave A / B envelopes, but since we want the pulse width to go from a thin pulse to a square wave in a cyclic matter, a more convent way is to use an LFO to modulate which waveform is played Firstly we need to set the range of Osc A and B, waveform 64 is blank in this wavetable, so we want the range to go from 1 to 63. So for Osc A, click on second wave range button and select Wave 63, do similarly for Osc B. The OSC screen should look this now So the next step is to set the LFO, so in the middle panel click on LFO In the LFO screen, make sure Wave A ‘s LFO is selected, set the amount to 100%, the Sine Amount to 100% and the Sine Speed to about 1hz. The screen should look something like this now If you press a key now you’ll hear a typical PWM type lead sound, because the sound goes from being a very thin pulse to being a square and then back again. This is quite a nice sound but is only the beginning At this point, we will bring in Osc B. So still in the LFO screen, click on the LFO screen and select copy. The select Wave B and click on the LFO screen again and Click on paste. Now turn on Osc B. At this point you’ll have both Osc A and B both doing the same sound, so it’ll be the same sound just louder. If however you change Osc B’s pitch to say -12 semitone and press keys now you’ll hear that one oscillator is an octave below the other. Also you might want to increase Unison amounts to about 30% for both Osc A and B. At this point you’ll have a nice thick lead sound Next press CTRL to bring up the control screen. Increase the release time to about 500ms, this means the sound doesn’t die away as soon as you release key. Also Click on port mode till it reads C Time and set the Port to about 60%, this adds portmento to the sound. Finally some effects are added. Press FX to bring up the FX screen. Firstly we will increase the stereo widen amount to 100%, this will stereo widen the sound by slightly delaying one channel. Next I’ll add a bit of vibrato to the sound, set vibrato amount to about 25% and speed to 5.5 Hz. Playing the sound you should quite a good lead synth sound If you went back to the wave screen now and loaded in other of the wavetable presets you’ll see that having different wavetables loaded in gives quite different sounds Wavetable Sequences The last part of Kubik that we haven’t looked at is Wavetable Sequences. Wavetable Sequences allow you to set up sounds where you can control exactly which waveform is played at any time, it’s volume, pitch, pan and filter frequency, and how long the waveform is played for. There are two sequences, one controls the properties of Osc A, the other the properties of Osc B So to start with click on the Seq button, this will bring up the sequence page. Kubik operates in two modes; normal this is what you have been using up to this point and seq, in this mode the sequences are activated. Clicking on the Seq:Off button so it reads Seq:On, toggles between normal mode and sequencer mode. Clicking on Seq A button toggles it so you now see Seq B and pressing again returns to Seq A Below is shown a typical sequence Step column and editing The first column shows the current step. Sequences in Kubik can be from 1 to 64 steps long. Only 16 steps are shown at any one time but you can scroll through the steps by keeping the mouse pressed down and if you go to the bottom of the Seq screen the steps scroll forward, so you can see steps past step 16, and if you got to the top of the Seq screen then the steps scrolls backward to lower step values Clicking on a row in the Step column selects that row and if you move your mouse with the left button pressed down then you can select multiple rows If you right click in the Step column then a pop-up menu is shown up, Here you can set how long the sequencer is and what step is loops back to when it’s finished. To do this click on the last row in the sequence, right click in the Step column and then Set End Loop, this sets the end point of the sequencer. This is shown in dark red in the example above If you played this sequence it would go to the end of the sequence (as shown above) and then returns to the first step. However sometimes you don’t want the sequence to return to the first step, in this case select the row you want the sequence to loop back to, right click and select Set Start Loop. This row is then coloured a light yellow in the screen above, and when the sequence reaches the end step then it loops back to this step. This is useful because you can have a part of the sequence that only plays once and also have a part that loops Creating Sequences Up to this point if you press any key then you won’t hear anything, this because no waveform is assigned to any of the steps. So to set up a sequence, the first step is to load in a Wavetable. Going into the wave screen by clicking on Wave and load in the Wavetable 04SqrSweep. Then click on Seq to return to the sequence screen. We only want to edit sequence A, which will be played by Osc A, so make sure the Seq A button is pressed. Since sequence B is empty, Osc B will generate no sound. In the sequence screen, the second column after Step is labelled Wave, here you can set which waveform is played in each step of sequence. Initially they are all shown as – this means this step plays no waveform so is silent. To select a waveform, click on a row and either with the mouse pressed down move up or down - this will scroll through the waveforms or right click which will bring up a menu where you can select the waveform To start creating a sequence, click on step 1’s wave and select 1. If you press a key now it’ll play waveform 1. You can also put different waveforms in the other steps and by setting the loop end position these different waveforms will be played in order. For this first sequencer put in the following Step 1 – Wave 1, Step 2 – Wave 20, Step 3 – Wave 40, Step 4 – Wave 60, Step 5 – Wave 40 and Step 6 – Wave 20, and set the loop end position to be step 6. If you now press a key the sound that pulsates between a square wave and a sine wave should be played This sequence doesn’t change in pitch, so the next step is to change the pitch of the individual steps. The Tune column allows you to do this, selecting a row and moving up and down with the mouse pressed down changes the tuning of that step. This tuning is relative to the pitch of Osc A, so 12sm means that step is 12 semitones above the base frequency of Osc A So to step up a simple tune, click on step 2 tune and move the mouse till it reads 4 sm, then step 3 to 7 sm, step 5 to 4sm and step 6 to 5sm. Press a key will now play a small tune, with the waveform changing as before In this sequence all the steps are the same length, you can change this with the Length column, this will add a bit more interest to the sequence. Clicking on a row in the Length column and moving the mouse up or down with the button pressed down will change the length of that step or right clicking brings up a menu where you can select the length of the step. All the steps are in quarter beats so are dependant on the tempo of your sequencer. So clicking on step 2 and set it’s length to ½, do a similar thing with steps 4,5,6. Now the sequence will have steps 2,4,5 and 6 being halve as long as steps 1 and 3. At this point the sequence screen should look something like this The next three columns are the Volume, Pan position and Filter Frequency of the sequence step. We’re not going to change this in this example but by changing these you can alter these properties of the sequence The next column is Mix, this sets the rate one step’s wave, volume, pan and filter settings mixes into the next step settings. It’s default at 100%, this means that the properties change in a linear way, so at halve way through the step the properties are halfway between this steps properties and the next one. If you change its value you can alter how quickly this mixing occurs. At 0% the step parameters change instantly when you reach the next step, this can sometimes cause pops and cracks so it might not be the best values, between 0 and 100% intermediate mixing times occurs, if you changes these values you can hear what happens when you press a key and start the sequence. The final column is Slide, this controls how quickly the pitch slides from one step to another, at 0% the pitch jumps instantly when the next step is reached, at higher values this pitch shift takes longer. Once again try different values and play the sequence to see what the changes sound like At this point you should have simple Wavetable sequence. For wavetable sequences the envelopes are ignored, all these properties are changeable with the sequencer. LFO and Mod’s though still are applied to the sound, so these can be further used to alter the sequence. Sequences controls Wavetable sequences are polyphonic, this mean that you can have more than one playing at the same time. So press a key and then wait a minute and press another, you should hear two sequences playing. However they are not in sync with each other, different notes are being played at different times. This is because the sequence is in note mode, so when you press a key the sequence step is always set initial to the first step. To solve this problem and have sequences that play in sync, you need to click on the button Rst:Key so it reads Rst:Free. Now any sequences that are pressed will always be in sync with each other. One point about Rst:Free is that the sequence always reaches the end and then loops back to the first position, the loop start point is ignored The sequence buttons at the side allow you to swap the sequence around and clear them. Pressing the key:off button so it reads key:on allows you to enter the step semitone values by press notes Right clicking on the step column brings up the sequencer pop-up menu. This allows you to clear the sequences, copy and paste parts of the sequence, set the loop points and load and save sequences. More information about these commands is in the technical manual This is just the starting point for sequence, the next step for instance could be to put a sequence in sequence B, this will be played at the same time as Seq A. This can have a different length so you can get nice syncopation type effects. Alternative you can mess around with the volumes of steps to create trance-gate type effects. A whole of different sounds can be generated using sequences. Technical Overview Oscillator Controls At the top of Kubik is the Osc/Ctrl/FX panel, clicking on Osc brings up the oscillator panel. This contains controls for Kubik’s oscillators and filters Kubik uses two oscillators and filters to generate sound. The oscillators generates sound by reading out the wave data saved in the wavetable Osc A is the first oscillator and B the second. Left clicking on Osc A or Osc B allows you to mute / unmute the oscillator and right clicking brings up a following menu Osc A > B Osc B > A Swap Osc Clear Osc A Clear Osc B Randomise A Randomise B Copies A to B Copies B to A Swaps A and B Sets A to default Set B to default Randomises A Randomises B Kubik can combine these two oscillators in nine different ways, you can alter the mode by clicking on Mode and selecting from the menu Mode Description A+B The output of A is added to B A-B The output of A is subtracted from B Mix The output of A and B are mixed together. The volume of A controls the overall volume and the volume of B control how much A & B are mixed together - 0% - only A, 50% - equal amounts of A & B , 100% - only B Ring Mod The output of A and B are ring modulated (multiplied) FM The output of A frequency modulates B, the volume of A is the amount of frequency modulation WaveShaper The output of A is wave-shaped by oscillator B Sync Osc A syncs B. When A cycles around it reset B’s phase to zero The control Smooth, smoothes this abrupt change in B’s output S&H Osc A sample and holds B. B is only updated when A cycles around The control Smooth smoothes this abrupt change in B’s output PWM Same as A+B, but the Unison controls alters pulse width modulation (PWM) amount and speed The following are the Oscillators controls, they are the same for Osc A as well as Osc B Control Description Start / Finish Wavetable range of oscillator. When using an envelope to control the wave used, the minimum of the envelope will correspond to the start value and the maximum of the envelope will correspond to the finish value Vol Oscillator volume Tune / Fine Oscillator’s coarse (-36 semitones to +36 semitones) and fine tuning (-100 cent to 100 cent) Pan Oscillator’s pan position, from 100% left to centred to 100% right Off Wavetable offset. This moves Osc A’s wavetable start / finish position. Setting it to 10 would set the wavetables to go from waveform 10 to 64 and then from 1 to 9, rather than 1 to 64 Unison A secondary detuned oscillator is used to add unison to the primary oscillator. These controls alter the properties of the oscillator. Unison, set the fine-tuning of this secondary osc. Speed, how quickly this fine-tuning changes over time. Off, the coarse tuning of the secondary osc. In PWM mode these controls alters the PWM amount and speed Filter Controls Kubik uses two filters to further alter the sound. Clicking on the Filter Path button allows you to set how the filters and oscillators are connected together, they are Filter Path Description Direct Osc A goes to Filter A, Osc B goes to Filter B A>B Osc A goes to Filter A, then the output of Filter A are added to the output of Osc B this then goes into Filter B. For synths modes with one output such as FM, A>B will be the same as Direct Parallel The filters are in parallel, the output of A and B go into Filter A and Filter B, with the mixture of the output of Filter A / B controlled by the Filter Mix Serial The filters are in series, the output of A and B, goes into Filter A, it is then boosted/reduced depending on the value of Filter Mix, and then passed into Filter B The following are the controls for the filters, they apply the same for filter A and B Control Description Filter Type Kubik has several filter types to choose from they are 12db Low/High/BP/BR Low, high, bandpass and bandreject filters 24db Low/High/BP/BR Moog type low, high, bandpass and bandreject filters, these are more aggressive than the 12db versions Formant Formant vowel filter Comb Comb Filter Ring Mod Ring modulator Tuned Noise Replaces the filter’s input with noise, which is bandpass filter to create tuned noise Freq Filter frequency, from 20hz to 20Khz Q For 12/24db, Formant and Tuned Noise filters this controls resonance / bandwidth. For Comb Filter it controls the feedback of the filter, and for Ringmod the amount of ring modulation Var Var has different functions depending on the filter. For 12/24db filters it alters the pre-distortion of the filter. For Formant it alters the vowel of the formant filter and for Comb it alters the sign of the comb filter Ktrack The amount the filter’s frequency is altered by the key press, at 0% there is no effect, at positive values higher pitched notes have higher filter frequency, at negative values higher pitched notes have lower filter frequency. Filter Mix In Serial Mode this controls the mix of Filter A/B in the output. In Parallel Mode it controls how the signal’s volume changes when it comes out of Filter A and before it goes into Filter B Finally the tempo dial allows you to set the tempo used by Kubik , it is automatically set at auto-tempo , where the tempo is read from the VST host. Changing this value alter things such as envelopes and sequences where the timing are tempo based. Control Panel At the top of Kubik is the Osc/Ctrl/FX panel, clicking on Ctrl brings up the control panel The control panel allows you to alter how Kubik is affect by the note played and midi controls. The controls are split into three different parts. These are play controls, oscillator controls and filter controls Play controls affect how Kubik responses to notes being played Play Controls Description Ktrack Whether the pitch of the oscillator change in responses to the pitch of the note being played . Poly Polyphonic mode you can play more than one note at a time Mono Monophonic mode you can only play one note at time Play Mode Port Mode Latched Same as Mono but any key pressed remains on till another key is pressed. Pressing the same key twice turns it off Legato Same as Mono but if you press a key and then press another one, then release the second key Kubik returns to the pitch of the first key pressed Arp Arpeggiator mode, Kubik plays any notes which are held down, but instead of playing them all at once they are played in order, the arp controls alter the properties of these arpeggiator notes Off Turns off the portmento C Rate The portmento changes at a constant rate C Time The portmento takes the same time to move between last note and current note H Rate/Time Same as C Rate/Time but in this mode portmento is only applied when more than one key is pressed Port Amount of portmento Bend How much the pitch of Osc A / B is changed by the pitch bend wheel, from 0 semitones to 4 octaves Arp Mod The mode of the arpeggiator, these are Up / Down / Random / Up & Down Up – plays the notes in order of being pressed Down – plays the notes in reverse order of being pressed Random – plays random pressed notes Up & Down – plays the notes in order of being pressed and then in reverse order of being pressed Arp Speed The speed of the arp in terms of the current tempo Arp Oct The number of octave the arp plays, if for instance you have Arp Oct set at 2 then the notes are played at the their real pitch and then 1 octave above this pitch Arp Gate The percentage of the arp note length which is played before the note is released (stopped) Oscillator controls affect how Kubik oscillators response to note and midi events and also the global properties of the oscillators Osc Controls Description Tempo Tempo used by Kubik in bpm (beats per minute), at the minimum value it uses the tempo of the host, at other setting you can set the tempo from 20 to 220 bpm Volume Main volume Attack Attack time of the sound, how quickly the sound reaches it’s maximum volume after a key is pressed Release Release time of the sound, how quickly the sound dies away to nothing once a key is release Aftertouch How much aftertouch alters the volume of the oscillators A or B Key > Wave How much the current wave is altered by the note pressed. 0% - no effect, 100% - each key pressed will cause a different wave to be played, others have effects in-between these two Mod > Wave Modulation control to wavetable position, 0% - no effect, other values – higher value of modulation controls causes the wavetable to start at a higher position Wavetable Smoothing This stops glitches with very fast or large changes in wavetable position Wavetable Quantizations This alters the mixing between waveforms when you use envelopes or LFOs to change waveforms. At 0% the waveforms mix smoothly, at 100% the waveforms jump in discrete step with no mixing between waveforms, values between have intermediate properties Filter Controls affect how Kubik filters response to note and midi events Filter Controls Description Vel Filter’s response to note velocity Mod Amount filter is affect by modulation wheel changes After Amount filter is affect by aftertouch Filter Smooth Smoothes out changes in the filter frequency from midi control or altering the filter frequency dials. It’s useful to remove zipper type noise caused by very quick changes FX Panel At the top of Kubik is the Osc/Ctrl/FX panel, clicking on FX brings up the FX panel The FX page contains the effects controls; these are 2-band equalizer, a compressor, a stereo widener, a vibrato and tremolo effects and 2 multi-effects. The two multi-effect allow you to use different effects, the first FX unit uses modulation / distortion effects and the second uses delay type effects. You can access the various effects by clicking on the buttons labelled FX A (modulation/distortion) or FX B (delay). The buttons labelled On/Off turns on / off FX A or B. The Mix dial sets the mix between the dry (original signal) and the wet (signal after the effect). The modulation / distortion effects available in FX A are Chorus, Phaser, Wahwah, Distort and LowFi. Chorus Controls Description Len Maximum length of the chorus Width Maximum delay modulation amount Speed Delay modulation speed Feed Chorus feedback. For short chorus length and high feedback a flanger type effect is generated Phaser Controls Description Pitch Phaser frequency Width Maximum frequency modulation amount Speed Frequency modulation speed Feed Phaser Feedback Wahwah Controls Description Amt Amount of modulation of the Wahwah’s frequency Freq Wahwah’s maximum frequency Q Wahwah’s resonance / bandwidth Speed Speed the Wahwah filter frequency changes Filt Mix Mixing of Wahwah’s a low pass and a band pass filtering, 0% is all lowpass, 100% is all bandpass Distort Controls Description Sat Amount of saturation (distortion) applied to signal Limit Limiter value, any signal with a value larger than this value is set to this limit Tone Distortion’s bandpass filter frequency Emp Distortion’s bandpass filter bandwidth Boost Distortion volume boost Lowfi Controls Description Bits Bitrate of output from 16bits to 1bit Limit Sample rate of output Sat Amount of saturation (distortion) applied to signal Filter Lowpass filter frequency Boost Distortion volume boost The delay effects available in FX B are xDelay (two stereo delay lines, the output of left is feed into the right delay and vica-versa), sDelay (two separate stereo delay lines), lDelay (delay with time in seconds), comb filters and reverb xDelay Controls Description Left Left delay length in quarter beats Right Right delay length in quarter beats Feedback Cross feedback between delay lines Low Delay’s low pass filter frequency High Delay’s high pass filter frequency sDelay Controls Description Left Left delay length in quarter beats Right Right delay length in quarter beats Feedback Feedback Low Delay’s low pass filter frequency High Delay’s high pass filter frequency lDelay Controls Description Len Length of delay in milliseconds Feedback Feedback Cross Cross feedback between delay lines Low Delay’s low pass filter frequency High Delay’s high pass filter frequency Comb Controls Description Comb 1 Comb 1 frequency, setting it to it’s minimum value turns it off Comb 2 Comb 2 frequency, setting it to it’s minimum value turns it off Comb 3 Comb 3 frequency, setting it to it’s minimum value turns it off Damp How much the comb feedback is damped Filter Comb filters internal low pass filter frequency Reverb Controls Description Early Earliest reverb time Size Size of room in the reverb simulation Feed Amount of feedback in reverb Damp Amount of damping (lowpass filtering) in reverb Boost Amount the reverb is boosted The other effects are always on, independent of which other effects are selected Equalizer Controls Description Low Low band frequency Low Boost Amount low band is boosted / reduced High High band frequency Feedback Amount high band is boosted / reduced Compressor, this makes sure the sound is never above a set level. Increasing the compression amount decreases the total sound volume, useful for sounds that have loud sound peaks in them Stereo widener makes the sound wider by slightly delaying the right stereo channel as compared to the left channel. Widener Controls Description Spread Widening amount Width Maximum of spread modulation Speed Speed of spread modulation Vibrato /Tremolo is global periodic changing of pitch or volume Vibrato/Tremolo Controls Description Amount Maximum amount of vibrato / tremolo Speed Speed of vibrato / tremolo Speed Amount the modulation wheel alters the vibrato / tremolo Envelope Panel In the middle of Kubik is the envelope / LFO / Mod panel, clicking on Env brings up the envelope panel The envelope screen allows you to alter envelopes, clicking on the env button allows you to bring up the available envelopes. These are Wave A/ B Volume A/B Pitch A/B Filter A/B wave envelope for Osc A/B volume envelope for Osc A/B pitch envelope for Osc A/B filter frequency for Osc A/B Envelopes in Kubik are made up of up to 32 different sections, and have loop start and loop finish positions. Using loop points means that envelopes have an attack phase, a sustain phase and a release phase. In the attacked phase the envelope before the loop start point is used, in the sustain the envelope between the loop start and loop finish points is used & then looped and in the release phase either the region after the loop finish point is used or the looped area is used. When the release button is on the part after the loop end is used when a key is released and when it’s off the loop area is used Envelope Controls Description Length Length of envelope in quarter-beats Amount Range of the envelope, depends on the envelope Wave- amount wavetable position is changed by envelope, from 0 to 100% Volume - amount volume changed by envelope, from 0 to 100% Pitch - amount pitch is altered by envelope, from –1 octave to +1 octave Filter – amount filter frequency is altered by the envelope from –100% to 100% Key Tracking How much the note’s pitch alters the length of the envelopes. 0% has no effect, for negative values higher notes have longer envelopes and for positive values higher notes have shorter envelopes Velocity to Envelope Amount the note’s velocity affects the range of the envelopes, 0% has no effect, at over value then higher velocity means larger envelope range Editing Envelopes Clicking on a point with the left mouse button selects that point (it has a large circle around that point now and the position indicator is latched to that point), moving the mouse now moves that point. Clicking between points with the left mouse button allows you to alter the slope between points by moving the mouse up or down. Moving the mouse up means the line is curved more towards the start point and moving the mouse down means the line is curved more towards the end points, with the middle point meaning a linear line between the two points. Pressing shift + left mouse button adds a point at the current mouse position Pressing ctrl + left mouse button selects the currently selected point as the loop start point Pressing alt+ left mouse button selects the currently selected point as the loop end point Clicking the right mouse button brings up the envelope pop up menu Envelope Commands Description Add point Adds a point Del point Deletes current point Copy Copies current envelope Paste Pastes currently copied envelope Clear Clears envelope Loop start Sets loop start to currently selected point Loop end Sets loop end to currently selected point Loop all Sets loop points to first and last point Loop off Turns off the looping, by setting loop start/ finish to last point Load Loads envelope / wave from disk Save Saves envelope / wave to disk Randomise Randomises envelope Snap to beat When turned on moves the envelope points so they lie at exactly at quarter beats values. Presets Envelopes presets LFO Panel In the middle of Kubik is the Envelope / LFO / MODE panel, clicking on LFO brings up the LFO panel Clicking of the LFO screen brings up the LFO commands these are LFO Commands Description Clear Sets the LFO's controls tohere t default values Copy Copies a LFO Paste Pastes copied LFO Random Randomises current LFO Same Period Sets the saw & square speed to the same as the sine wave Zoom In Zooms in the LFO screen, the level is shown in top-left corner Zoom Out Zooms out the LFO screen Default Zoom Returns to original zoom level The top set of controls alter the major properties of the LFO, these are LFO’s in Kubik are more flexibility than in many other synthesizers. This is because LFO’s are made up of a sine, a square and a saw wave component mixed together. The bottom set of dials allows you to set the amount of these waves, the speed of these waves, the phase of the wave and for the square component the pulse width of the square wave. The top dials control the LFO’s properties LFO Controls Description Select LFO Type, these are Wave A/B, Volume A/B, Pitch A/B and Filter A/B Frequency Mode Toggle whether the LFO is reset to it’s initial value when a key is pressed (Note Reset or Free) Amount Overall LFO amount Delay The time before the LFO starts it’s attack phase, the larger it is the longer it takes the LFO to start. Attack LFO attack time - how quickly it takes for the LFO to reach it’s full amount after a key is press, only works in key mode Decay LFO decay time - this control how quickly it takes for the LFO to die away to nothing after it reaches its maximum value. . At maximum value it never dies away Mod How much the LFO speed is altered by the modulation wheel Vel How much the LFO amount is altered by the velocity of note Sym Amount of symmetry in the wave, changing this to higher values makes the first part of the LFO wave lasts a shorter time than the last half Hum Humanize randomly varies the speed of the LFO every time the LFO finishes it’s cycle, the amount of randomisation is determined by the Humanize amount, at 0% no randomisation occurs and at 100% the LFO speed can vary between it’s normal speed and twice it’s normal speed. Smooth LFO smoothing, helps get rid of glitches due to fast changes to LFO values, useful for instance when using square LFO’s Key Control how much the note played alters the speed of the LFO, at 0% this has no effect, at negative values higher notes have slower LFO’s and at positive values higher notes have faster LFO’s Mod Panel In the middle of Kubik is the Envelope / LFO / MODE panel, clicking on MOD brings up the MOD panel Mod’s are either simple LFO or keyboard controls that can control the secondary controls in Kubik such as pan position. There are 4 Mods, these are all global and so affect any note being played and are free running, i.e. they are not reset when you press a key. All 4 Mods have the same controls, which are Mod Controls Description Destination Clicking on the long box under Mod brings up the destination menu, this allows you to select which control the mod affects. – means that it has no destination Type There are two main types of mod controllers LFO - sine, saw, square, triangle and sample & hold Control – volume, pitch-bend, velocity, key pressed, modulation wheel, aftertouch, cc16 to 19 or joystick x and y position LFO Mods have the following controls Speed Speed of the Mod Amount Maximum value of the Mod , from –100% to 100% for some Mods and 0 to 100% for others Smooth Smoothing applied to the Mod’s output, useful for waves with abrupt changes in output, such as square waves Phase Phase of Mod Hum Humanization amount of the mod , i.e. the range the mod’s speed can change when it’s finished it’s cycle Control Mods have the following controls Min Minimum value of the mod, for instance modulation with a Modulation Wheel, if it’s set to zero then the mod would be this value Max Maximum value of the mod, for instance modulation with a Modulation Wheel, if it’s set to full then the mod would be this value Multi For volume modulation, Multi multiplies the volume so it lies more in the range 0 to 1 Smooth Smoothing applied to the Mod’s output Wave Panel The lowest panel of Kubik is the wave/seq/ prg panel, clicking on Wave brings up the wave panel The Wave panel allows you to alter the wave properties Wave Panel : Wave Selector At the top of the screen is the waveform selector, this has the numbers from 1 to 64 in boxes. Clicking on a numbered box selects that wave, the selected waveform it is shown in inverse and the selected waveform is shown in the screen below If you move the mouse while the left mouse button is down then you can select a range of waveforms. If you click left mouse button + shift on a waveform and move your mouse, you can drag waveforms around, the select waveform is placed where you finished dragging. Right shift + click brings up a menu which allows you can use this to select all, copy, paste and clear the waveforms Wave Panel : Wave Editing Screen The next screen is the Wave Editing Screen – this shows the currently select waveform. Pressing the left button and moving on this screen allows you to draw waveforms. After you have finished drawing the wave, this waveform is converted into additive partial amplitudes and phase data. This may cause some minor changes to the drawn waveform Pressing shift + left button, allows you to select regions of the waveform. These are shown in inverse. After lifting the mouse button, the selected region is expanded to fill the whole wave editing screen. This is useful for removing unwanted regions of the wave Pressing ctrl + left button, allows you to move the waveform left or right. Right clicking on the wave editing screen allows you to preview the current waveform, this will be play as long as you hold the mouse button down. Wave Panel : Additive Screen The additive screen at the bottom, allows you to alter the amplitude and phase of the additive partials for current waveform. Right clicking on the screen togs between amplitude and phase data Left clicking and moving you mouse, over the additive screen allows you to alter the partials data, amplitude or phase depending on the mode selected. In the display at the bottom the current partial is shown and it’s amplitude in decibels, and it’s phase in degrees Wave Panel : Presets To the extreme right is the waveform and wavetable preset windows The top window shows the waveform preset selector, initially it shows the preset directories that are stored in the waves directory in your installation path. If you add a directory into the waves directory it will show up in the root of the waveform preset selector. If you add any .aws presets into these directories they show up in these preset directory the next time you load up Kubik Clicking on one of directories brings up the waveforms in this directory, and then clicking on one of these entries loads in this preset. At end point clicking on the preset header label returns you to the directory level Moving the indicator in the thin column allows you to scroll up / down in the preset window The bottom window shows the wavetable presets, these are stored in the waves directory in your installation path. If you store any .awt wavetable into this directory, the next time you load in Kubik they will be shown in this window. The wavetable is loaded into the currently selected waveforms, if no range is selected than the waveforms from 1 to 64 are used If you clicking on the wavetable selector header than the current wavetable plays Clicking on an entry selects that wavetable and double clicking loads in the wavetable into Kubik Wave Panel : Commands Right at the top of the WAVE screen is the wave command menu, clicking on these entries allows you to select the various commands associated with waveforms and the whole wavetable. File Commands Description Load / Save Waves Loads/saves individual waveforms as .awv files Load/Save WaveTable Load/saves wavetable as an .aws files. When loading in an .aws file it is loaded into the currently selected waveforms, if no range is selected than the waveforms from 1 to 64 are used Load Wave Loads in a sample into the current waveform. Kubik allows you to load in any 16-bit .wav file, though it’s best if you load in single cycle type samples. Load Raw Wave Loads in a raw (.pcm) 16-bit files into the current wave . Resynthesis Resynthesis allows you to load in longer 16 bit samples as multiple waveforms. Kubik tries to find looped waves spread through out the sample, which are then loaded into waveform. When playing these waves back together a version of the original sound is recreated. Resynth seems to work best with sounds like single note that don’t vary in pitch, and you may have to mess around with parameters to get the best result. If you have selected a range of waveforms, the resynthesised waveforms are put in these, otherwise they are put into waveforms 1 to 64 The normalize dialog allows you to automatically normalize the waves. The default dialog allows to set up a preview version of the resynthed wave. It does this by automatically muting Osc B , setting the wave envelope to a set length and set the wave envelope amount to the maximum amount The size dialogue allows you load more than one looped wave cycle into each waveform Split Split is another resynth method, what this does is splits the sample into the number of sub-samples and then loads the sub-samples into the selected waves. The size dialogue allows you to select only the first part of the subsamples to be loaded in waves and the norm dialogue allows you to apply automatic normalization Select Commands Description Select All Select all the waveforms Unselect Unselects the current selection Set A/B to selection Sets Osc A/B wavetable start / finish positions to the currently selected waveforms. . Edit Commands Description Copy Copies the selected waveforms Paste Pastes the last copied waveforms Clear Clears the selected waveforms Clear All Clears all the waveforms Insert Inserts blank waveforms into the selected range, and moves the other forwards Delete Deletes the selected waveforms and moves the others backwards Swap Swaps the last copied area, with currently select area Reverse Reverses the order of the selected waveforms Respan Respan allows you to span the selected waveforms over other waveforms. The dialogue allows you to select the span start and finish waveforms. So for instance selecting waveforms 1 to 16 and then selecting start waveform 1 and finish waveform 64, then waveforms from 1 to 16 will be respanned over waveforms from 1 to 64 Randomise Randomises the order of the selected waveforms Mix Mixes the copied waveforms with the waveforms starting at the current select wavetable the dialogue asks how much of the copied waveform and the current waveform are mixed together, from 0% - all the original waveform to 100% - the copied waveform Mix Commands Description Set to first Sets all the selected waveforms to be the same as the first selected waveform Morph Morphs between the first and last selected wavesforms. Kubik does this by interpolating the additive data of the first and last waveforms over the select waveform Interpolate Similar to morph, but instead of interpolating additive data, Interpolate interpolates the actual wave data and then extracts additive data for the in-between waves Fill Morph Fills in any empty waveform by morphing between the filled waveforms in the wavetable. This is useful because you only need to fill in ‘Key’ waveform and the rest are generated for you. For Fill Morph to work properly you need to have at least Wave 1 and 63 filled with some data Fill Inter Same as Fill Morph, but instead of interpolating additive data it interpolates the actual waveform data Mix Sets Selecting Mix Sets brings up the mix sub-window. This allows you to mix the partial data from the current waves and saved wave, or between two saved waves The display shows how much of set A and set B are mixed together, left clicking on this display allows you to alter the values and right clicking brings up some presets The A, B boxes allows you to select if the current waves or save waves are used in the mixing Additive / Ring mod allows you to either mix the additive data or ring modulate them Ok performs the mix Wave Commands Description Normalize Normalize the selected waves, i.e. they are increased in volume to the maximum amount without them clipping Normalize Set Normalize a set of waves so that the relative volume differences are retained, for instance if wave 2 maximum value is twice the maximum value of wave 1, then after normalization this volume difference is retained Inverse / Reverse Inverses or reverses the selected waves Size Changes the size of the select waveforms. If you enter values over 1 then the wave is looped to the start to fill in the full wave. If you raise by 2 then the wave is raised by one octave and if you enter 0.5 then wave is lowered by one octave Smooth Smoothes waveform by mixing the end of the waveform with a reversed version of the wave. The smooth amount controls how much smoothing between the reverse and original waveform occurs Move to Zero Moves the current wave to a zero point in the wave Additive Commands Description Volume Changes the volume of the selected waveforms, the start amount is the volume change for the first waveform, the last amount is the volume change for the last waveform and inbetween waves are changed by an interpolated value Phase Change the phase of the selected waveforms Shift Shift the selected waveforms by 0 to 100% of the full waveform Low / High filter Lowpass or Highpass filters the waveforms Cut Zeros all additive data about the cut level Phase Dist Phase distorts the selected waveform . Ring modulate the selected wavesforms. The last copied waveform is used for ring modulation. Ring Mod Distort Distorts the selected waveforms FM Frequency modulate the selected waveforms. Wavetable Sequences The lowest panel of Kubik is the wave /seq / prg panel, clicking on Seq brings up the Sequencer panel The sequence page allows you to set up sequences of waves. To start the sequencer you need to click on the Seq button so it’s on. When it’s on envelope don’t work, you change these parameters using the sequencers volume, filter, etc controls There are two sequences, one for each oscillator, you select these by clicking on the Seq A button, initially it is set as Seq A and sequence A is showing, clicking this button then select sequence B and the button then reads Seq B, clicking again reselect sequence A. The Reset button allows you to have the sequence either being reset on key press or free running The Release button allows you to have a release section of a sequence, when it’s turned on then when you release a key, the sequence ignores the sequence end point and plays the rest of the sequence till the final step (64) is reached. The buttons below this are Key Toggles between the sequencer responses to key being pressed, when on the relative pitch is entered and the sequencer moves to the next step A>B Copies seq A to B B>A Copies seq B to A Swap Swaps the seq A and B Clear Clears the current sequence Undo Undoes the last change to the sequence The sequence grid occupies the majority of the sequencer screen The left hand scroll bar allows you to scroll up and down within the sequence. The first column is the current sequence, Left clicking on a row selects that row, moving the mouse allows you to select multiple rows, these are shown in a dark grey blue. Moving the mouse above the first row moves the rows up and below the first row moves the rows down. Shift + left clicking allows you to shift rows around. Right clicking brings up the sequence menu Sequence Commands Description Select All/Unselect Selects / unselects all the sequence Set start loop Set the sequences start position showing in light red Set end loop Set the sequences end position showing in dark red. The start loop position has to be before the end loop position. In key mode, when a sequence start it first plays up to the end loop row and then it loops back to start loop row Clear / Copy / Paste Clears, Copies and Pastes rows Insert / Delete Inserts or deletes a row Set to first Random All - set all selected rows to the first selected row Wave – sets all wave values to first selected wave All - interpolates between the first and last selected row Wave – interpolates the wave value between the first and last selected row Randomises the selected rows Save / Load Seq Saves and loads sequences to disk Interpolates The next columns are the sequences attributes, these are Sequence Attributes Description Wavecycle Waveform to be played Length in quarter beats Length of the current step in quarter beats Tune in semitones Relative tuning of the step from – 36 to +36 semitones Volume Volume of the step from 0 to 100% of osc volume Pan Position Pan position from 100% Left, to centred to 100% right Filter Frequency Filter Frequency from 20 Hz to 20Khz Mix How quickly one step mixes into the next step, 100% means it takes all the length of the step, smaller values takes less time Slide How quickly the tune of the current step slides the next step. Program Panel The lowest panel of Kubik is the wave /seq / prg panel, clicking on Prg brings up the Program panel The left hand screen shows the Preset Selectors, this shows the presets in the current bank, clicking on one loads this preset in The right hand screen shows the Bank Selector, this shows all the banks stored in banks directory. If you place Kubik preset bank files (.kkb files) here, the next time Kubik opens they will be shown here. Double clicking on one of these loads in that bank of presets Below the preset select is the text entry box, this allows you to save a description of the preset with the preset. Clicking on it allows you to alter this text Load / Save Preset These commands allows you to load and save a single preset, they are saved as files with the extension .kkp Load / Save Bank This allows you to load or save banks of 32 presets, these are saved as files with the extension .kkb Set Default If you load a bank and then preset Set Def then the next time Kubik starts this bank will be automatically loaded. Rename This allows you to rename the currently selected preset Copy / Paste / Clear Allows you to copy and paste presets. Clear sets the current preset to the default ‘blank’ preset. Graphic Set-up Panel If you click on the colours button in the prg panel it brings up the graphic set-up screen This screen allows you to set the colours of all elements in Kubik, the font used and the size of the various labels. Clicking on a label selects that control, clicking on the hex colour values allows you to enter a value into that controls colour. Reset – returns the colour set-up to the default set-up Set – sets Kubik graphics to the currently select colours and text properties Load – loads in a saved graphic set-up file (.kcl) Save – saves the current graphic set-up as a .kcl files Close – closes down the graphic set-up panel and returns to the PRG panel All the colour set-ups are saved in the registry in the Kubik entry. You can also edit the graphics used for the dials and buttons by editing the bmp file in the bitmap directory.