Sound Design for Oberon - Quixotic's tips & advice (aka what I learned while making Orkerstrial Obersounds)

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Auryn
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Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

19 Feb 2018

Sound Design for Oberon - Quixotic's tips & advice (aka what I learned while making Orkerstrial Obersounds)

- One of the most interesting/powerful sound design techniques in the Oberon arsenal is the Xmorph control used in conjuction with the harmonize, which allows you to morph between the spectrums of osc 1 and 2, and then harmonize the resulting spectrum so it will still be musical. This means that typically to make an interesting sound using Xmorph you will want to program both oscillators (both source and target), even if only oscillator 1 is actually audible.

- Let's take a look at the morphing in a bit more detail. First create and Oberon and initialize patch. Now you probably want to turn down the volume a bit because the init patch is friggin' LOUD... and then have Oberon play some melody or arpeggio that loops so you can hear what you're changing.

- When initializing, both oscillators are exactly identical, so morphing won't have any audible effect.

- Go ahead and increase osc 1's Xmorph to 100% anyway. No change, right? Okay, now change osc 2 keyboard tracking (kbd track) parameter to 0. Okay, now you should just be hearing a single droning note, because you've fully morphed to a target oscillator that doesn't track keyboard changes.

- Okay, now for a simple demonstration of the power of the harmonize control: Increase osc 1's harmonize setting to 100% You will now hear that Oberon gradually re-harmonizes the target osc's static droning into music.

- Changing osc 2's settings (for example changing the octave setting) will now drastically alter the timbre of the morphed osc 1 sound, but no matter what you do the result will still be more-or-less correctly tuned thanks to the harmonize control of the source osc (remember you are still listening to the output of osc 1)

- Now it's important to note that for the target oscillator (the oscillator that is being morphed to, in this case osc 2) some oscillator controls are "pre-morph" and some are "post-morph". The keyboard tracking parameter is an example of a pre-morph control, e.g. changing this parameter on the target osc (2) will alter the morphed sound of the source osc (1). There are also controls that are post-morph, those controls will not change the morphed sound of osc 1 but only the output sound of osc 2 if it is enabled/audible (see image)

- To understand this better try the following: re-initialize the patch. Now increase the bend control on osc 1 to 100%. You will hear osc 1 "bending upward" in a strange, dissonant way. You can get a more musical sound by using the osc 1 harmonize control again, so increase that to 100%.

- Okay, now return osc 1's harmonize to 0 and increase osc 1 morph to 100%. No change again, because both oscillators are identical. Now change osc 2's bend control and you will hear a similar effect to the one you just heard when bending osc 1. Now try this: increase osc 2's harmonize control - you will find that this does not have any effect on the output sound of osc 1 because the harmonize control is post-morph. It only affects the output sound of osc 2, not the morphed sound of osc 1.

- Understanding this architecture and using it to your advantage is one of the keys to getting more out of Oberon. You will typically want to have both oscillators audible for a fuller sound, so understanding that post-morph parameters can be changed independently and pre-morph parameters cannot is important in getting a complementary sound for both oscillators.
Attachments
oberon morph controls.jpg
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Last edited by Auryn on 19 Feb 2018, edited 2 times in total.
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

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Loque
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19 Feb 2018

Good tips. I like the features of Oberon, but still struggling with the OSC selection and morphing. Gonna make a session to dive in again. I think its worth, because Oberon has its own character, sometimes a bit Ober-clean, and other times incredible fat stuff!
Reason12, Win10

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Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

20 Feb 2018

Loque wrote:
19 Feb 2018
Good tips. I like the features of Oberon, but still struggling with the OSC selection and morphing. Gonna make a session to dive in again. I think its worth, because Oberon has its own character, sometimes a bit Ober-clean, and other times incredible fat stuff!
The morph is really the best way of getting out of the "Ober-clean" zone as all kinds of weird interference starts happening when you use it. Oh, and the partial clip as well, that can add some grit. I've made a short demo song that goes from a simple wave to a sort of metallic wall of sound in less time than it takes to play "hotel california" ;)

it also demonstrates what I was trying to explain above, about how you can still use/modify some aspects of the second oscillator's audio, even though you're already using it as a morphing target.

Edit: New File, New Link (corrected a few things) : https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4lal5f0gitov ... eason?dl=0

it's also good to add some movement to a sound via the mod matrix... try applying an LFO or envelope to the morph, partial clip, or even Osc 2 pitch for example.
Last edited by Auryn on 20 Feb 2018, edited 1 time in total.
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

acesd619
Posts: 7
Joined: 18 Feb 2018

20 Feb 2018

Thank you for taking the time to do this writeup. Definitely a good starting point for my trial.

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modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

20 Feb 2018

I recently been informed that when oberon 2 was released, the trials were reset, so there is no excuse why any of the 7,603,334,271 people currently on earth should not have Oberon/the Orkestrial Obersounds refill.
Yes even those in a coma will arise when they hear the metallic bells shimmering and I have seen that midgets messing about with the mod matrix, will grow!

all yall.JPG
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🔗💥

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Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

20 Feb 2018

all yall.JPG (29.69 KiB)
this just made me LOL. Waco, Texas representing ;)

But let's get back to the topic of sound design! (seriously dude, you're making me blush and people will start thinking I'm bribing you with free stuff or something)
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

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Auryn
Posts: 842
Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

22 Feb 2018

Just put up a small bonus refill on my website called "Orkestrial Oberload" which consists of "outtakes" and other leftovers from making the Obersounds refill.

- 20 rhythm template patches
- 30-ish polysynth template patches
- 10 new patches that use the Reason (10) Drum Supply sample library.
- Some PolyCV-enabled combinators
- Some voice-based patches courtesy of a well-known forum member...

The template patches were used extensively in the creation of the refill so they may be useful to anyone wanting to explore Oberon for themselves.

You can find the free refill here, d/l at the bottom of the page: https://www.quixoticsounddesign.com/ork ... bersounds/
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Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

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modecca
Posts: 807
Joined: 07 Jul 2016

22 Feb 2018

Auryn wrote:
22 Feb 2018
Just put up a small bonus refill on my website called "Orkestrial Oberload" which consists of "outtakes"
https://www.quixoticsounddesign.com/ork ... bersounds/
Messing about with the free Orkestrial Oberload and Fritz Granular RE.

🔗💥

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