Introduction
In the winter NAAM of 2016, Korg announced the Minilogue, and also the Volca FM. The latter is a three voice 6-operator FM synthesizer, compatible with the old DX7 format. More than the Yamaha Reface DX released the previous year, this little synth re-kindled the love (well, at least the interest) for FM synthesis. One advantage of FM synthesis is that the harmonic content of the sound can vary greatly in response to data such as velocity or after-touch, making patches much more expressive than what can be achieved with subtractive synthesis (this is specially true for percussive sounds in east-coast synthesizers). The MicroKorg was developed as a Virtual Analogue subtractive synthesizer, but with sine waves on OSC1 and LFO2, the ability to push LFO2 into audio-range, as well as controlling the speed of LFO2 using the keyboard, the MicroKorg lends itself to be pushed into a very basic, 2-OP FM synthesizer.
Patch
| Patch Name: | FM Bells | ||||
| PARAM 1 | PARAM 2 | PARAM 3 | PARAM 4 | PARAM 5 | |
| VOICE | SYT | SGL | PLY | — | — |
| PITCH | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| OSC1 | SIN | 0 | 0 | — | — |
| OSC2 | TRI | OFF | -12 | 0 | — |
| MIXER | 127 | 0 | 0 | — | — |
| FILTER | 12L | 107 | 0 | 0 | 28 |
| FILTER ENV | 0 | 64 | 127 | 0 | ON |
| AMP. | 127 | CNT | OFF | 0 | — |
| AMP. ENV | 0 | 99 | 0 | 105 | ON |
| LFO1 | SAW | OFF | OFF | 10 | — |
| LFO2 | SIN | OFF | OFF | 127 | — |
| PATCH1 | LF.2 | PTC | 63 | — | — |
| PATCH2 | TRC | LF.2 | 30 | — | — |
| PATCH3 | VEL | CUT | 41 | — | — |
| PATCH4 | MOD | LF.2 | 22 | — | — |
| MOD FX | ENS | 4 | 28 | — | — |
| DELAY | STR | OFF | 1 | 112 | — |
| EQ | 100 | -5 | 1.00 | 5 | — |
| ARPEG. A | 101 | 1.8 | 20 | DON | 2 |
| ARPEG. B | OFF | -10 | ON | 8 | — |
License
This patch is released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Please share this page’s (or the website’s) URL if you found this useful for your work.
FM Bells MicroKorg Patch by Filipe Teixeira (Philip+) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://filipe-teixeira.com/electronic-music/microkorgcookbook/fm-bells-microkorg/ .