Spectral Resonator takes a sound and generates a bunch of sine waves
based on the spectral properties of the incoming signal.
This allows us to totally transform sounds. From turning drums into melodies
or turning organic sounds into digital washed-out soundscapes.
In this video I'll first talk a little bit about how a Spectral Resonator works
and then we'll use it to turn a drum loop into chords.
So here on this track I have a default instance of Operator, Spectral Resonator and a Spectrum
so we can see what's going on with the sound. I'll make the spectrum bigger
by hitting the triangle on the upper-left corner and I'll turn off Spectral Resonator for now.
Now out of Operator I'm playing a sine wave.
You can think of the sine wave as the fundamental building block of any sound.
Almost every sound you hear in the world, from a piano playing to a person talking, can be thought of as
just a bunch of sine waves at different frequencies, amplitudes and phases.
You can see the sine wave looks like a spike on the spectrum graphic.
Now I'm going to change the output of Operator from Sine to White Noise.
White noise is a random signal of all the different frequencies playing throughout the audible spectrum.
Let's take a listen.
You can see this just looks like a vague scribble across the spectrum. Now let's turn Spectral Resonator on.
So first off we can hear that the white noise is a lot more tonal.
And we can see a bunch of these spikes similar to what we saw when we were playing the sine wave alone.
What Spectral Resonator is doing is analysing the frequency distribution of the incoming signal
and generating a bunch of sine waves based on what it sees.
Each of these sine waves is called a "harmonic" and we can control the number of harmonics generated
on the upper-right corner here.
Let's turn it down from 256 and see what happens.
Cool. So you can see I'm generating 5 harmonics here and we can count the number of spikes in the spectrum,
1,2,3,4 and 5.
I can control the fundamental frequency of where this harmonic series begins with the frequency knob.
I can also control how far the harmonics are spaced using Stretch.
Or, if I turn the number of harmonics back up...
I can shift the input spectrum up or down using the shift slider.
This is similar to pitching the incoming signal up or down. Or almost acting like a filter.
Now what I'd like to happen is for each of these sine waves to resonate out for longer.
So if I turn up Decay here, now when I just tap a note, you can hear the sine waves of the Spectral Resonator ring out.
I can dampen the higher frequencies using this 'HF damp' knob.
So you can hear the higher frequencies are decaying much more quickly now.
Or I can do the same thing for low frequencies with the 'LF damp' knob.
Notice how we can see what frequencies are decaying faster using the Spectrogram.
You can see that the top part of the Spectrogram, which shows the volume of the upper frequencies over time,
fades to black more quickly than the lower part.
So now that we have a basic understanding of how Spectral Resonator works,
let's apply these techniques to something a bit more musical.
Over on this track, I have a simple drum break. Let's take a listen.
And now let's hear it with Spectral Resonator.
You can hear the drums sound much more tonal like they're all playing one note.
I can change the pitch of the drums by manipulating the Frequency dial.
Or if I like, I can change this in semitones by clicking the musical icon here.
Now what I'd like to do is play in the notes, that Spectral Resonator is tuned to, using my keyboard
rather than having to turn the Frequency dial.
So to do this I'm going to switch the mode from internal to MIDI
and I'll select my MIDI input track.
I'll go ahead and arm the Input track so that it receives MIDI information from my controller.
Let's take it back to the break track. Now let's play a simple melody.
I can create a pitch-bend effect between notes by turning up Glide.
I can also set the range with my pitch-bend wheel on my keyboard
using the PB slider at the bottom.
If I turn in MIDI Gate, the signal will be muted when I'm not playing any notes.
Let's turn MIDI Gate off for now.
Now over on my MIDI input track, I have a simple chord progression.
What I'd like to do is send the MIDI data over from my clip to Spectral Resonator.
So let's press play on the clip and hear what happens.
Seems like only one note is playing at a time. So let's take it back to my break track.
And I'll change the mode for Spectral Resonator from Mono to Poly.
And now you can hear it's playing my full chords.
And I can choose to set the number of voices here back to 2 or up all the way to 16.
Now that we have the chords working, let's shape the sounds further.
I'll turn up the Decay so that the chords ring out for longer.
Turn up the HF Damp so that the higher frequencies get turned down more quickly.
I'll turn up Shift and make the chords sound a bit brighter.
And the Stretch as well, which spaces out the harmonics to create a more hollow sound.
Next we can play with the Modulation modes.
So, 'Chorus' creates a wider, phase-y effect. 'Wander' does a similar thing but has a more neutral sound,
and 'Granular' creates a super unique digital wind chime sound.
I can manipulate these modulation notes further with the 'Mod-Rate' knob
or I can create a bit more movement in the sound by turning up the amount of pitch modulation.
I can also turn up Unison, which creates slightly de-tuned copies of the sine waves we already have.
We can control how de-tuned these sine waves are from each other using the Unison Amount.
And I can push the Unison up to 8 here which almost sounds like we're back to the original drums.
Alright, so I'm happy with the sound here. But what I'd like to do now is mix it back in with the original drums.
So to do this, I'm going to turn down the Dry/Wet, you can see the Dry signal is represented in yellow, in the spectrogram
I can set the amount of gain applied to the input signal running into the resonator using this 'Input Send' knob.
And finally, I can transpose the whole thing up using the Transpose knob.
Awesome. Let's hear it with the bass and drums.