All right, let's load up an instance of Operator.
This is just the default setting.
Operator is a super powerful FM synth.
And it can be a little bit tricky to navigate around
at first, so I'm going to give you just a general quick walk
through of the different panels and how you can access all the parameters
on this particular synthesizer.
So starting over here on the left, we've got the four operators--
A, B, C, and D. So incoming MIDI is going to give each of these operators
its fundamental frequency, unless you choose
to fix it in place, in which case you can define that frequency over here
with a frequency knob, choose a multiplier,
and then there's a level for each operator as well.
You can turn all of these on and off by clicking their associated letters
over here.
So if you only want to be using A and B, you can turn C and D off
and they won't be taking CPU power or be involved in any of the modulation.
Moving along, in the center of Operator is the operator display.
So depending on what you have selected in the shell,
you're going to see specific parameters that are related to that device
inside of the operator display.
So for each of these operators, I have an app envelope.
And then I also have oscillator parameters as well.
So let's take a look at the envelope here first.
I have a visual display of the ADSR.
And I can adjust those parameters here by clicking and dragging
or I can adjust them down here numerically the same way.
We have other parameters which are specific to this particular amp
envelope.
And then I click on the oscillator, you can
see that I have parameters for adjusting which type of a waveform we have.
I can also draw in my own waveform.
You can see it goes to user waveform.
And more parameters specific to this particular oscillator as well.
So you can see if I was going to select oscillator C now,
it would be back to whatever its particular parameters were.
So just clicking through--
sometimes it can be a little confusing, especially
if you have multiple stages of modulation,
keeping track of what's going on where can get a little hairy.
So just make sure you know where you're clicking and what you're clicking on
and it all makes a lot of sense when you kind of spend a little bit of time
inside of Operator.
Moving over to the right hand side of the panel,
we have an LFO, which we can turn on and off like this.
We have a filter which can similarly be powered on and off.
Pitch envelope, and then down here we have
all of the global settings for this entire device.
So starting up here with the LFO, we have another envelope.
And then here we can assign the destination for the modulation.
It can go by default to any of the four operators, the filter,
then you can select another destination as well
and adjust different parameters, such as how amount of modulation
is affected by or in relation to the velocity of the incoming MIDI notes.
You can change the wave, you can change the rate,
and the amount just like a typical LFO on any device that you would see.
The filter here, again, envelope.
And then here we can actually adjust the parameters and the settings
of the filter visually or, again, you can do this over here with these knobs.
The Pitch envelope-- same thing, we can adjust it visually
up here or numerically down here.
This is another set of modulations where you
can assign it to go to any of the oscillators
or specifically to the LFO and then an additional destination.
This is where you're going to adjust your glide settings and the glide time,
if you're adding that sort of a dimension to the sound.
And then down here we have the global parameters.
So if a click on this shell here, you can see the algorithms
and you can decide how each of these operators
is working in relation to the other.
Then down here, we have yet another level of modulation and most of these
are from incoming MIDI messages.
So we can assign velocity, key tracking, after touch,
pitch bend, the mod wheel to be creating additional modulation here.
Down here at the bottom, we have parameters
that are specific to the amount of voices that Operator will play
and how those voices are being played.
So there's a general walkthrough of Operator.
The more you mess around with its device,
the less confusing that it seems.
So visually at first, you might find this to be challenging,
but it's actually really easy to navigate
once you understand what's going on.