Alissia Dragoon

An amazing soundtrack and one of the best/underated games on the system.

Also.... It is my personal opinion that FM synthesis people depend too much on other peoples patches. Learning to actually use FM synthesis is not that hard with a little reading and experimenting. I can tell you from my experience with both trackers/synthesizers side that toms are totally possible and emulations of most sounds can be done with a bit of planning and thought. For toms or any kind of sounds you just got to break down what you hear in real life and apply that to the envelopes in FM world.

the thing about synthesis is that it only is limited by the mentality of the user. you can avoid 80's sounding synthesis if you don't program for it. its as simple as that. today a lot of dubstep producers use FM because of it's agressive sound and how it distorts with effects. FM synthesis actually was well liked because it was better at emulating real sounds then traditional synths.

I don't use samples either, so if you want to check out what I've done with YM2612, for example this track: Partners In Crime. Check the intro and especially the outro for some tom drum fills.

4op algorithms. I think the best algorithms for making tom/snare drums out of those are: 4, 5 & 7. If the sound gets clicky, change the Attack Rate of the carrier/output operator(s) to fix that. Some of the best FM drums can be found from Hitoshi Sakimoto, TechnoSoft & the game Madou Monogatari I. Study the patches, see if they sound good "as-is" and/or add pitchbends to spice them up.

My release Trenchvent has no samples either - I can send you my bass drum patch if you like.  That can definitely be turned into a tom sound.  But yea - it's hard to get them punchy sounding like a DMG although it is definitely possible.

https://soundcloud.com/jredd/enchanted-forrest Here is one I did with FM and PSG, no samples.

nice drums Jredd

Thanks Lazerbeat! One of these days I should get back to making FM chipmusic...

fedepede04: Not bad hihats, but still rather clicky. Perhaps FM+filters could help. That crash sound reminds me of a grandfather clock or something. It's hard to get a nice complex cluster of overtones whilst also having a nice bell in FM cymbals. I guess oscillator detuning could help with that. That said, I don't think any type of pure synthesis can make a very nice pseudo-realistic crash cymbal yet...

that was(is) exactly my point.
when we are talking about kick drum, toms and synth toms, i think they are pretty easy to do,
but authentic hi hats, cymbal is another matter, even snare drums is hard to do if it shall sound authentic.
then control of the noise and sound is really hard to master, like you say impossible.

it was also the reason for that i was thinking of add samples to my program.
it was also my intention to added filters to the program, but it was something I never got around to do.
and other idea that i played with was, the waveform in my program is 1024 data long, if I took 1024 data from a eg. crash sampling and use it to do FM synthesis over.
but again it was something that i never got around to do.

btw i don't know exactly know how a grandfather clock sounds like
, but i also don't think that my cymbal sound like a crash cymbal, i think it sound more like one of the smaller cymbals

fedepede04: Not bad hihats, but still rather clicky. Perhaps FM+filters could help. That crash sound reminds me of a grandfather clock or something. It's hard to get a nice complex cluster of overtones whilst also having a nice bell in FM cymbals. I guess oscillator detuning could help with that. That said, I don't think any type of pure synthesis can make a very nice pseudo-realistic crash cymbal yet...

Hi! Glad you're considering using FM for percussion instead of samples.

I had a quick play with one of my snare patches in TFM Music Maker for literally 5 minutes and came up with this. It's played with pitch slide, a fast retrigger and the delayed notes doubled at lower volume in a separate channel. I'm sure you could do much better!!

fd-toms-YM2612.wav

fd-toms-YM2612.png

These are gorgeous!

fedepede04 wrote:

of cause i depend on the software you are using
but i don't think it is hard to make good drums using FM sound,
what i think that is the hardest is hi-hats, crash cymbals, and rides, all sounds that need metallic noise.

here is a FM drum beat using, my own program Power-Fm
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/308 … 20Beat.mp3

nice! cymbals sound good/real.

Thx

of cause i depend on the software you are using
but i don't think it is hard to make good drums using FM sound,
what i think that is the hardest is hi-hats, crash cymbals, and rides, all sounds that need metallic noise.

here is a FM drum beat using, my own program Power-Fm
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/308 … 20Beat.mp3

nice! cymbals sound good/real.