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Article 3 took us on a trip deep into FM theory. It's hard work - all those diagrams and exercises - but the knowledge gained plays an important part in mastering sound design on the MA chips.
When all the sound design is done, good use of MIDI programming, together with some careful orchestration, can extend your work even further. So, in this month's article we'll take a break from all that tough theory stuff, and focus on how MIDI programming itself can be used to manage and improve the tone color and sound of ringtones. We'll do this by working through a few simple SMF techniques that particularly support and compliment the MA sound and are also effective on the handset audio system. Don't forget that you ear is the final judge - once again, turn off those neat studio monitors and get immersed in the miniature audio space of the hand-set, if you can, when you check out these files!
All the examples are made the same way. There is a SMAF file to listen to first, together with an SMF file and voice file in order for you to reconstruct the SMAF file and check out what is going on. There is just one .vm3 file (voice file) needed for all the examples.
In most examples, the first part of the SMAF file plays a note (or phrase) without the effect then there is a short pause, then the phrase is repeated with the described effect.
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Bell tones are easy to create with FM, but they are made even more effective by playing the right clusters of notes. Because of the dissonant nature of the tone, the note cluster sounds like a single strike, rather than a chord. Check out this example:
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Quickfire program changes can be used to create the effect of a filter sweep, or a typical sample and hold filter effect. The first example moves through a series of voices that have slow attacks and releases - this helps them "smear" into each other. Alternate program changes are put on two different tracks in order to allow overlapping. The second example is a little more straightforward - as the notes are all short, program changes can be scattered between the notes, calling up different voices from a related set, giving the effect of a randomly switching filter cutoff frequency.
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Making telephone "bells" is most effectively done by rapid fire notes. Here are a couple of examples using different voices - the idea is the same in both cases, to build a bell with a series of rapid "tings":
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A chorus effect can make the sound bigger, even when playing through the handset. In fact, it's like spending polyphony in exchange for sound. Duplicating a track and de-tuning slightly (using pitch-bend) will create a broad chorus like effect. In the example, each track is panned hard left & right to make the chorus effect "wide".
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This is a standard technique that is easy to implement. The track selected for echo is duplicated on a new MIDI channel and delayed by about 150~250 ms, and the volume reduced to about 60~75% of the previous track. Repeating this process deepens the echo, but usually, two repeats is enough to create a convincing echo or ambient effect, especially on monophonic lead lines. If you have the room, it is always better to use new MIDI channels - echo can be built on one MIDI channel, using decreasing velocity, but there is a risk of interference between notes, the results cannot be panned wide and it is more difficult to control and edit.
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All of these techniques are all pretty standard in the world of MIDI programming, but with all the DSP power available on the desktop these days, its easy to forget them. In the world of ringtones, however, where every detail counts, they can be very effective. I hope you've enjoyed revisiting these tricks and can apply them to you ringtones. In the next article, we shall go back inside the the MA synthesizer and look at the role of PCM in the voice editor.
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