YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Ableton Spectral Resonator Effect Tutorial

Ableton Spectral Resonator Effect Tutorial — Transcript

by Robert Tubb · 2,303 words · 475 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:04welcome to this
0:05tutorial about the spectral resonator
0:08and what i'd like to do today is take a
0:11quick look at the old resonators
0:14take a look at what they can and can't
0:16do and
0:17briefly compare this to the new device
0:21um then we'll talk about each of these
0:23parameters and what they do in detail
0:26and then maybe we'll go on to some fun
0:29sound examples and some
0:30little tricks so
0:34the old resonator is basically
0:38a bunch of short delays
0:42so what i've got here is an operator
0:44that's just putting out
0:45[Music]
0:47turn off just putting out white noise
0:53and what the resonator does is
0:57have a very short delay that's tuned to
0:59the right
1:00delay time to make a note which is set
1:02here
1:02[Music]
1:05and the feedback on that delay is this
1:07control
1:10which affects how resonant or ringy
1:14it is there's also a filter in this
1:16delay which
1:20damps the resonance
1:24so that the high frequencies drop off
1:27faster than the low ones
1:30and you've got a bunch of these so you
1:31can set up chords
1:40which is nice but one thing
1:43one thing that bugs me about this device
1:44is that you can never quite get
1:48a completely tonal sound there's always
1:51something of the original white noise
1:54present
1:57and this gets even more so when you
2:03when you reduce the decay to something
2:05very short
2:08you don't really hear the tones at all
2:11so something
2:12we wanted to achieve with the new
2:13resonator is
2:17for it to be a device which takes in any
2:20input
2:21and really imposes tonal qualities on
2:24that
2:25sound so let's take a listen
2:28to the new one
2:32so that's kind of similar
2:37let's do an a b
2:42[Music]
2:49so it seems a lot more tonal in a way
2:53so even at short decay times
3:00there's definitely
3:04more of a
3:08pitch to it and then a
3:11really long decay times because very
3:16pitched
3:19[Music]
3:20so just the same as the old resonator
3:22there's a decay time there's a pitch
3:24[Music]
3:28and there's high frequency damping which
3:31is kind of the equivalent of this color
3:33knob
3:38there's also low frequency damping
3:41where the low frequencies die off
3:43quicker than the high frequencies
3:46these can be combined
3:47[Music]
3:54you look at the spectrum for the old
3:56resonator
3:58you see these spikes
4:01and each one of these is a resonant
4:04frequency so if we put this in linear
4:06mode and take the pitch up
4:14you can kind of see that all of these
4:17frequencies is evenly spaced
4:19which is a harmonic series basically
4:22and this is what happens when you have a
4:24really short delay with a high feedback
4:27this is why it's called a comb filter
4:29also because it looks like a cone
4:35in the new one you have exactly the same
4:40thing
4:42except in the case of the new one and
4:44rather than this
4:45harmonic series being generated by a
4:47delay it's actually been
4:49generated as individual sinusoids
4:54so this is being created as a spectrum
4:57with spikes in it
4:58and then it's being turned back into
5:02audio and the nice thing about this
5:05is that you can affect each
5:09of these signal sides individually
5:12let's go back into the log domain so
5:15with the harmonics control
5:17we can say how many of these spikes we
5:22want
5:26and then add them in one by one
5:38another thing we can do is stretch and
5:40compress this harmonic series
5:42to get in harmonic sounds
5:43[Music]
5:50at 100 stretch you've got only odd
5:53harmonics turning up
5:55so this gives you a sort of square wavy
5:58pipey kind of sound
5:59[Music]
6:05and then negative values it compresses
6:12[Music]
6:14eventually minus 100 you get just a
6:18single sine wave
6:22[Music]
6:31another thing you can do with
6:34the fact that you can control all these
6:37same waves individually
6:38is modulate them each individually
6:42so this is this section here the
6:44modulation section
6:45which has three modes first is chorus
6:54which creates a kind of chorusy sound
6:56[Music]
7:00flangey
7:04and with the mod the pitch mod set to
7:07zero
7:07it's just modulating the amplitude
7:11so you can see these sinusoids jumping
7:13up and down here
7:16and we pitch mode
7:19[Music]
7:24get more wonky stuff
7:38wandering noise is
7:41a bit like chorus except instead of
7:44being modulated with triangle waves it's
7:46modulated by random ramps
7:52so if we listen to just one or two sine
7:56waves
8:10oh
8:13and um what this is nice for is when you
8:16increase the unison
8:18so what unison does is add more
8:21sinusoids or partials
8:24at each of the harmonic points but
8:29at each of the harmonic frequencies but
8:32slightly detuned
8:44so you can see each of these spikes is
8:46becoming wider and more
8:49wobbly and indistinct
8:56and then when we add modulation it
8:58modulates each of those unison
9:00sinusoids individually again so we get
9:03even denser sounds
9:17[Music]
9:22so there's both detuning of the unison
9:25here and also with the modulation
9:30so granular modulation is
9:33modulating the amplitude again but this
9:36time with
9:37a decaying exponential and the decay
9:41is set with this
9:45decay control as well
9:47[Music]
9:48so every frequency
9:52is pinged at random rates resulting in
9:55these
9:56little sort of plucking sounds
10:04[Music]
10:08and the moderate affects the density of
10:11the grains
10:14from very occasional to
10:19too dense
10:23and this is happening individually for
10:24the unison so the more unison
10:27voices you have the denser this will
10:30become
10:32[Music]
10:43uh one thing to note here is that
10:48unison and modulation are doing
10:50different things to
10:51the partials on left and right channels
10:54i think quicktime is only recording in
10:56mono for some reason so you won't hear
10:57that
10:58but it's a shame because it does sound
11:01quite nice
11:07so let me go over here and put a filter
11:10on the white noise
11:19so we've got a resonant low pass and now
11:22the spectrum of the input looks like
11:26this
11:28kind of uh
11:31spiky triangle
11:35with a peak at the resonant frequency
11:36and then it falls off
11:38towards higher frequencies and then
11:41if we look uh what happens to the
11:43partials in the resonator
11:47we get exactly that shape reflected and
11:49this is basically how it works it takes
11:51the shape of the input spectrum
11:53and it sets the amplitude of all the
11:55sinusoids to follow
11:57that input spectrum
12:01so if we change the frequency of the
12:02filter we'll see it
12:04change the shape of the output of the
12:08resonator
12:09[Music]
12:13and then the decay happens after that so
12:15you'll hear
12:17the filter kind of ping the decay
12:26[Music]
12:28now there's a second way of sweeping
12:30this filter
12:31and that's this shift control here so
12:33what this is doing is
12:35shifting whatever the input spectrum
12:37shape was up and down
12:39in frequency
12:40[Music]
12:47and it doesn't matter what shape or what
12:50sort of distribution of the
12:51partials you have so if you
12:54kind of create crazy tunings for this
13:04you can still shift the shape
13:20and what i've done here is have
13:22wandering noise
13:24modulate the pitch in a quite dramatic
13:26fashion here
13:27take the moderate right down and then
13:29you get
13:31a bunch of partials they're really
13:32weirdly spaced
13:34and sound peculiar
13:55other than waggling this pitch control
13:59like a lunatic i would prefer to
14:02be able to feed the pitch with midi so
14:04the way i do that is
14:06set the mode pitch mode to midi
14:09and choose a midi track that i want to
14:14get my midi from and i'm going to use
14:17the track that i'm on which is this
14:20operator track
14:22and now
14:23[Music]
14:25the pitch of the resonance follows the
14:29midi
14:32and in monophonic mode you get some
14:35[Music]
14:42glide
14:44but you can also choose polyphonic mode
14:45[Music]
14:52and despite the lack of the mpe
14:55thing here we can feed mpe
15:04and control the pitch of the individual
15:06voices
15:09[Music]
15:10individually
15:22is still with fairly boring input which
15:25is
15:26just filtered white noise
15:29so let's move on to something maybe a
15:32bit more
15:34groovy i have a loop
15:37here which sounds like this
15:39[Music]
15:45and then i resonatify this
15:55add a midi sidechain
16:00[Music]
16:04turn that off
16:18[Music]
16:34do
16:36[Music]
16:46and do all that kind of stuff and then
16:48add unison
16:55[Music]
17:06so one thing to note with the polyphony
17:08is that the more polythene
17:10you have the less partials per voice you
17:13have so if you've whacked up your
17:14polyphony to 16 and your unison to eight
17:18you don't actually get too much uh
17:22too many partials here so it sounds a
17:25bit muffled
17:27so let's back off a bit on that
17:33[Music]
17:37and then
17:48[Music]
17:58[Music]
18:08[Music]
18:12so
18:15so yeah all of that kind of fun one
18:18thing to note
18:20is that in mono mode
18:24so if you're playing your input then you
18:26will get some output
18:30regardless of midi unless you turn this
18:32midi gate on
18:34so with the midi gate on
18:37you play the loop nothing comes out
18:39until you hit a midi note
18:52and in poly mode it's like midi gates on
18:56all the time
18:58so you always have to hit some note to
19:00get something out
19:11[Music]
19:19so that's a drum loop but what if we
19:22feed it with
19:23some melodic content well
19:27here we have a guitar loop of some
19:33[Music]
19:36description
19:38so whatever we feed this is always going
19:40to come out to be
19:42whatever midi note is so let's try that
19:52[Music]
20:05so this is interesting interaction
20:07between the harmonics in the input
20:09and the harmonics that you've set the
20:11spectral resonator to
20:13let's have a look at a spectrum
20:18so if we look at this spectrogram
20:20display here we can
20:21[Music]
20:23if we change the derive wet control
20:25we'll see yellow spectrogram which is
20:27the
20:28dry input
20:34and when we add the effect we see the
20:37blue
20:38spectrogram which is the wet signal
20:50[Music]
20:53so a bit like a comb filter that combed
20:55out everything that wasn't in
20:57the harmonic series this is combing out
21:00everything that's not
21:01in the whatever the partials are set to
21:06[Music]
21:10so you get something loud when the
21:14input harmonics here line up with the
21:18harmonics that you've set the resonance
21:22[Music]
21:28to
21:32[Music]
21:36so what if we want our resonance to
21:39follow
21:40what's what the guitar is playing
21:44well we can use the uh
21:47convert melody to new midi track or
21:50convert harmony to new midi track and
21:52see what we get
22:01so now we have some midi which is what
22:03our guitar was playing
22:05let's listen to that
22:13[Music]
22:17what we could do now is
22:21root that midi into this thing
22:24so there's that
22:27and let's see what that sounds like
22:53beef up the polyphony and then now
23:08we can transpose that midi anywhere we
23:10want really
23:25[Applause]
23:26[Music]
23:32[Applause]
23:34[Music]
23:40[Applause]
23:44[Music]
24:00so you can completely transform the
24:02input but stay somehow faithful to the
24:05melodic content of the input which is
24:08kind of cool
24:13an interesting thing that happens when
24:15you set
24:16a lot of these resonant modes down at
24:18very low frequencies
24:21is that you can create a kind of reverby
24:25weird space effect so
24:28we'll take our frequency down to
24:30something fairly low
24:32whack the unison up to something high
24:36stick some wandering noise on with a bit
24:38of modulation
24:40and put a drum loop through it and see
24:43what happens
24:48[Music]
24:58it sounds like we've completely lost all
25:01the tonal correct characteristics but
25:03we have a sort of spatial characteristic
25:12instead
25:17[Music]
25:33[Music]
25:39can get pretty cavernous again would be
25:42better in stereo but never mind
25:49so the next thing we're going to try is
25:51maybe the most obvious thing to try
25:54which is rooting my voice which is
25:57coming in here on channel 4
25:59into the spectral resonator and seeing
26:02what comes out
26:04so you end up with something rather like
26:07this
26:08it's a bit like a vocoder i guess
26:12very like a vocoder in fact
26:15so then
26:19decay and dabbing
26:37into it
26:41here's our midi here's some
26:45chords here are
26:49some chords
26:53lovely deeper chords
27:04precious
27:07um i think you can still hear my dry
27:10voice so it probably sounds
27:11rubbish but never mind
27:24i'd like to show you something that you
27:26could do with
27:27two spectral resonators in series
27:32what i have here is a sample of me
27:33saying
27:35yeah yeah
27:38and then i have one spectral resonator
27:40which has the
27:42midi coming in from this clip which has
27:44some
27:45pretty high ascending arpeggio notes
27:49and that's sounding like this yeah yeah
27:52yeah yeah yeah yeah
27:57not very good but then i had another one
28:02and this is getting midi from this
28:05[Music]
28:08which is just uh two alternating
28:11semitones quite low down transpose low
28:15and what's going to happen
28:16is that the yeah yeah
28:22the high harmonics in this high-pitched
28:24one are going to line up with
28:26high hop no the low harmonics in this
28:29high pitched one are going to line up
28:30with the high harmonics in the low
28:32pitched one
28:33and that's going to sound like this
28:46and then we can make it more funky by
28:49adding an lfo and then mapping that to
28:56shift
29:00incidentally there is a limiter on the
29:03end of this
29:04uh device and if you crank up the inputs
29:07and too hard
29:08you will hit the limiter and that little
29:11light should come on
29:12currently in the beta it's not coming on
29:14we're going to fix that later
29:24i want another lfo and i want to
29:25modulate something else
29:29i'm going to modulate
29:32the pitch modulation
29:40[Music]
29:52great
29:57[Applause]
30:08[Music]
30:08[Applause]
30:10[Music]
30:16so you can do quite a lot with two of
30:19these things
30:21perhaps you can do even more with three
30:22i don't know i haven't tried it
30:24why don't you

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Ableton Spectral Resonator Effect Tutorial by Robert Tubb, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 2,303 words across 475 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.