hey, i’m trying to use the value of the Current Forward Speed component in the Flying template to modulate the frequency of a modular synth.
i’ve gotten this to work by mapping the range of the forward speed (in this case 0 to 4000) to the desired range of notes (1 to 36) and using the event tick to trigger the note on repeatedly. the oscillators appear to be snapping to notes instead of passing between them smoothly. i see that the note value is a float and not an integer, so this should be possible right?
also is there a better way to constantly refresh the frequency than by using the event tick to constantly trigger note on events? keeping in mind i want the sound to be tightly correlated to the speed of the vehicle. it doesn’t seem like the smartest way but i couldn’t figure out anything else.
i’ve attached a picture of my blueprint.
There are loads of other synth parameters that can be controlled. In particular blueprint nodes such as ‘Set Osc Semitones’ are probably the solution for you, no need to retrigger notes. Just be aware that the synth has two oscillators so you will probably need to set the semitones on both of them. (although there is no reason both oscillators have to use the same frequency, lots to play with and experiment with to see what works for you)
This post I made in the thread about the midi plugin has a screenshot of how I’ve wired up two of those nodes to do this when using pitch bend on midi hardware. It’s very simplistic and the left-hand side of the graph is not relevant to your case (ignore the pitch event and my maths) but hopefully it illustrates something of what I’m on about:
hi steve
thanks! i thought the set OSC semitones parameter was limited to +/- 12 but its just limited to that in the Make ModularSynthPreset component.
also, i take it the oscillators cant be used as modulation sources? so there’s no possiblity of FM, cross-mod or audio rate modulation of any parameters? the LFO only goes up to 50hz.
I havent dug deep enough into yet to answer your questions but I’m sure it was described as a subtractive synth so I thought of it more as a semi-modular subtractive synth than a fully modular synth. And I’ve seen responses from people at Epic that invite us to look at the source code for the current plugin as a starting point if we want something far beyond the current setup.
I didnt know about the semitone range limit, and will keep in touch if I learn anything of use to you when I explore further. I was supposed to do more with it at the weekend but got distracted by trying to make it work properly on my mac since my windows pc fan noise is slightly distracting when I’m doing audio stuff.
yeah i was wrong, you can send more than +/- 12 semitones, that was just an arbitrary limit baked into the ModularSynthPreset. i’ve mostly got what i’m after for now.
The modulators in the Modular Subtractive synth operate at a control rate that is slower than audio rate for performance reasons.
But more than that, an FM synth really demands a very different architecture than a traditional Subtractive Synth, so I would envision it as a completely separate synth component. With that said, just as a test, I was able to implement FM modulation in a custom Synth Component–I totally recommend playing around with that if you feel comfortable in C++!