Funky Resonant Lead With Punchy Envelopes

The DM12 has lots on offer in the envelope department. Here are some tips for quick, funky sculpting!

All synth sounds would be lifeless without envelopes adding time-based evolution. The DM12 has the usual amp and filter ADSRs (and they’re nicely punchy too) but in addition, you can also use the ‘curves’ feature to sculpt the shape of each stage of the envelopes in more detail; this is great for rhythmically intense and groove-oriented music like funk and soul. In the next steps we’re going to show you how to quickly make a single oscillator resonant lead sound, using the filter envelope and curves to add squelch, punch and dynamics! Try sending ‘note number’ and velocity to ENV 2 rates on a couple of mod matrix slots to vary the sound and add some more soul and vibe!

Initialise your patch (program + compare). Then choose a single saw wave on DCO1. Hit the edit button under the unison detune slider and choose the Mono 2 mode with legato envelope behaviour. Then use the unison detune slider to add a little movement and chorusing.

Increase filter resonance to taste and then bring down the filter cutoff until you are getting a nice ‘squelch’ from the sound. Now, push the filter envelope amount slider up to around halfway – this slider governs how much the filter envelope affects the sound.

A great starting point on the filter envelope for funky resonant leads is this: attack to fastest, decay to around half, sustain to zero and release to zero. You can now balance the envelope amount slider, cutoff, resonance and the filter ADSR/curve levels to taste.