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3. Digging deeper with Synthwave Keys (continued)

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Used on a bass sound, you can get some quite dramatic effects too. Load up Bass-Dorain and set the Rate and Depth controls as shown. It’s a dramatic wobble but slow so you can hear it to its full effect. 7

Now we’re going to bring the filter in. Set it to Low-pass using the dropdown menu and click and drag the Filter Frequency dial upwards. (It’s sometimes hard to get it to do this but you’ll get the hang of it!) Now the sound is starting to growl a little. 8

Using this combination of LFO and filter allows you to edit the sounds somewhat – and we had quite a bit of fun with it, unexpectedly with some bell sounds (above). But, like we said earlier, this is no synth. However, we do have one more trick up our sleeves for getting more sonic changes going…

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The best work around for digging deeper with Synthwave Keys is to use your DAW’s automation features. These allow your DAW to access a few of the ROMpler’s parameters and record or send out changes – effectively controlling it remotely. We’ll show you how to do this in Logic and Live. In Logic hit A for Automation. The tracks will expand.

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Hit the middle drop-down menu on the track you have Synthwave loaded onto and you will see it as one of the options. Select it and five parameters – the ADSR options and Filter Frequency – will appear. Select the latter as that is the one we will automate.

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Record some notes in a MIDI part without automation. Now press A again and you can now draw in automation points along your MIDI part and these will control the Filter Frequency in Synthwave. Note how the dial automatically moves as you play back!

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While only five parameters for the ROMpler are available to automate, your DAW should allow you to automate others like the overall volume. Here we’ve set the track volume up to automate and faded Synthwave in from the start.

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In Live, place Synthwave Keys on a track in Session View with some MIDI information playing in a Clip. Now go to the Clip View detail and select the Envelope icon. Select Synthwave in the Envelope section and Filter Frequency as the parameter. Again you can draw in the automation points.

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In Arrangement View it’s just as easy. Hit the Automation Mode button, select Synthwave and Filter Frequency as the parameter and draw in automation. Recording movement from the Frequency dial back in does not work, but drawing in automation yourself really opens up the instrument to more editing.