Seaweed Audio Fathom CM
> Step by step 1. Using the excellent screen to create sounds in Fathom CM
1
Fathom CM is a super flexible modular synth, and though its drag ‘n’ drop interface is intuitive, there are a few subtleties to make clear. Let’s check out a few presets. It may not be immediately obvious, but to open presets you need to manually navigate to the main Fathom folder that’s with the installer.
2
To do this, select the Browser button then either type the location in the top bar or use the browser arrow in the top left to move through your folder hierarchy. You should find four subfolders including Wave types, Modulators and Programs. Open the Program folder, and you’ll see the preset categories.
3
Load the preset Crouching Tiger from the Acid folder. On the display you’ll see its three audio components, and if you play the preset, at the bottom there’s a representation of the notes played and in the middle a frequency analyser curve. Below this are some global parameters and a 13-band graphic EQ.
4
So far, so simple. Click on any of the audio component graphics and its parameters will occupy the lower half of the interface. There can be multiple pages of parameters as you’ll see from the buttons with the Oscillator. If you want to load a specific oscillator or wavetable into your patch this is where you do it.
5
As mentioned, clicking on an audio component selects it. A second click will either bypass it if it’s an effect (green) or deactivate it if it’s an oscillator (red). A third click deactivates an effect. Here you can see we’ve deactivated the oscillator and bypassed the reverb.
6
Additional audio components can be dragged into the main signal flow window from the list and connected. Oscillators are hardwired to output stage, so if you’re not applying further effects you can just drag an additional oscillator in as we have here and it automatically becomes part of the sound.
7
As well as audio components (oscs, filters or effects) the list also includes modulators. These are dragged to target parameters and once assigned appear in the Modulation Matrix list. Select fresh modulators (New), choose ones you’re already using (Edited) and select front panel controls such as the XY pads.
8
Play the loaded preset, Crouching Tiger, and you can hear there’s a sample and hold effect. Click on the dice icon on the modulation slat assigned to Frequency and it folds to show Random, Sample and Hold modulator parameters. Click the icon to close it and adjust mod depth with the little dial to the left.
9
Finally, you can choose from 16 different skins. Use the right hand circle icon in the top bar to cycle through them. In addition to this there are also auxiliary colour schemes which are cycled through using the left hand circle icon in the top bar.
> Step by step 2. Advanced modulation in Fathom CM
1
Flexible modulation is one thing that makes Fathom CM such a powerful synth and we’ll now look at a few ways we can use this. Let’s start by loading a fresh instance of the plugin and creating a sound from scratch.
2
We’ve grabbed an Analog Saw oscillator from the list and then added a State Variable Filter to put after it. By dragging the output node of the oscillator to the input node of the filter we have connected them. We’ve then adjusted the filter Cutoff and Resonance to taste (about 800Hz and about 3 respectively).
3
To add envelopes to both the filter and oscillator we’ve dragged in two ADSR Easy envelopes, one onto the Cutoff and one onto the oscillator Volume. Conveniently, these have the ADSR controls on the modulation slat, but you can still open them up and edit them using the plot if required.
4
Set the envelopes to taste, adjusting the Cutoff and Resonance accordingly. Let’s add some more complex modulation to the filter Cutoff using a different method to add the modulator. Click on the Filter module so its parameters are visible, then click on the Cutoff knob and select the Add Mod button on the right.
5
Now click the Select Modulator button on the new modulator slat and choose LFO. If you now increase the tiny Amount dial on the left of the modulator slat, you should hear the filter cutoff being modulated by the LFO. On the LFO parameters we’ve set the Trigger option to Note so the LFO starts on each note.
6
We’ve set the Amount to 0.20 for a subtle effect. Next we’ll stack a more extreme effect onto the same filter. Click on the Cutoff knob and once again use Add Mod. This time choose the Envelope modulator. We can use this for more specific rhythmic effects.
7
Set the Envelope modulation Amount to about halfway, then on its parameters set the Division setting to 6. Make sure the Grid Units are set to Beats so you’re following the DAW tempo. If we now adjust the curve to end on one of the main grid verticals, we should have a triplet feel modulating the filter cutoff.
8
Let’s now finesse this curve so the effect is more exaggerated. We can also set the Segments parameter to 12. In our track, which is at 73 bpm, the envelope is now adding a nice triplet feel to the filter cutoff and the cutoff also has a gentle modulation from the first LFO we added.
9
Finally, we recommend you try out the recently added Fractal Reverb. We’ve simply added this after the Filter. Increase the Sustain Time and Decay Time for a more spaced feel. Use the Room and Dry settings for the effects balance and tailor the sound with the Freq Close and Freq
Far parameters.