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Distortionator - turn anything into an FM synth


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Thought I'd give a shoutout to this obscure effect plugin I came across:

http://www.niallmoody.com/ndcplugs/distortionator.htm

It lets you choose between vanilla clipping and sine wave distortion, which is kind of like waveshaping I guess, but sounds more unique and closer to frequency modulation as the description says. Turn the distortion and in gain to max, then try playing some drum or percussion sounds through it and they will sound like tinny Genesis sound effects.

I tried running some 3xOscs from FLStudio through it, started out with a basic sine wave osc, then added another sine wave osc and just started tweaking the knobs, volume and coarse and such, and I'm suddenly programming FM synthesis through subtractive synthesis. Even something as subtle as slight detuning can have a profound impact on the sound. I made this quick example of a bunch of distorted 3xOsc instances where I even managed to program drum and cymbal sounds with relative ease, then automating the volume knobs

http://www.tindeck.com/listen/lqxz

It's a pretty fun and alternate way of programming FM sounds. The only notable drawback I can think of is that you won't get any actual polyphony, you'd need to load up another instance in a different mixer slot for that.

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