Sounddesign with Ring Modulation | Thomann

Today’s video lets you dive into the topic of Ring Modulation. Perhaps Ring Mod is a little lesser known next to FM & AM Modulation but not less interesting or versatile to create interesting sounds with. Besides the basic theory behind Ring Mod the video is covering the use with String Sounds, Chords, Drums and plucky melodies.
Gear used:
Fairfield thmn.to/thoprod/450522?offid=...
Pasiphae thmn.to/thoprod/492077?offid=...
Arp 2600 thmn.to/thoprod/511571?offid=...
Deckards Dream thmn.to/thoprod/499251?offid=...
Nord Drum thmn.to/thoprod/386116?offid=...
Verbos OSC thmn.to/thoprod/485089?offid=...
Interesting bits and pieces:
0:00 Intro
00:34 Theory
02:39 Analog Synth Pads
08:40 Melodies
12:15 Drums
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[@lit2021]

4:3 aspect ratio, interesting stylistic choice!

[@LoudPaul1]

I thought it was a VERY interesting choice to then switch back to 16:9 for a few seconds at 8:04 haha :P

[@entx8491]

lol@@LoudPaul1

[@MrRexBaron]

love how retro the demos look - great feel. Great tutorial - I never really knew what RM was, only could describe by the sound.

[@ThomannSynthesizers]

thanks, happy that you like it :)

[@maykit]

Easily the best synth sound design tutorials around. Great stuff as always.

[@wellurban]

One nice trick is to exploit the mathematical fact that a sine wave ring modded with itself creates a sine wave one octave up. That way you can use one output from a VCO (say, a saw) as the source for one synth voice, and take the sine out, mult it to both inputs of a ring mod, then send that through a different signal path with different rhythms to create an illusion of multiple yet related voices.

[@giovannipalermo2473]

a

[@nsjx]

Thanks for that! Going to try this!

[@chrisburns984]

I believe this only works with a triangle wave?

[@stephenspackman5573]

@@chrisburns984 It's not that, it's that it specifically fails to do anything useful for a square (or pwm) wave. The square of a negative number is a positive number, so ring modulating a signal with itself folds the negative going part up into the positive. For sines this happens to yield the same shaped wave at twice the frequency (but with a substantial DC offset); for triangles it produces something triangle-ish (but with somewhat different harmonic content), and with square waves it's useless because the lower part of the wave exactly fills the gaps in the upper part, producing a flat output. So, like ‘regular’ wavefolding, it does something potentially useful to most waveforms, it's just vertical transitions in the waveforms that produce particularly disappointing results. Or… so says the theory.

[@willjohnson4798]

Really Loved how the Arp 2600 sounded with Ring Mod, a nice little patch too! Thanks Jonas

[@ThomannSynthesizers]

Thanks mate, glad you liked it :)

[@Audhentik]

Very nice! You should link the artists in your description, curious about some releases of Jonas:)

[@Bendy2K]

Superb. Please keep these coming - such high quality!

[@nsjx]

Really cool Jonas, thank you. Is it mixing two sin OSC and mod the Freq of one w Env that gives a rm bell character? I can't recall off-hand. Really appreciate the demos 👍

[@nsjx]

One more thing, concerning Ableton. There is the very nice improved Freq Shifter device called "Shifter", which offers RM as well and I highly recommend playing with that on various sources! Sometimes just a little Env Follower can go a long way and the LFO offers some intriguing waveforms. 👍

[@profet1385]

Haha yes env follower, i've just commented on this very thing in this video a second ago. Basically Env Follow source's amplitude and bind Env to amount of Ring Mod, like 50-100Hz at most. Use with plucks, or other dynamic sounds.

[@ThomannSynthesizers]

Yes true

[@veragargiuolo]

@@profet1385 pp😅😊😅😅😊😊 😅😅😅d ed e😂ih c

[@SisterRose]

I don't know why more people don't just rip the tracking part of an Octave Pedal out and use that. Obviously it'd still be monophonic, but it'd let you get similar Ring Mod sounds to Synths where they were originally used, plus you'd get some crazy modulation trying to play chords. If you could control the voltage of the tracking too you could get some crazy disonance

[@profet1385]

@5:43 Club rubbish? lol.
Methd to make a plucky sound intersting: set eg. Ableton's Ring Modulator to react to a plucky sound (I like electric guitar in this example) with an envelope bound to source sound's amplitude. Set the envelope with rapid attack and medium decay. Bind it to ring mod amount (like 50Hz at the top env, 0Hz difference at sustain), wet 100%, u can also split to right and left channel if u want.
The effect will be, whenever you pick a note on guitar, the sound will start dissonant quick and "come closer" and become more pure and tonal, less dissonant, as the decay comes down.

[@NealSanche]

A bit confused by your 2600 patch. The noise generator is already normaled to the S&H. The next two cables you add go from outputs to outputs. But you do have S&H FM on Osc 1 up, so increasing the noise generator does have an effect. The last cable you add from ring mod out to the gate input doesn't do anything because the switch is set to gate from the midi. Not sure if I'm missing something here.