Morphing Through Harmonics

Smoothly sweeping through harmonics by modulating the oscillator Center and Width controls are Harmonia's "main event," and the key to creating awesome evolving soundscapes. Here we'll show how to create these types of patches:

  • Click the New button in the top left corner to create an initialized patch.

  • Click on the orange text in Oscillator 1's Waveform selector, and select the Vocal>ChoirVerb wave

  • The Initial Level fader needs to be turned up - it will default to 80% in the initialized patch.

Before go any further, hold a note down on the keyboard, slowly move Oscillator 1's horizontal Center slider, and behold the awesome of Harmonia's interpolated scanning harmonics mixer. Since moving onscreen controls with a mouse while playing isn't much fun, we'll automate the Center slider movement using low-frequency oscillator #1:

The LFO>Center Mod routing is already configured in the default patch, but we'll explain how it's done.

Because Center and Width mod is so important in Harmonia, we've given these controls dedicated mod routings (Center and Width can also be modded using the Mod Matrix).

  • Set the Center slider all the way to the left. To modulate Center, click on the Src button in the Center Mod section. In this example, we're using LFO 1 as the mod source. Once the mod source is selected, turn the gray Center Mod knob to the right to around three o' clock.

  • Now we'll set up LFO parameters. Make sure the #1 tab is selected (it should be orange). We'll use the default triangle wave.

    Because the Center slider is at its minimum setting and we want the LFO mod to raise its value, we'll set the LFO Bias knob to max (all the way right). This means the swing of the LFO goes from zero to max and back to zero - that is, it won't go negative. The dashed line in the Wave window makes the swing of the LFO easier to understand.

  • Now set the LFO rate as desired - somewhere around 0.30 Hz will work well.

The Center Mod amount knob will affect how "far" the mod travels, that is, how many higher harmonics are heard.

The Center slider position can be used to set the initial start point, and the reducing the LFO Bias knob can be used to modulate the Center slider up and down from initial Center position.

To increase the amount of neighboring harmonics heard, increase the orange Width knob setting. The Width knob can be similarly modulated using its dedicated Width Mod bus.

Continue to Quasi-Harmonic Sequencer section