In my last post I discussed U-He’s Zebra – a virtual
instrument plug-in. This week I would
like to discuss a great instrument that comes with Reason.
Thor is an incredible instrument with immense capabilities
and a vast array of possible sounds which are created using up to three
oscillators and a various selection of filters, shapers, modulation, chorus and
delay. At a glance, Thor can look
intimidating, and even a veteran Thor user can find it daunting when trying to
tweak parameters to get the right sound.
But as long as you understand the components available to you, Thor can
become a great ally when trying to create simple or complex sounds. My suggestion: experiment, turn knobs and
push buttons; don’t be afraid to screw up… you might accidentally find a great
sound!
Now, lets look under the hood at the oscillators:
Oscillators
Thor has three oscillator slots available for use, but this
synthesizer offers a diverse selection of oscillator types to choose from.
The analogue oscillator is an emulation of basic hardware
wave synthesis. You have sawtooth,
square (with pulse width setting), triangle and sine waves. With an initialized Thor patch and no filter,
these oscillators sound simple and bland, but because there are three
oscillators, you have the capability to layer sounds via either different
waveforms, the same waveform at different octaves or the same waveforms on the
same octave but detuned (think super-saw).
The oscillator controls (to the left of the oscillator slot) also allow
you to perform amplitude modulation and sync functions. Check out this tutorial from Propellorheads
to explain this concept more in depth.
The multi oscillator acts just like it’s name suggests… This
component offers multiple voices (up to 8) of each waveform, and allows you to
detune them based on a selection of algorithms with an adjustment knob.
The Phase Modulation oscillator allows you to alter the
phase of two waveforms coinciding concurrently.
Because of its function, the PM oscillator starts each waveform at the
exact same place each time a note is pressed.
This differs from the analogue oscillator which has each waveform in a
“free-running” mode.
The Frequency modulation oscillator operates based on the
principal of FM synthesis. This concept
involves modulating the frequency of a sine wave (carrier) with another sine
wave (modulator). By changing the amount
knob (amount of modulator’s impact on the carrier) and by increase the pitch
(via semitones) of both waves, you can get very metallic sounds, with rich
harmonic content that can be used for anything from your typical dubstep basses
to emulations of the Fender Rhodes pianos or even percussive bell sounds.
The wavetable oscillator consists of many selections of
prerecorded simple and complex waves allowing you to select different positions
within the wave table or to modulate through several positions.
The noise oscillator produces noise of different “colors”,
broadband noise, different densities, and noise modified by a sample-and-hold function or rates. Although noise is not always seen
as a useful for musical applications, it can add depth to thin signals or even
add “snap” to synthesized percussion. You can also set up keyboard tracking and a
series of filters to “play” the noise bands.
Check out this tutorial on making an ambient pad soundscape with just
noise and filters.
This looks like a really interesting synthesizer! I can't believe I've never worked with it or even really heard of it. I'd love to hear some patches made using it. I think the idea of combining so many types of synthesizers could really yeild some interesting results. My go to synch is Massive which is wavetable synthesis. I think the possibilities with only that can be both daunting and endless. Interesting article, I'm going to have to fire up Reason and check Thor out.
ReplyDeleteGreat in depth discussion on the oscillator section of Thor. It is one of my favorite instruments in Reason. I love using the noise oscillators with various filters to create textures and bring an atmosphere to a mix. I like anything that gives variation to a sound that makes it interesting. This is the reason I like the wavetable oscillator. You get a very complex dynamic performance from an oscillator. If used correctly, you can get some pretty cool stuff out of it. I look forward to hopefully a long series of posts about this and other analog and software synths out there. Good post!
ReplyDeleteGreat post this week Jordan! Your right when you first use the Thor it is very daunting, I remember when I was in my first synth class I was completely unaware of all the parameters and how they work. I would just tweak knobs randomly and hoped it made it sound good. Even know when I look at it, I have to think a bit to understand what im actually changing on the thor as well as other instruments in reason. I think this was a good post for beginners who first start off using reason and don’t really know what all the parameters are.
ReplyDeleteI to remember when Thor scared the ever-loving hell out of me, but I am thankful to say that it is now one of my favorite instruments in Reason. Although I am a big fan of adding a whole bunch of subtractors together, I still find Thor the most useful and flexible tool within Reason’s software. As you seem to be a pretty experienced Thor user, have you found any useful applications that incorpate the audio inputs and out puts of the Thor on the back panel? I’ve done a little reading, but have yet to find a useful applications to those features witin Thor.
ReplyDeleteAustin: I highly recommend taking it out for a spin. It looks a bit scary at first but its actualy pretty simple to use once you break it down into components.
ReplyDeleteRyan: I'm a big fan of Thor (although I've been dabbling with Parsec a lot lately) and I figured I would try to break it down and simplify it in my next few posts. I am most likely going to talk about the modulators (LFO/Envelopes) and the modulation bus matrix next week.
Phil: I have used the audio inputs a few times to split a mono signal into "stereo", to invert the phase of either L or Right channel and in order to take advantage of Thor's Comb and Formant filters. I know there are a bunch of applications for the use of the audio inputs. I'm going to dig around and get back to you with a later post.