Chapter 10: Patches With Welch's Synthesizer Cookbook

Every synth is different, but many are made to perform the same functions. Knowing this, it is possible to create a preset sound, known as a patch, that can be used on many different analog synths or virtual analogs like DSN. One book that has a bunch of good universal patches is Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook.

This may be a bit last minute for your holiday wish list, but this book helped me when I first got my Realistic MG-1 synthesizer and had no idea what to do with it. The book really is mostly a cookbook with recipes for sounds and it is designed to be used on most 2 oscillator subtractive synthesizers. I first bought this book 5 years ago and lost my copy during a move. I have been thinking about it recently because of how easily the recipes can be implemented in DSN, with a brief explanation.

The values in this book are actually quite easy to figure out, because in addition to listing absolute values in seconds, he also has relative values. Again, not every synth is exactly the same, but the patches here are close enough that you only need small adjustments to get it sounding right. 

Let's start with the detune of VCO2, listed in this book in octaves, semitones, and cents. Semitones and cents are subdivisions of an octave, so there are 12 semitones in one octave (each note is a semitone apart) and 100 cents in a semitone. This means that moving up from the key C4 to C5 goes up one octave. The distance between two keys is the same, whether or not it is a black key. So, moving from C4 to C#4 goes up 1 semitone, and moving from E4 to F4 also goes up 1 semitone. Cents are useful for doing microtonal sounds and but mostly used to detune the two oscillators o create harmonics. 

Unlike the MS-20 or the iPad version iMS-20, we don't have the ability to give VCO2 a separate octave from VCO1 in the same Track, but this could be achieved by using more than one Track with a copied sequence. The detune knob of VCO2 has a range of 3 octaves in either direction from the center position, according to my tuner. The lack of a value given within DSN makes it difficult to determine the adjustments in between, so we have to rely on hat sounds close enough to our ears. There is nothing wrong with a bit of uncertainty and imperfection in music, though, but it can be frustrating to not have all the answers.

I should also note that keyboard tracking CANNOT be turned off for our VCO2 in DSN in order to make a constant pitch drone sound, but using another track can do this, too.

This book uses LFO value in Hz, but also says in parentheses if it's slow, moderate, or fast. This is easy enough to make with our MG wave. For amplitude, route the VCO2 to VCA, this can be adjusted like our FM waves we made before.

Glide is our portamento, with glide time controlled by the amount setting, just play around until it sounds good.

This book only uses a Low Pass Filter, with Resonance meaning our Peak, and envelope amount controlled by the VCF EG INT. 

Some patches have a third oscillator that is noise, I think you know my suggestion: use a separate Track.

Voices means adding in more than 2 oscillators at once, this isn't really necessary but, yeah...additional Tracks again.

The ADSR values are in seconds. I don't have those values mapped out, but it's easy enough to just try different values until it sounds good.

On the book's Amazon page, there is a sample recipe for a cowbell (didn't I promise a cowbell in the drum chapter?). Instead of previewing the sound with the B button, I set up a sequence with a C4 note repeating, this is necessary for really getting a sound that sounds correct at the pitch you want to play it at. Here is my interpretation of Welsh's cowbell.

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