Getting Started with the Pulsar Dual LFO Video Lecture | Reason Tutorials: The Ultimate Guide - Video & Sound Editing

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today I want to show you some basics
about the new Pulsar dual LFO despite
its depth and complexity pulsar is
actually the ideal place for people new
to modular synthesis and lfos to get
started an LFO is one of the fundamental
parts and analog synthesizers it stands
for low frequency oscillator and it's
basically an electrical waveform that
repeats over and over and usually pretty
slowly when you listen to music you'll
notice that it isn't very static sounds
evolve over time from Leslie speakers on
an organ to the vibrato of a guitarists
finger musicians employ tricks and tools
to spice up sounds that would otherwise
get dull fast pulsar has two lfos which
can do some pretty complex stuff but
let's learn the most basic LFO
techniques first here I have a simple
pan on Thor it doesn't do much on its
own so let's create a pulsar
pulsar doesn't auto wire itself to Thor
we do that ourselves by connecting a
control voltage or CV cable from pulsars
lfo1 output to the amp level input on
Thor right away you can hear pulsars
made a big difference with a pretty
extreme volume tremolo the speed is
determined by the rate knob from slow to
fast the level knob controls how much of
an impact the LFO has for wirings like
this one you can think of the level knob
like a wet/dry knob on a reverb or a
delayed of us it blends the LFO signal
into the sound
you
you can also choose the shape of your
LFO waveform the picture shown will give
you a pretty good indication of what
waveform shape the LFO will generate
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let's put some drums underneath to give
this more of a groove
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you can hear the drummer has a little
more swing in his beef and pulsars
electronically perfect square wave in
order to make our pulsing pad swing with
the drummer I'll turn up the shuffle
knob so our square wave gets a little
funky first I'll exaggerate the setting
so you can hear the result
for a hip-hop beat like this I'll set it
closer to 56%
I like this we've taken our static pad
and given it pulsing movie since pulsar
has to LFO s let's hook up LFO to to do
something else we'll wire LFO to to
control the filter one frequency of Thor
this time I'll connect the CV cable
using one of pulsars inverted CV Jets
this will flip the CV output so instead
of going up and then coming down our
signal goes down and then comes up I'll
also adjust the CV trim knob on the back
of door so that the CV signal doesn't
sweep the full range of Thor's filtered
off but rather a smaller portion of it
our one static path now sounds like this
there's a lot more you can do with
control voltage and pulsar to control
all sorts of things in the reason Rack
pulsar can even be set up so LFO 1 and
LFO to interact and control each other
but since this is a getting started
tutorial we'll leave it there and get on
to pulsars other big trip making its own
synth sounds remember at the beginning
when I said that LFO stands for low
frequency oscillator well what would
happen if we sped up that low frequency
oscillation so much that it moved into
frequencies above 20 Hertz that we can
hear is pitch if I connect a pulsar to a
mix channel and turn off the tempo sync
button so I can increase the rate well
beyond the tempo of the song you'll
start to hear the result pretty cool
right ok ok all right Joe
it does get cooler trust me on this one
first I'll turn the level all the way
down to pacify the angry MA
now let's turn the rate knob all the way
up
so our synth is in tune with our song
I'll also turn the keyboard follow knob
all the way up and turn the level knob
on the LFO one envelope section to about
3 o'clock I'll right-click and create a
track from my pulsar so I can play it
with my MIDI keyboard and there you go
pulsar is making its own sounds so what
is actually happening here the envelope
section is responding to key presses on
my MIDI keyboard and turning up the LFO
one level each time I press a note the
keyboard follow knob is then changing
the speed or rate of the LFO and since
our LFO rate is up into the range of
human hearing those rate changes become
different pitches when you play up and
down the keyboard now lets Kula fie this
sound a little more shall we
I'll turn the envelopes release down all
the way so the notes don't ring out and
I'll change the waveform of LFO 1 to a
square wave
now we're sounding more like an analogue
bass remember that shuffle knob that
gave our pad some grooving swing on a
square wave setting and with a rate this
fast that same shuffle knob alters the
square wave to become what's known as a
pulse width modulation waveform I prefer
to think of it as that super cool knob
that makes my synth bass sound
aggressive dirtier and thicker
so let's put a baseline in our song
now let's add a little more analogue
character to the sound by sending it
through the synapse audio AAF for analog
filter since it's not being used for my
synth sound I can even use LFO 2 as a
separate LFO to control the cutoff
frequency and resonance on the filter
I'll keep tempo sync on and set the rate
to a nice slow 4 bar long waveform and
that's it you've just built your first
analog modular synthesizer complete with
a pulse width modulation oscillator a
keyboard tracking envelope generator and
a low-pass filter being modulated by a
sine wave LFO sounds pretty complicated
right well you should feel proud
memorize that list of stuff and brag to
all your friends about how smart you are
you can even print out this certificate
and hang it on your wall like a doctor's
office or show it to your mom so she
stops bugging you about finishing your
education of course there's tons more
than pulsar can do we're just scratching
the surface here
but I definitely think you should check
out the many pulsar patches that are
included with it to see more complex and
interesting routing techniques most
importantly don't be afraid to
experiment and make some great music
good luck
Oh
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