Filter modes - MASSIVE Tutorial

- Now that we're using the Oscillator to its fullest potential, what we're gonna do is modify that sound using the FILTER section here in the middle. Now I've created a little simple, sort of, dub reggae-ish Key part, however you want to interpret this. (dub music) And what I'm gonna do is get something sort of nice going with just the Oscillators and then we'll modify it using the FILTERS. So, I'm gonna get two saw tunes going. (dub music) Let's detune them slightly using these Pitch guys here. You can hear a little phasing happening. (dub music) That's what I call the magic setting, and go a little heavier. I like that. Let's get a little more Release going, fast Attack, a little more Release. (dub music) Not too much. (dub music) We can even take one of these guys and make it a Polysaw. (dub music) Ooh, that's kinda nice. Nice and thick. I'm getting kind of a Transylvania dub vibe here from this one, I like it. So, now that we've got something that we're happy with, with the Oscillators, the basic character of our sound is something that we like, let's move over to the FILTER section. And, before we activate any of the FILTERS, we have to make sure that we're hearing the FILTER we want to hear, and that's why we have to talk about FILTER routing. On all of the Oscillators, we have a crossfader that's gonna determine where it sends the signal. FILTER 1, FILTER 2, or a combination of both. By default, they're all set up as going to both of them, and we're gonna leave that where it is for now. Just to the right of that, you can see that we have a slider that changes how FILTER 2 gets its signal. Where the slider is right now, means that it is in Parallel mode, which means that we have a Parallel FILTER routing and that the two FILTERS are operating independently. They receive signal independently, and then they send signal out independently. They don't really affect each other even though the sounds do get mixed together. With a Series routing, if we change this slider up to the top, it actually means that FILTER 2 is now listening to the output of FILTER 1, and no longer able to receive signal just from the Oscillator section. We're gonna start out with just a Parallel routing. In fact, it actually doesn't matter because we're only gonna use FILTER 1, and the way that we're gonna make sure that we're only using FILTER 1 is by moving the MIX fader up to Mix1. This is simply a crossfader which changes and sets which FILTER we are listening to. So it's FILTER 1 at the top, FILTER 2 at the bottom, or a combination of the two in the middle, and we can fade that up and down. As you can see, with both of these, the Series versus Parallel slider, as well as the MIX fader, both have two modulation handles, so there are quite a few possibilities here for things that we can do as far as modulating this. We're gonna start with something very simple. So if we hit this drop down menu, we can see our FILTER modes and we have our basic FILTER types, our Lowpass, our Highpass, our Bandpass. We have two modes for each Lowpass and Highpass. The 4-pole has a steeper Cutoff than the 2-pole. And so, let's just start out with a Lowpass FILTER. Let's do a Lowpass 4. I've got my keyboard part here. I'd like to call this a Key part because it's playing some chords like a keyboard player would play. It's not a bass, it's not a lead. So let's listen to that. I'm gonna bring up the Cutoff. (dub music) Maybe not so much detuning. (dub music) Let's go ahead and use our Envelope here. (dub music) And there we go, basic FILTER modulation. (dub music) Maybe we want a little bit of variation on here. So, one thing that I'd really like to do is add some Velocity sensitivity, and the most basic way to add Velocity sensitivity is within an Envelope. I'm gonna go ahead and just turn up the Velocity slider, and as I turn that up, it's gonna increase that Envelope's overall sensitivity to Velocity, which means that as I hit the key harder, the Envelope gets larger, and as I hit the key more softly, the Envelope gets smaller. This slider is simply changing the overall range of that modulation, not in terms of the maximum Velocity that you hit, but rather the lower Velocities. It's changing how low they can get before they actually hit zero. So if I bring this all the way up, we have a very, very wide range of modulation. Here's something very soft. (soft synth sound) And here's very hard. (loud synth sound) And if I pull this down here, we can hear that if I hit it hard, (loud synth sound) it sounds the same, but if I hit it softly, (soft synth sound) it's a little bit brighter than the soft note I hit before. Let me just turn the Cutoff up to make that clear. So here's a hard hit. (loud synth sound) Here's a soft hit. (soft synth sound) OK, very dark. And we pull this down, now here's the same high Velocity. (loud synth sound) Same brightness, but now let me hit a softer note. (synth sound) You can hear the lower Velocity notes are a good deal brighter than the lower Velocity notes were when the Velocity slider was all the way up. So, I really, really like this slider, it's very, very handy. So, let's get something going with the sequence. I'm in Logic here, and I'm just gonna adjust the Velocities, and I'm gonna select all of these short notes here, and I'm gonna pull their Velocities down, and let's see how that sounds. Let's bring Massive back. (dub music) Then we can have a little bit of fun, and bring up some of the other guys. Let's bring these ones up a little bit. If you're not a Logic user, red means a very high Velocity, and as we get closer to blue, we're cooling off on our Velocity, because Logic's cool. (dub music) OK, so that's nice, and what if we want a bit of a brighter sound? (dub music) That might work. (dub music) We can also try it with a Bandpass FILTER. (soft dub music) Turn off the Bandwidth. (dub music) What you might be noticing is that this middle knob doesn't always have a job. It doesn't. With Lowpass and Highpass, that middle knob doesn't do anything, but with Bandpass, changes to be our Bandwidth. This is always gonna be the case, actually with all three of our knobs, as we use more advanced FILTER types, we're actually going to have these knobs change roles. Cutoff is gonna be more or less consistent but these other two are gonna have some different jobs, and it's just important to keep your eye on that.