Beat Frequency vs. Fine Tuning - Synth Clips 13 - Daniel Fisher 

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 13 of Synth Clips with Daniel Fisher🙏 There are more great episodes coming up in this series so hit those like and subscribe buttons to be notified when the next one drops 🤘

I am really glad there was a video available that directly addressed this question. I will relate my capacity for learning synth concepts to your ability to teach. At lower levels I can more easily follow but as the technical details increase, my difficulty in tracking becomes more noticeable. Your ability to teach and explain acts as the "beat frequency" to my learning curve. Well done sir and I'm very grateful for all you do!

Completely new to me - thank you.

Good demo, Daniel. It might be worth mentioning that another way to get beat detuning on some older analog synths is using good-old LFO modulation of only one VCO (or DCO): unless you have the LFO rate tracking the keyboard, that LFO will module the VCO or DCO with the same number of beats per second no matter what key/freq you're at. I would guess that beat freq detuning implementations are exactly that: a dedicated and simplified LFO to modulate one oscillator's freq at a fixed rate. The drawback of using explicit LFO modulation of the oscillators, I guess, is that you're "burning" one LFO for that specific purpose (you might need the LFO for something else like PWM or filter mod at a different rate). Most older synths have only one or two available LFOs which are often otherwise tasked. But at the other end of the spectrum: if you have at semi-modular synths or at least a synth with CV inputs then you might easily have an available external LFO via CV inputs to dedicate to the task of beat detuning. The benefit of using a for-real LFO (in lieu of beat detuning) is being able to leverage more sophisticated LFO features like varying waveforms or delay... or shifting from modulating VCO-2 for modulating VCO-1 in realtime. Or maybe even routing CCs such as aftertouch, breath or touchpad to modulate the intensity of the LFO modulation of the VCO/DCO. For example maybe you setup LFO modulation of VCO-2 at 1.5 bps but allow breath controller levels to increase that rate smoothly up to 4-5 bps. Additionally some soft synths such as Arturia's Jup-8 emulation allow the LFO rate to be synced to fractions of the actual DAW beat - which might be a nice feature, especially for some DAW-synced effects using more dramatic modulation. One last thing: using beat tuning or the LFO-modulated VCO/DCO with a polyphonic synth creates much less-natural sounds from chords since all voices/oscillators are being modulated in-step; this might be desirable -especially with DAW-controlled beat sync - but is certainly less natural than regular VCO/DCO freq detuning.

Thank you so much for droppin knowledge Daniel!!

Excellent. Now I understand beatfrequency at my sub 37 :)

Thanks so much for these videos. What about one on arpeggiators or generative music ideas?

Very interesting. With my Minitaur I'm just debating if using slightly beat frequency or not with two square oscillators (one octave apart) for optimal smooth but punchy bass. What's your opinion on that? Thanks