Synclavier Regen User Manual
137
Resonance is cranked way up at 90% and, as such, this filter is able to self-
oscillate.
The Filters on Regen are of the IIR variety, which use feedback loops to
attenuate frequencies. With resonance, certain frequencies around the cut off
point are reinforced rather than attenuated, and once these frequencies are
bouncing around in the filter, they can linger, even after a note’s final decay is
complete.
Notice that the
Pitch Track
is set to -1.0. It’s unusual to
pitch track
the keyboard in the negative direction, but
there are a few musical use cases for this. In this timbre,
the effect adds to the quirkiness of the overall sound,
but it means there’s a sweet spot: because as you play
higher on the keyboard, the low-pass filter
closes
and
eventually, too much of the high-frequency information
is filtered out for there to be anything useful left.
Now tap the MIDI button. On the Expression
Modulators page, you’ll see that Vibrato LFO 2 is routed
to Filter Cut Off. This is the really interesting part of the
timbre. The extreme random vibrato that was applied to
partial 2 has also been “exported” as an LFO (low
frequency oscillator) and routed to the note filter’s cut-
off. So every note played has a filter that opens and
closes in a rapid random fashion. This is what’s
responsible for the “talking” effect.
