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Chapter 11 Advanced Sound Shaping Controls
43 Noise Level
Here’s another nifty little knob. This one’s great for throwing some grunge and
bite into the basic wave — letting you dirty up the Voice with some noise.
Why add noise? Why not use the Distortion effect? And what good is “dirt” in
the sound, anyway? (We could hear those questions coming...)
Well, besides the obvious Lo-fi and Industrial music applications — such as
making noise percussion — noise is great for adding harmonic content all
along the frequency spectrum. And that harmonic content added at the begin-
ning of the signal flow makes the sound more interesting when you work with
the filter (VCF) section later on. Much more interesting, in fact.
Use it judiciously, however — too much noise can mask the basic pitch and
character of the sound.
Try selecting a Pattern with a relatively “pure” and soft Voice. Then, work the
[NOISE LEVEL] knob to hear how different degrees of noise affect the sound.
44 Making waves — VCO 1 and VCO 2
Here’s where the sound begins. All of the awesome, amazing sonic stuff on the AN200 starts with the waves
— generated by VCOs 1 and 2.
The AN200 gives you a wide variety of waveforms — not to mention enormous flexibility in combining,
modulating, and processing them.
The subject of waves can be fairly complicated, and you undoubtedly don’t want to read about it. As always,
use your ears! Give a listen to the various waves here and experiment with them. Try them out with the pro-
cessing sections — especially VCF — and hear how they sound. That’s the best and only way to start creat-
ing your own Voices.

■ VCO 1• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

1 Select a Pattern.

2 Solo VCO 1 by turning the [VCO 1/2] knob all the way

left.

3 Set Sync Mode to OFF by pressing [MODE].

4 Press the VCO 1 [WAVE] button repeatedly to select different waves.

Better yet, press [WAVE] and turn the [DATA] knob. That lets you access ALL of the waveforms —
including the “hidden” waves.
The actual waves that are available differ depending on the Sync Mode setting. After trying the waves
that are available when Sync Mode is set to “OFF,” select one of the other two modes, then try out the
new group of waves. (See Tech Talk below and the Wave List on page 56 for details.)
Noise Level
Determines the level of the noise signal
added to the VCOs.
Range
0 — 127