I’m trying to add some lo-fi effects in FMOD Studio, like tape warble where there’s pitch instability. I want to get into nuances that involve more jittery yet controllable shapes.
I’m having great fun with the current LFOs — especially my fave Noise “Ramped”, but I’m having a hard workflow time trying to specify a custom envelope shape that can repeat over X bars or every X seconds. The use case would be something like a sudden “pinch” that ideally randomly happens, as heard in effects like LoFi Pitch Dropout by Yum Audio – Alive & tasteful error generator
I’ve tried the normal Automation timeline, but it feels very tedious and I can’t seem to copypaste PART of a curve over and over inside the little window. Plus it ends up being kind of predictable over Timeline, since I can’t seem to specify “fraction of a timeline” or other odd/staggered portions.
The AHDSR envelope mostly works for a one-time trigger to get the achieved effect, but I don’t see a way to retrigger it at will (this would be another viable path to the same goal, if another event can periodically or even randomly retrigger the ADHSR).
Have you considered using snapshots? You can include time-based behaviour in a snapshot by automating its intensity or one of its scoped-in properties on the snapshot’s timeline parameter, or by using a time-sensitive modulator (such as the LFO modulator or AHDSR modulator) to a property scoped into the snapshot while viewing the snapshot in the mixer. Either option would allow you to define a time-limited adjustment to pitch that plays out in a specific fashion each time the snapshot is triggered.
From there, you’d only need to set up some way of triggering the snapshot repeatedly and randomly. A loop region containing a snapshot instrument with a probability trigger condition, or a snapshot instrument placed inside the playlist of a scatterer instrument, would both work for that purpose.
@joseph Time and time again, you think of sparklingly creative solutions with the current toolset. I hadn’t thought of snapshots for this — at first, it sounds more clunky and I wish there’ll eventually be a way to specify custom LFO envelopes (has that ever come up before? It’s common in some synths), but within the framework we’ve got, it sounds like the best bet… worth it to explore the possibilities!
And there we have it for anyone in the future who comes looking to do some good ol’ lo-fi pitch instability!
