LEARN THE BASICS OF FM SYNTHESIS WITH DEXED
Frequency modulation synthesis has a reputation for being complicated and difficult to master. But while FM synths can certainly be intimidating, they’re quite straightforward once you’ve got your head around the basics.
That said, programming patches on the quintessential hardware FM synth, 1983’s Yamaha DX7, must have been a slog. The instrument only had a two-line LCD alphanumeric display. Sure, a liquid-crystal display must have seemed impossibly futuristic and glamorous in the early 1980s but this one’s limited capacity to display information would have made the DX7 much more time-consuming to program than modern FM soft-synths. So what made the synth so popular? Its presets.
The DX7 boasted some of the most impressive and popular presets of all time, which can be heard on countless pop hits and film and TV soundtracks from across the 1980s and 1990s.
Dexed is an open-source DX7 clone plug-in. Although its interface
