Designing a Wah Sound with the IK Multimedia Uno Synth

Introduction:

This time around, I present a tutorial on designing a wah sound using the IK Multimedia Uno synth. If you already understand the basics of using the Uno's editing matrix and the rest of it, you can go right to the summary of steps provided below. If you need a little more information, read at least the part in the Preamble and Hidden Menus before diving into the heavy stuff with all that information. You will find out a lot more information about the Uno workflow and what each control does. I know I did.

It is a good idea to read the rest of the information as it will help you learn a lot about sound design in the process. Have fun!

Summary of Steps:

Step 1) Use start from Zero patch

Step 2) WAVE 1 and WAVE 2 – setting them to triangle waves

Step 3) In the OSC section, make sure TUNE 1 and TUNE 2 are at 0

Step 4) Set WAVE 1 and WAVE 2 levels to 127

Step 5) Turn Cutoff all the way up

This allows the low pass filter to pass all frequencies.

Step 6) Turn up Sustain using the ENV ADSR hidden menu

Step 7) Make sure FILTER is set to low pass

Step 8) In the LFO section, set WAVE to triangle, RATE to 16 in note sync section, and FILTER all the way up.

Step 9) Dial back the CUTOFF to about 25 or even as low as 5 and turn up RES to 64

To my ears, this has a more gentle peaking of the wah sound.

Step 10) Experiment with RES(onance).

Press the FILTER button. Now you can change the RES control, which stands for resonance. This control changes how intense the peak of the filter gets around the cutoff frequency.

Step 11) Experiment some more with FILTER RES and LFO FILTER and CUTOFF

Work on getting more bass or more high pitch sounds by using these controls.

Step 12) Working with the FILTER ADSR envelope

Getting a wah sound using only the ADSR envelope.

Step 13) Step 13) Using both the FILTER and the LFO to get a wah sound!

Set the following: LFO RATE = 1. FILTER ADSR A = 15, D = 15

Preamble:

My original spin on this tutorial was to talk about reading the Uno's user manual. Fortunately, the user manual for this synth is not crammed with text so it is easy to read. Reading the user manuals for synths is often very helpful and was here. But I had also learned a lot from working on getting wah sounds from other synths. The user manual sections to read up on for the Uno are the Filter Row, the Envelope Row, and the LFO Row, pages 13 and 14. It is not necessary to read the user manual to go through this tutorial.

This time, I used the hardware interface on the Uno synth itself. It can be faster at times to do this, once you understand how to access all the controls. Remember that the OSC, FILTER, and ENV buttons can be pressed and held down to access the hidden menus.

While I like to use the hardware interface to make changes to the controls, it is also useful to have the Uno Synth Editor also running so you can see all the controls at the same time. This is very helpful because once you change rows in the hardware editing matrix, it is very easy to forget what the previous sections' setting were set to. The layout is a little different than the synth itself but you should become used to it quickly enough.

One thing I changed recently was the knob behaviour. I changed it from absolute to pass-through. This helps prevent your sound from changing oddly when you change the hardware controls on the synth from section to section. Absolute knob behaviour adjusts the knobs when they are adjusted from section to section. Pass-through knob behaviour means that the knob has to pass-through the setting for that control for a change to take effect. Relative knob behaviour is another option but I do not really like how it works. It seems a little unintuitive to me. The description is in the Uno Synth User Manual. Use the Uno Synth Editor to change knob behaviour.

Hidden Menus:

OSC hidden menu gives you access to the WAVE 1 (oscillator 1), WAVE 2 (oscillator 2), and NOISE levels.

FILTER hidden menu gives to access to all the controls for the ADSR envelope for the filter.

ENV hidden menu gives you access to all the controls for the ADSR envelope for the amplifier.

As with my previous tutorials, I am providing a summary of the steps. This can be much easier and faster than reading through each step. PLEASE do take the time to read each step though.

Steps in Depth:

Step 1) Use Start from Zero patch

If you do not have a start from zero patch, now is the time to make one. I find it to be one of my best tools in learning how to build your own sounds. It is pretty simple to do. Start at the top, either on your Uno synth itself or using the Uno Software Editor. Simply turn all the controls to zero. If you want to skip some, do not worry to much about the effects buttons although that can help as well. Then choose a patch where you want it saved and write that down or memorize it or both!

Why you ask?

Some people use an initial or “init” patch wherever they find they like to start and work from there. Some people probably have even more than one init patch because they know how to work from different points to get different sounds. Some synths even have a standard init patch and others have something that produces a random patch. I find it very useful to zero out everything because I am still fairly new to sound design and playing synths. I like to know the effect of the control from zero.

While people try their best to write tutorials that are thorough and well thought out, sometimes things sneak through. At this point, especially if you have not been using your Uno Synth Editor app, take the time to press the GLIDE button. The press the down triangle (or arrow if you like that better) until the number reaches zero. Save the change to your zero preset. GLIDE is located in the section of the synth on the right side. That is why it escaped my notice while I was zeroing out all the other controls.

>>>>>Before we continue on with the rest of the tutorial, one thing should be said. Do not be disappointed if you lose track of where you are or something does not work out the way it is supposed to according to the tutorial. Maybe the tutorial was written in a way that did not suit you. Simply go back to your zero patch and start again. This tutorial was written over a number of months and when I would come back to it each time, I would have to start from the beginning on the Uno synth and build the patch again. And this time around, I must have built a similar patch each time, figuring out what effect each control has on the sound. That only took about a fifty times! No exaggeration there.

This restarting is actually a good thing. It gives you a lot of practice and when you go to build the same patch the next time, the steps come back much easier. Or, maybe you want to make it sound a little or even a lot different. In those cases, remembering the steps used will help you as you learn which controls did what and how much the sound changed and how as you build your new patch.

Remember, to save your patch, press and hold the PRESET button until the display flashes the current patch number. Then, if you want, you can change the patch number using the down and up buttons to the patch number you want and press PRESET again to save it to that location.

OK! ON WITH THE SHOW!

Step 2) WAVE 1 and WAVE 2 – Setting Them to Triangle Waves

This is often seen on other synths as OSC1 and OSC2 which stands for oscillator 1 and oscillator 2. These controls select which waveforms you want to use for your sound. Your options are triangle, triangle-sawtooth, sawtooth, sawtooth-square, square, square-pulse, and pulse. When the control is set to a waveform that is some combination of two adjacent waveforms, there is a dash that shows up on the display. Turning the control one way or the other morphs the waveform closer to the waveform on either left or the right.

So how does that work? Are you boggled by that explanation? Have a look at the example waveforms below. They give you an idea of what each type of waveform looks like.

Triangle waveform:

Sawtooth waveform:

Square waveform:

Pulse waveform:

With this pulse waveform, the thick line can move back and forth as indicated by the arrows. When the thick line is at the place indicated by its current position, the resulting waveform is a square wave, as seen above.

If you use the Uno Software Editor then you can immediately how the waveforms morph from one to the next as you turn the control.

Take two waveforms above – the triangle and the sawtooth. In the Uno Synth Editor software, it only shows the triangle, sawtooth, square, and pulse waveforms. The other waveforms, such as the triangle-sawtooth waveform are something between a triangle and a sawtooth waveform. The closer the control is to the triangle section, the more it looks like a triangle. The closer it is to the sawtooth waveform, the more it looks like a sawtooth. The between waveforms are a combination of the two adjacent waveforms.

For comparison with the tutorial on the Korg Volca Keys, set the waveforms to Triangle, trI. Feel free to use any of the other waveforms for oscillators. The sound will be different but you will still get the wah sound with the rest of the tutorial.

Step 3) In the OSC section, make sure TUNE 1 and TUNE 2 are at 0

It should already be there if you use a zero patch. But you can play with it if you want. There are two sections to the TUNE controls. One section detunes the oscillator in a range of 0 to 99 and 0 to -99 – the ranges being on either side of the 12 o'clock position. This allows for detuning to +/- 100 cents. The second section, which comes after the 0 – 99 range, has a range from 0 to 12 or 0 to -12. This allows for detuning which each value of 1 being 1 semitone. A semitone is one half step on a keyboard. That is like going from B to C or C to C# or G# to A. Of course, going from A to A♭ flat works as well.

Step 4) Set WAVE 1 and WAVE 2 Levels to 127

Press and hold the OSC button until the LED blinks. Set both WAVE 1 (oscillator 1) and WAVE 2 (oscillator 2) Levels to hard right. You might have to turn the control hard left before it will turn up to 127.

Step 5) Turn Cutoff all the way up

This allows the Low Pass Filter to pass all frequencies.

The rest of Filter should come after adjusting the amplitude envelope. This is so you can turn up Sustain on this envelope so you actually get a sound.

If you play some lower notes here you will get a bit of a low volume thud. Ugh, that kind of sinks to the bottom. Hah! I crack myself up.

I tend to use a MIDI keyboard to play my synths and have used one here. However, the volume is so low on many of these notes that the sound of the keyboard is often louder than the notes themselves. Go into the upper octaves and you will hear a bit of a chirp. You can also change the octave range on the synth itself and use the synth's capacitive keyboard. As that is pretty quiet, you should hear the notes a little better.

Step 6) Turn up Sustain using the ENV ADSR hidden menu

Press and hold the ENV button until the LED blinks. This allows access to the hidden menu for the ADSR envelope for this section. Sustain is the third control here. Turn up Sustain all the way.

Now, play some notes and you should get a nice even sound. It will likely change a little as the LFO tends to change things even when setting the rate to 0.

Step 7) Make sure FILTER is set to low pass

Press the FILTER button. Make sure the filter MODE is set to Low Pass. It should read LP. CUTOFF is actually a FILTER control but it is set apart from the FILTER controls so it can be accessed at any time. CUTOFF is such a useful control that it was determined with this synth that the user should not have to change the section for all the other controls to use it.

Res is going to be left alone at this point. If you are using a zero patch, RES should be at 0.

Feel free to skip the next two paragraphs as they are not essential to the tutorial. However, they can provide some insight into sound design in general.

While working through this material, I think I found a little bit of sound design that could be useful for a different sound but still within the wah territory. If you change the filter to a high pass filter (HP), instead of a low pass filter, the Cutoff control works the opposite way for clockwise and counterclockwise directions. Where a low pass filter allows lower frequencies through and turning the Cutoff control counterclockwise “closes” the low pass filter, it opens a high pass filter. I will have to mess around with that later to work on getting that higher pitched wah sound.

The funny thing about sound design is that it is all subjective. Some sounds tend to be liked by many but, the ones that tend to be a little odd tend to fit in only certain situations. I think this could be the case for the high pitched wah that uses the high pass filter.

Step 8) In the LFO section, set WAVE to triangle, RATE to 16 in note sync section, and FILTER all the way up

Press the LFO button. Set the WAVE control to Triangle. It should read trI.

Set RATE at 16 in the sync section.

The following explains how the LFO RATE works:

This means from hard left, turn it up past the numbers you see go from 0 to 127. Go past 127 and that is the sync section. The values for the sync section of this control are:

1 1, 1 2, 4d, 1 4, 8d, 4t, 1 8, 16d, 8t, 16, and 16t.

1 1 – This syncs the LFO to cycle through once per four quarter notes at the value of the TEMPO. If tempo is set to 60, you get 60bpm or 60 beats per minute. The LFO will cycle through at a rate of 60bpm / 4 quarter notes = 15 cycles per minute. The time for the LFO to cycle once is 4 seconds.

You can test this by setting using a stop watch.

On your Uno, set the tempo to 60.

Set your sequencer to record.

Press and hold only one note as the sequencer cycles through one time.

Press stop on the sequencer.

When you press play again, you should hear it play one note and the LFO will vary the amplitude of the note up and down through one cycle. It will start at a medium point, rise to a high point, fall to a really low point and rise back up to a medium point. Here is a graphic of a triangle wave for an LFO waveform.

After reading the explanation above, make sure you have the LFO RATE set to 16 in the sync section.

At this point nothing seems to be affected a whole lot. There are a couple of things that can be changed to remedy that. To follow the Korg Volca Keys tutorial on getting a wah sound, I think - I think, that you change the FILTER control (still in the LFO section).

Turn the FILTER all the way up, hard right, or 127.

Play some notes and now you there is still little variation in tone.

NOTE: When the LFO RATE is in the free running mode, which is controlled by using the values in the 0 – 127 range, the RATE is only controlled by the RATE value.

When use use the values that synchronize with the note values, 1 1 up to 16t, the speed of the LFO RATE is controlled by two knobs. One is the RATE knob which is used to change from 1 1 to 16t. The second knob is the TEMPO knob. This is because note values are always relative to the tempo of the music. Try the differences and see how it works.

Step 9) Dial back the CUTOFF to about 25 or even as low as 5 and turn up RES to 64

To my ears, this has a more gentle peaking of the wah sound. I think I would find this more useful as a rhythm sound in music. A more aggressive peak, giving a more aggressive sound, should cut through a mix a little easier. It all up to your taste.

Dial back the CUTOFF quite a bit – to about 20 – 25 or even down to 5. Now in the FILTER section turn up the RES to about 64.

CUTOFF:     20 -25 (as low as 5)

FILTER: RES:     64

Play some notes as you are dialing in these last two settings. You will really start to hear some action in the tone.

Play some lower notes and you can turn up the FILTER RES and get some fuller sounding notes.

The Uno User Manual says the FILTER control is that it acts to modulate CUTOFF frequency. As the LFO rises, the CUTOFF frequency moves up. As the LFO falls, so does the CUTOFF frequency. If you took the time to check out the other tutorial, on the Korg Volca Keys, this would be EG INT under the VCF section.

One thing to keep in mind with envelopes, of which the LFO is a kind of envelope at times, is that they usually change the sounds you hear at a rate slower than audible frequencies. If you look in the Uno synth’s user manual, (ugh, the user manual!) you can read on page 14, near the bottom, that the LFO can actually get up to 30Hz. The lowest audible frequency we humans are supposed to be able to hear is 20Hz.

30Hz is getting up there and that would qualify as frequency modulation using the regular notes as carriers and the LFO as a modulator in FM synthesis. Something to look at another time, if you like.

Step 10) Experiment with RES(onance)

Press the FILTER button. Now you can change the RES control, which stands for resonance. This control changes how intense the peak of the filter gets around the cutoff frequency.

Before changing RES, dial back the CUTOFF control a little if you have not done so already or experimented with the CUTOFF and turned it back up. This will warm up the tone a little and you will get a less gritty wah peak when it occurs. I will not tell you waht (see that – did it again!) settings are good. You can experiment with the settings as you change the RES control.

Turn RES up to somewhere between 20 and 100.

We are definitely getting some tonal changes now. However, the LFO RATE set at 16 (16^th notes) is too fast to get a real appreciation for that wah type sound. Go back to the LFO section by pressing the LFO button. Dial back RATE to 1 4.

RATE at 1 4 should be set to sync the LFO to synchronize with 1/4 notes, or quarter notes. If the LFO is still moving too fast at this point, turn down the TEMPO until you get something slow enough like it was waves crashing on a beach or maybe the pace you have when walking.

Step 11) Experiment some more with FILTER RES and LFO FILTER and CUTOFF

Now we can hear that change quite well. I like to hear a little more bass in the wah sound when it peaks. To get this dial back the CUTOFF to around 50. By the way, I changed the RES to 60.

Play some low notes and you can hear some whumping bass as the note goes through the LFO. This is heard better if you hold the note for a bit.

Also take the time to experiment with LFO FILTER. Just because the FILTER ADSR envelope is set to zero for all parts, does not mean that the LFO FILTER control will not affect the low pass filter. There are other controls in the FILTER such as the RES(onance) and CUTOFF. And remember, the LFO FILTER control affects the CUTOFF directly.

Aside here – if you want to add some wacky pitch variation that happens at the same time, that is when you use the LFO PITCH control. I have yet to explore the usefulness of that control. When you do not know how a control will affect things and still like to mess around, try subtle changes. If you want some wild laser sounds, use the PITCH control.

Step 12) Working with the FILTER ADSR envelope

Now, what was the purpose of changing the FILTER ADSR envelope? It does not seem to affect a whole lot at this point.

Let's have a look at a representation of an ADSR envelope.

In the graph above, what is not provided are actual values for different points. On the Uno synth, the ADSR envelope values range from 0 – 127. In terms that relate to time, 0 would be the lowest value which could be 0 seconds. The value of 127 could be several seconds or even up to 10 or 15 seconds.

In addition to that, the envelope sections of A, D, and R are not necessarily linear. They are probably not a straight line. What this means is that a low value for an Attack might take less than half of a second. Let's say A = 20 might take 0.20s to rise to full volume. If A were a linear curve (a straight line), that would mean the following:

A = 20,

20 = 0.20s

127 in seconds would be

(127/20) x 0.20s = 1.27s

However, if you repeat steps 1) to 6) and then do the following, you should find out that A = 127 turns out to be something very different than 1.27s.

>1) Press and hold the ENV button.

>2) Set A = 20

>3) Play a note.

>4) Make a note of approximately how long it takes for the note to reach full volume.

>5) Set A = 127

>6) Play a note and hold it.

>7) It should take a lot longer than 1.27s for the note to reach full volume. I estimate that it takes 10 to 15 seconds.

If you were to make a plot of the data, you would see that the curve for A is not linear. But it does make it a lot easier to explain the concept of ADSR envelopes.

On with the rest of this step.

Press the LFO button.

Set FILTER to 0.

Press the FILTER button.

Make sure of the following:

MODE = LP

RES = 50

CUTOFF = 30

Play some notes and hold each of the for a few beats before playing the next note.

Press and hold the FILTER button.

Set the ADSR as follows:

A = 25

D = 25

S = 0

R = 0

At this point, the ADSR envelope for the FILTER section looks almost like the diagram below. The diagram shows two different relative values but it is close enough to give you an idea.

Play some notes and hold each one. It is important here to completely lift the finger off the key before playing the next note.

You should hear a short wah sound at the beginning of each note. Then it will die off and rise again as the LFO will slowly rise again and fall repeatedly. You will only hear the short distinctive wah sound at the beginning of the note as the ADSR envelope is only triggered for each individual key press. If you play too much legato (not lifting the fingers completely from each key after it is played), you will not hear the wah sound on the following notes, only on the first note played.

This is just another step in sound design and can be useful if you use it in a musical way.

Remember to get to the FILTER ADSR hidden menu on the Uno itself, press and hold the FILTER button until the LED blinks. The effect becomes less pronounced if you turn back the FILTER ADSR, A (Attack) to 0 and D (Decay) to 0. Play some notes now. Turn A back up to 25. Play some notes. Now turn D back up to 64. Play some notes.

Step 13) Using both the FILTER and the LFO to get a wah sound!

As I was learning about how the LFO and the FILTER ADSR can affect the CUTOFF frequency of the FILTER, much of the time when I tried to use both, the FILTER ADSR effect would get lost in the sound of the LFO changing the CUTOFF to give that characteristic wah sound.

You can get a wah sound from both by reducing the FILTER ADSR A and D controls to a lower number so the envelope opens and closes faster than the LFO. To make sure this happens, go to the LFO section and turn back the LFO RATE to 1 RATE at 0 is a little too slow for my tastes. The LFO FILTER can be turned up again if you want. Then go to the FILTER ADSR menu and dial back A and D to about 15 or less.

Play the a note and hold it. You should hear a wah sound that happens within a second or so and they the wah sound rises back up. The first wah sound is the action of the FILTER ADSR envelope. The second wah sound is the action of the LFO rising and falling.

If you are not hearing the wah sound, try reducing the CUTOFF and increasing the FILTER RES (at least a little).

What should you be doing next? Work on using your wah sound in a song. That can teach you a lot as well. It will further your knowledge to figure out how to interplay between two or more instruments. Or even using the one sound in its very own song.

Conclusions:

Try experimenting with the different effects you get with ranges of settings. Saving a preset is a great thing to do. If you can, use the Uno Synth Editor to save your presets. That way, you can see all the values on the dials of the controls. It also helps though to work through things again and again. In the process of writing this tutorial, I went back to the beginning many times. The most important reason for doing this was that I did not always write down what I had done as I experimented with the controls.

This is my third tutorial on making a wah type sound. Doing this has taught me a lot about each synth but also a lot about synthesis and sythesizers in general. I could probably go to another synth like my Microkorg XL and get a wah sound out of it now. At some point I am going to look at Korg Gadget to see what would be good synths to use in similar tutorials.

Feel free to change different controls at different points along the way. Make sure to work with different waveforms (or oscillators as they tend be called more frequently). It make a big different in the sounds you get. Look up what types of waveforms are associated with particular instruments. Those search results will explain it much better than I can.

Around the time I first started writing this tutorial, somebody asked how to get a particular sound from a song. I might get around to it soon, but what I do want to say is, that is how I got started in really learning my synths. Somebody wanted to know how to get a particular sound and I worked on that. None of the three synths used in these tutorials are labelled exactly the same. Their layouts are very different. Their workflows are different. They sound different, for sure, but once you start heading in the right direction, you know it. You also learn what does not work, which is often very helpful.

Another step along the way is to work on getting other types of sounds from your Uno. What about bird sounds? Laser sounds? A motorcyle revving? The siren from an ambulance?