WRITTEN BY JACOB COOK
RE-RECORDING MIXER, BOOM BOX POST
I decided to give the super-awesome and totally free Zebralette Sythesizer from u-he a try. I’m not very experienced when it comes to synthesizers. I’ve had fun messing around with them on occasion, but I am far from a proficient synthesizer user, so I decided to get my feet wet and do some experimenting. I am SO glad I did.
Zebralette is a free miniature version of u-he’s Zebra 2 synthesizer. While Zebralette features one powerful oscillator(capable of stacking 1, 2, 4 or 11 of itself in unison), Zebra 2 boasts 4 oscillators, in addition to some other great features you can read about on the Zebra 2 page on u-he’s website. I’m not going to dig into every detail of this synth, but I am going to talk about a couple of elements that I really liked and thought were interesting.
Oscillator
The oscillator is the source of sound in a synthesizer, and Zebralette and Zebra 2 have a really interesting way you can generate your sound wave. You can create or pick the classic sine, square, triangle waves and etc, but you can also use these crazy functions called Geomorph, Geoblend, Spectormorph and Spectroblend. These all will let you draw a waveform or manipulate points to create one. The crazy part is that the “Spectro” functions read the same graph as a harmonic spectrum instead of a waveform. So in essence, your wave or drawing will determine a set of harmonics that will play over about 10 octaves. This is already way over my head technically, but I did have a TON of fun messing around with it, drawing different waveforms and switching between the modes. If you try this synth, I would highly recommend you do the same.
Multi Stage Envelope Generator
For me this is where the magic happens with Zebralette. Although the Multi Stage Envelope Generator(MSEG) is not totally unique to Zebra, it is the part of the synth that I found gave me the most drastic and fun manipulations of the sound. If you can dial in a cool sound using these two pieces, any effects or further modulation was just icing on the cake.
This is a complex modulation source that can be manipulated in various ways and applied to modulate different parameters of the synth. I had the most fun and found the most value attaching it to the “Tune” function, controlling the pitch of the oscillator. In this setup the graph depicts the change of pitch over time, but really the sky is the limit in terms of how you use it. Presets even use it to create fake delay effects(the synth has a separate delay function as well).
Creating Sounds
Once I got my head around the basic controls I decided to start with my #1 favorite thing to synthesize, the sound I always search for on every synthesizer: the laser blast.
You can pretty easily create any number of similar sounds on almost any synth by modulating the pitch in a downward direction quickly and adjusting the decay to limit the length of the sound. After some experimenting with a square wave, I ended up with a neat 16-bit sounding laser for my library:
I changed up the wave and loaded another MSEG preset(another awesome feature) that had a sort of twin attack to make the laser sound a bit different. A bit more messing around and I got my second and third lasers:
For my final laser, or phaser as it were, I ramped up the effect of the MSEG on the Tune function, and lengthened the wave to create a super cool swoopy effect:
After that I decided to toy with some of the awesome presets; a great way to get the juices flowing with a new synth. I discovered a lot of cool ways you can create sounds. For making stings, using the Osc FX and built in delay makes some very spooky sound effects.
Similarly you can create some awesome pads and droning. For these, I really liked redrawing the waveforms, and using a stuttery type of wave on the MSEG:
Overall, I think Zebralette is a fantastic synthesis tool. After just a few hours of messing around, I was able to create a bunch of new sounds. With more experience, I could probably create TONS more, and integrate it into my workflow when designing new builds. While I don’t think this free Zebra is as full featured of a design tool as some more popular synths like NI Massive or Omnisphere, you really can’t beat it’s value as a totally free product. Seriously, you don’t even need to give them your email to download it! Be sure to grab it from u-he’s website and let us know your favorite synths for sound design in the comments!