"Understanding the ModMatrix and how it works is not rocket science though... everyone understand the source, amount and destination scheme, but the secrets lies in understand what to modulate and how... this is something you have to learn like any other skill... it's sound design skills that is needed to get more out of the REV2, and other deep synths like the Prophet 12"
Razmo have you got any tips for literature or other stuff where I can learn the skills or is it learning by doing? I am pretty new to Synthesis so it would be great to get some tips from experienced people like you.
To be honest, i learned everything I know by myself over the course of the last 25+ years... so I'd say that a large part of it is by simply doing and having the ambition to expereiment and take things one step at a time... I've also been doing electronics myself in the past, and coding stuff like envelopes, LFO's and the like for synths... knowing how things work internally is also a big plus which people not having done these things probably do not realize...
Over the years I've learned some tricks of course, that I use a lot, but in many cases it's about being able to "see the sound in your head"... it's actually a creative process... using your imagination to get as much modulation into the sound as possible... in some cases things end in completely other directions than intended, and you stumble upon a cool sound by accident... it's almost like "creating a painting" to me... I just "throw colors at the canvas" and see what i come up with over time... then knowing how to take those raw sounds and molding them into something useable is where knowing how the synth works is crucial...
But a good start is to take any part of the synth, and focus on that part... figure out how it works, and how you can use that part...
Many of my sounds usualy start out by me looking at a certain part of the synth from a technical perspective... like "Hey, what does it sound like, if I let the pitch of an oscillator be modulated by LFO1, which is modulated by LFO2, which is modulated by LFO3 which is modulated by LFO4 which is again modulated by LFO1 ?" ... I simply take a small part of the engine, and experiment with it... when I find something while experimenting that sounds cool, then it's just about applying maybe some filter modulation and assign some controllers to parameters until i get some interresting modulations going... and when I've experimented with such a program, then I have learned more about how the LFO's can be used in strange ways, intermodulating eachother etc... some stuff I can use on other programs, other things is only used that once... it varies..
I actually do not have many obscure tricks that I use a lot to be honest... a few have proven useful and is used often though:
1. Envelope feedback... routing an envelope's output to it's own Decay/Attack/Release parameter is a known trick on many synths... this lets you shape the envelope decay curve to become more exponential or logarithmic... a really cool trick for making basses more snappy, or give a bassdrum more punch... it's also good on bell sounds that need punch...
2. Fake filter... Set one oscillator to a Triangle, and the other to a Sawtooth... route an envelope to the oscillator MIX parameter... this way you can simulate a filter BEFORE the filter (like having two filters after each other)... the sound starts out with the bright Sawtooth waveform, but the envelope will crossfade to the Triangle in the end... the Triangle has the least harmonics, thus the end result sound much like a filter... if you adjust the real filter on top this actually give some rather cool bass sounds.
I'll post other tricks in here, when I recall them... but as i said earlier; most of my sounds come from experimentation with a certain part of the engine... that is also why most of my programs are made from scratch, and NOT based on other programs.