How FRASIL works

Three layers, one voiceLink to this section

• CHOIR three detuned saws (or pulses) through a low-pass filter that follows the note. Warm, wide, vocal.
• PARTIALS 8 additive harmonics, each drifting on its own in level and tuning. Bright or dark, odd, stretched into bells, with a formant.
• BREATH noise (a hiss or sparse grains) through three resonators tuned to the note, from air to glass.

Each layer has two pages on EDIT: the first its level and main character, the second (CHOIR II, PARTIALS II, BREATH II) its source and what shapes it after. See the layers’ second pages.

You don’t choose a layer per note: all three play every note, and you mix and shape them.

The whole droneLink to this section

Before the layers, the first page on EDIT, DRONE PARAMS, shapes the whole drone: TIMBRE (all three layers brighter or darker), SPACE (how much of it goes to the reverb), MOTION (how far it drifts) and BODY. At 100 % BODY leaves the drone as its settings make it. Turned down, it thins it out without changing them: the choir closer and quieter, fewer partials, little breath, narrower, less warmth, its low body taken off. BODY is on ALGORITHM too, on every page, and an LFO can move it.

The drone’s presetsLink to this section

Turn PRESETS, on any page: 24 drones, each setting the three layers (their levels, both their pages) and the drone’s own: DRONE PARAMS but BODY, DRONE SHAPE’s ATTACK and RELEASE, DRONE MOTION. The cloud, PRESSURE, VELOCITY and BODY stay as they are.

Before them comes CUSTOM, your own. Turn any of those settings and the drone becomes CUSTOM, from where it was. Another preset doesn’t lose it: turn back to CUSTOM and it is there. A scene keeps its CUSTOM, and the preset chosen over it.

01MIST

the default: all three layers, gently

02CATHEDRAL

a wide choir an octave under, a long hall

03GLACIER

glass: stretched partials, bell resonators

04ABYSS

dark and deep, warm

05AURORA

the spectrum wandering, a light formant

06EMBER

a warm square choir, glowing low

07TIDE

a deep tide on the timbre

08DUST

grains ringing in resonators, crackle

09WIND

air: breath alone, moving

10ORGAN

steady pipes, a fifth over

11HOLLOW

odd harmonics, a band-passed square

12VOWEL

a sung overtone

13SHIMMER

bright beating partials, a halo a twelfth up

14CHANTER

a reed: a narrow pulse, nasal

15ENSEMBLE

strings: detuned pulses, swaying

16BELLS

stretched into bells

17NOCTURNE

slow and dark, a resonant low-pass

18HAZE

airy, high-passed, an octave up

19PULSE

every partial beating, quick

20RIME

thin ice two octaves up, glittering

21DEEP

weight: the fundamental, an octave under

22SPECTRAL

one overtone alone, singing

23RUST

gritty, driven: grains, a resonant band

24STILL

almost a sine, unmoving

Where the sound goesLink to this section

Then WARMTH (a soft saturation) feeds CLOUD, the reverb: an 8-line modulated network with diffusion in its loop, a pre-delay, a pitch-shifted shimmer inside the loop, and FREEZE. Its tail runs from 0.4 to 60 seconds.

What moves on its ownLink to this section

Your drones’ notes never change. What moves on its own is the sound: MOTION is a slow random drift of each partial, detune and resonance; TIDE is a slow swell of the timbre over minutes. Chance comes into GLINT’s notes only where you let it: CHANCE skips the arpeggio’s or the sequence’s steps, RANDOM and DRIFT pick the arpeggio’s order, and SPARKLE (below) plays glints of its own on the notes the drones hold.

And what you set moving: three LFOs, each on up to four settings, free or on the beat. A setting keeps the value you gave it, and the LFO moves the sound around it. See The LFOs. On FX’s first page, SPARKLE lets glints fall by themselves, now and then, on the notes the drones hold (see Generative FX).

GLINT and BASSLink to this section

GLINT is a separate layer on top: 4 voices of clean FM, played from the keys when you turn them over to it (SELECT: KEYS; ARP’s pages do it too). GLINT notes are never latched: each one rings and fades like a bell. The drones keep sounding while you play GLINT, by hand, through its arpeggiator or from its 32-step sequencer. See GLINT.

BASS is a third thing the keys can play (SELECT on BASS, or SEQ’s pages): one deep note at a time, held like a drone, under everything, or a line of its own from its 16-step sequencer. It stays out of the reverb, but for a little SPACE. See BASS.