When playing the factory Program Presets you may have noticed that they sound a bit dry. This doesn’t mean that effects are missing, it is about the Controller action. Although the Fusion provides four cool Controller Knobs the way how they are assigned is pretty important to get access to parameters that can make a sound more interesting.
Looking at the picture above you can see the entire Controller section: 4 Control Knobs, 4 Trigger Buttons and 2 SW switches. Additionally there are the Pitch Bend Wheel and Modulation Wheel, the Foot Controller and finally Aftertouch. In total you have more than 10 different Controllers available and actually you shouldn’t hesitate to use them for every Program Preset. Now for the bad news: The factory presets controller setting is rather poor. Not bad at all, but on the today’s view it isn’t smart. It is a quite rudimentary and especially the important and so useful four Control Knobs are assigned with Equalizer, Effects intensity and envelopes.
This means: It’s time to improve them. Let’s see how this can be done quickly and effectively. Here is a screenshot of Modulation Matrix start page, this is where you assign the Controllers.
To make something right away you could check this with your own Fusion: Select factory preset ROM: PRESET 1 F7 (046) Symphonos, which is a nice pad sound with a stringish sound character. When testing the Controller settings you will find out, that the Control Knobs 1 and 2 get you access for a bit more Bass and Treble, the Knobs 3 and 4 allow changes for the attack and release time, Pitch Bend range is +/- 12 semitones and the Modulation Wheel is for adding vibrato. And frankly speaking: This is not that what makes such a sound full of life when using those Controllers. But the good news is, that you can change that and save the result on a new memory position, perhaps somewhere in your User Bank.
To get a real smart Controller setting you should make a little plan in the first place. What would you like to control with them? You have many options and here is one example:
Knob 1: Pitch control for OSC2 to alter the octave setting between both OSCs.
Knob 2: Filter Cutoff for the main filter to make the sound darker while playing.
Knob 3: Envelope Time Attack to make the attack really fast.
Knob 4: Effect intensity, to get the sound into a big hall, when you need it.
Trigger Button 1: Overall pitch control to get a transpose.
Trigger Button 2: Portamento time for slide effects.
Trigger Button 3: Envelope time to make the sound more staccato.
Trigger Button 4: OSC 2 Volume to make the sound a bit thinner when you need it.
The both SW switches will be discussed in another blog entry, so if you are interested in this you should tune in to this blog periodically. Also you can take the chance to edit the Modulation Wheel setting. A vibrato effect is nice, but the current setting is a bit to much. And if you don’t like the Pitch Bend action, then change it too.
Watch out for the next Fusion workshop issue to find out what exactly you have to assign and set for this new Controller setting. In the meanwhile you can go through the factory presets to get really familiar how they are and what you want to control. Also it is a good idea to view the Modulation Matrix pages to get familiar with the parameters and where they are located.
