This is a piece I made using FM synthesis (operator) in Ableton. I wanted to see how far I could push the synth until it produced sounds that felt alien and impossible to create through the common conception of FM synthesis. To do this, I mapped all the pitch parameters in Operator as well as the LFO rate, amount, spread, pitch envelope, filter type, time, and tone to Ableton’s expression control module. With this setup, every key press would produce a wildly different sound that varied in texture, pitch, and movement. Connecting this with an LFO augmenting a free rate arpeggiator created a lush and glitchy soundscape. The pad was done by duplicating the bounce of the glitch noises and using the external carrier on Ableton’s vocoder to feed a bunch of random notes played in scale through the timbre of the glitch noises. When played on top of each other, they melted into each other in a way that made it difficult to truly lock on to what was being played. While I don’t think I will bring this specific sound design trick into the music I write, I found that the mindset I approached the task with produced interesting results, and I am excited to see what I can do when I approach other modules in Ableton in the same way.