Zebra Manual

The XY controls are powerful tools to tweak the preset without actually changing its original settings.

You can morph through whole landscapes, galaxies or freak-out modulations from an ordinary, boring sound. Once you’ve had enough of the craziness, you simply put the XYs to the center and you’re back to the original value.

The XYs offer vast flexibility, but in order to make use of them you have to set them up. This isn’t the easiest part of programming Zebra, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

For each axis of an XY control you can assign up to 8 out of 100+ parameters that are XYable in Zebra. Hence, one XY control can morph up to
16 parameters.

Better yet, each axis is centered around the mid point of the XY field. That makes two directions for each axis, positive and negative (up and down for Y axis, right and left for X axis). You can scale the amount of influence for each direction separately.

Examine this picture and load the preset “DM djm OBX Synth Modeler” from the preset folder “Synth”.

All four XY-pads are assigned to modulate certain parameters. We will discuss pad 1 (in this example set up to modulate the oscillators), pad 2 (in this example set up to control the filters) and pad 3. I think after that you will understand how the principle works.

There are 8 knobs to the left of the bottom part of the window. These reflect the X and Y positions of the balls in the four XY-pads. You can use these to make sure you only modulate in one direction or to reset only one of the directions by double clicking one of the knobs.

Above the knobs are four tabs that will switch the display that represents the setup of the actual XY-pairs: XY1 through XY4 representing the four XY-pads.

Let’s examine XY pad 1 first.

The X-axis in this case modulates the WaveWarp parameter (see Oscillators) of both Oscillator 1 and Oscillator 2.

Note please, that the white triangles above and below all of the modulator range represent the maximum and minimum amount for each direction. The triangle with the tip down corresponds to axis movement to the right (X-axis) and up (Y-axis), while the triangle with the tip up corresponds to axis movement to the left (X-axis) and down (Y-axis). Together these two determine the range of the modulation. This way one axis can modulate completely unrelated parameters. Examine the Y-axis of this example and how movement above the middle modulates the Detune parameter while movement below the middle line influences ENV3 decay time and OSC2 tune.

The Y-axis setup in this example is a little more interesting to study because it shows the influence of the range definition using the triangles on direction and modulation.

Let’s examine XY pad 2

This is a pretty simple setup that shows the concept very clearly.

X-axis controls the cutoff of VCF1 while the Y-axis controls the resonance of VCF1

The value of a parameter that is set in the respective module and stored with the preset is always in the middle and represented by the white line in the modulator assignement section (bottom mid to right of the XY assign pane).

The colored bar shows the maximum modulation range of a parameter. If the colord section only goes to the right, the parameter is already at its lowest possible setting. This way, as soon as you picked a parameter from the parameter selection box you will immediately see its modulation range. Very handy.

The current value of a parameter is always in the center of the XY assign control!

Let’s examine pad 3

The X-axis in this example modulates the attacks and releases of both ENV 1 and ENV 2.

The Y-axis modulates the decay time and sustain level of both ENV 1 and ENV 2.

Some programming tips

�Ģ Start preset design with all XYs set to center / zero until you have your desired sound

�Ģ Assign and set XYs separately. Set all XYs to zero, except the axis you are working on. Set that axis to the maximum negative value first, edit negative influences (lower handles), then set it to maximum positive position (top or right) and edit positive influence.

�Ģ You can set up different things for both direction of the axis. Just set the lower handle to center for some parameters (no effect, i.e. dragging down). Same for the upper handle, for the other parameters you wish to control. This way you can achieve very different effects from the same XY!

�Ģ Avoid cross influences. Of course, you can have multiple XYs controlling the Filter. But then you have a complex scenario of different influence factors. In some settings, you might even not hear anything or have strange side effects that can barely be identified. Often, less is more and this especially true of Zebra’s XY controls. Make sure your settings don’t interact too much, so the XYs are actually a means of controlling your sound, not just a way of creating random hassle.

�Ģ Name your XYs. Double-click the text above and below the XY-pads to open a window with textfields and type some useful descriptions and names for your XY setup.

Once you’ve got the hang of them, the XYs are very easy to work with and a powerful tool for creating music!