Making sound
A track does nothing until there is something in it. This course is about the things you put there.
Phonon ships several hundred modules, which is a good problem and still a problem: the hard part is not that any one of them is difficult, it is knowing which one you want and what to expect when it opens. So this course starts with finding and hearing them, and only then with what the controls do.
The lessons
Lesson 1 is how to find things and lesson 2 is where to put them; take those two in order. After that, reading a panel and modulating it can be read either way round.
- 01The module browserHow to find one thing among several hundred, what the colours mean, and how to hear one before you load it.Unlocks: You can get a specific module onto a specific track.
- 02Instruments and effectsWhat makes a module one or the other, and why the order you add them in is the whole of the wiring.Unlocks: You can build a chain that sounds like what you intended.
- 03Reading a panelKnobs, sliders and switches, how to move them precisely, and where the application explains the one under your pointer.Unlocks: You can work a module you have never seen before.
- 04ModulationThe control rack: LFOs, envelopes and CV sources, and patching their outputs onto any knob in the application.Unlocks: You can make a sound that moves without automating it by hand.
What this course will not do
It will not go through the modules one at a time. There are several hundred and each one carries its own description in the browser, written by whoever built it; a course that repeated those would be out of date the week it was published and longer than everything else here put together.
What it teaches instead is how to read any of them: what the marks in the browser mean, what an instrument and an effect are in this application, and where to look when a control is unfamiliar.