Modulators make no sound of their own. They move the knobs you cable them to, which is where most of Helin’s depth lives.
Envelope
Attack, decay, sustain and release, shaping anything over the life of a note. Cable it to a filter’s cutoff for plucks and swells. Curve bends the segments, and velocity to level makes harder notes open further. A dot runs along the shape while a note plays.
Oscillator
A modulation oscillator, the LFO of classic synths: sine, triangle, saw, square, sample and hold, and smooth random. It runs from a thousand seconds per cycle up to audio rate. Use slow rates for drifting pads, tempo sync for rhythmic movement and note mode to follow the keyboard. Retrigger restarts it on every note.
Envelope Follower
Listens to the audio cabled into it and turns its loudness into modulation. Feed it one sound and cable it to another’s filter or level for ducking and pumping. Attack and release set how quickly it follows.
MIDI CC
Turns a controller’s knob or fader, any CC number, into modulation. Set the CC and channel your controller sends, then cable it to whatever you want to play live. Smooth stops stepped jumps.
Note and Notes In
The Note node sends what each note is as modulation: its pitch, gate, velocity and pressure. Cable velocity to a filter’s cutoff so hard notes are brighter, or pitch to a knob that should follow the keyboard. Notes In sends the mod wheel, aftertouch and pitch bend the same way, for expression.
Octave
Moves the notes passing through it by whole octaves. Put one before a source to play it higher or lower, chain two for bigger jumps, or give two sources different octaves for layers.
Macros
Eight macro knobs on the bar along the bottom of the canvas, each able to turn many controls at once. They have a page of their own: Macros.
Next: Macros