Using Cut-Off on a Synthesizer

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ben Anderson with Expert Village. And today I'm here to talk to you about cut-off and how it is used on your keyboard. Cut-off is used for a number of different things. Cut-off really will affect your sound more than almost any other filtering sound that you will have on your keyboard. The cut-off knob featured right here--if you play it, playing a note as-is, then by adjusting the cut-off, the sound itself changes in frequency. Now, if I turn it down lower, the sound changes even more. Basically, what cut-off will do is will cut off the height of frequencies, and will make the sound louder or softer. It works in a very similar way as volume does, but it plays more with frequency than it does gain and volume. One cool thing about using cut-off is it can really affect your sound in a number of different ways. One, here,--since it does sort of act as a volume control in a way, one cool thing that you can do is by holding down the note, and then by turning the cut-off knob back and forth a few times. It really kind of acts as more of an effect on your sound than anything else. It makes it a lot easier in a live setting, when changing dynamic levels in a song, to be able to play with your cut-off and it will affect the dynamic level itself there, rather than having you try to affect that dynamic level in the way that you're playing."