This is just a quick explainer of how I create low-cost “piano-esque” sounds, which I often use in generative patches. No one is going to confuse this for a concert grand any time soon, but with a little reverb or delay, in the mix with some other voices, it can be reminiscent enough of piano to get the job done. All it takes is a self-FMing sine wave, a VCA, a specific envelope, and some filtering — the total cost is under 10% of the CPU.

This deviates a little from the other Zynth Zekret videos in that it doesn’t really cover a type of synthesis; this is just a patching technique that I use quite often and thought others might be curious about. I hope you enjoy!