u/Sufficient-Match-137

Hey all,

I’m a white belt, been doing this since around October and I’m a bit weirded out by how things turned out during my karate classes.

We train shotokan and the first months went as one would expect, a bit of everything feeling chaotic for me but I got my footing after some months. Now, th problem is our sensei for some reason seems fixated on kumite, and I can confidently say we haven’t done a kihon or kata practice since December. To be honest I think this is weird and I personally don’t like the idea of training only one part of a discipline I was interested in, in its entirety. I know I’m a white belt so I’m pretty much clueless about all this, but I really looked forward to the more traditional aspects of this discipline and I haven’t done a gedan barai in 5 months.

Does this happen from time to time or is it actually a weird situation?

I have a basic grasp of FM but I’m not a theory person. Expected that to be a problem for using the DN2. Mostly I just work by ear, poke at ratios until something sounds interesting and lock it in. The presets have actually been useful for that, as a reference for what purposeful FM shaping sounds like before you start pulling it apart.

Curious how people here learned to use it. Theory first or just ears? Do you have any good resources to share about FM synthesis?