Thoughts on Zebra

U-He describes Zebra as a 'workhorse synth', and that is something worth thinking about. You can approximate many of the structures of synths like a Minimoog or Nord Lead, so can produce patches roughly like them, alongside many others. Now it won't give you the best Minimoog emulation: for that you might prefer Diva (if you want a U-He synth), or one of the many other Minimoog emulations. The thing is, if you want three oscillators, a noise source, a 24dB ladder lowpass filter and a couple of envelopes, you can just arrange the modules like that on the grid. And it is quick to do.

As I write this I'm doing the experiment of trying to make everything in Zebra, possibly including drums and percussion sounds. For example Kick2 uses a single oscillator, maybe a sine, saw or square, a multisegment envelope, a sampled click, and that's about it. Aside from sampling, (for the click so something with noise and a short envelope), you have everything you need to make a half-decent kick drum without using a sample or another synth. Percussive tops can be made with noises, envelopes, and such.