This walkthrough of Ableton's Vector FM breaks down its five Particle Attribute controls, the feature that sets this synth apart from standard FM instruments. Each control lets a particle's behavior in the 2D display drive a synthesis parameter, and every note you play spawns its own particle that modulates independently of the others.
Horizontal position maps to panning, so a particle's left-right location in the display places the note in the stereo field. Vertical position controls FM Index, and distance from center is set to inversely affect gain, meaning notes get louder as their particle drifts toward the middle.
Speed is mapped to Carrier pitch, with a quantization scale (here, Octave) keeping the pitch shifts musical rather than chaotic since raw speed-to-pitch mapping can sound extreme without it. Mass, tied to particle size, is set to shape the Carrier waveform, though its effect only becomes clear once particle mass is actually varied in the simulation.
Together these mappings turn a visual, physics-driven display into a live modulation source, where where a particle sits and how it moves directly sculpts the sound of the note it represents.