Synthesis question

I'm gonna spit out a few hard truths that you just sort of have to know before you get started in all of this. Sometimes unless you want to break the bank, you may have to pirate software in order to express yourself the way you need to right now. Full disclosure I own Ableton and the Adobe Suite along with some VSTs including FM8, and every single one I stole before purchasing because I personally didn't believe that they were worth money to me if I couldn't use them. Sort of a chicken before the egg sort of thing but that's a decision you'll have to make for yourself. One thing said, free software synths are generally terrible and have bad interfaces.

FM synthesis is really never going to be intuitive. It's just something you need to mess around with until you get the hang of it, and it will take a while. You're not going to find an all encompassing tutorial for making sounds with an FM synth because so much of it is dependent on personal experience working with the synth itself. Outside of learning the basics behind what operators are and stuff like that it's just something you have to learn over time. Click on stuff and see how it changes the sound. Do that for hours, it's super fun once you start to understand more of what you are doing.

The Korg M1 is not really a synth you will be able to construct sounds with like you could an FM Synth or a Subtractive Synth. It's a big music workstation used for making compositions and it's a rather outdated piece of equipment compared to what you will find in most DAWs today, and the system for editing and creating sounds is GOD AWFUL in my experience. Its absolutely a synth more designed to be played from presets even though you have the options to edit specific features.

Without trying to sound harsh, I don't think it would be very artistically.... Stimulating (?) to simply learn how to emulate a rather iconic sound already attached to a producer you admire. Sophie had an interview where he mentions starting with a conceptual aim, and the aesthetics will follow, including sound. Learn how to use FM synthesis, and you can make your own sounds and develop your own style. Spending tons of time only to end up emulating another artist is extremely unfulfilling in my experience, and short of just giving you presets there's not much any of us can tell you in specific terms how to make these sounds anyways. He is using lots of complicated envelopes and waveforms created by FM synthesis. Make your own style, it is so much more fulfilling. Trust me.

2 best ways you can learn synthesis imho:

(1) really learn what's happening inside a preset or patch you like that the synth comes with. how did this synthesist get from point A to point B? how did a very basic sine wave successively morph into something so detailed?

to do this it helps to grasp basics of what each parameter is doing to the sound (tho FM goes deep a.f. and the math behind what's going on only gets more complicated as you learn more, so I've given up this angle), but if you're smart enough to know the difference between an oscillator (or "operator") and an envelope then you should just twiddle one knob at a time and see what changes in the patch. then you should try to build it again from the bottom up, starting from an initialized basic sine wave...except along the way you can experiment and try new things, then BOOM! custom patch. Then save your work and repeat.

(2) YouTube. I know you said there's not much out there you've found helpful but just look up a couple basic FM tutorials, DubSpot has a great one and there's another where you learn to make one of those Deep Housey kinda basses with FM. This should get you acquainted with what it looks like to build a sound up from the bottom, even if the synth being used in the video is a different one from what you're using. FM Synths all work in similar ways, with minor but significant variations especially with regard to how many operators you're being given to work with, i.e. how complex of a timbre you can accomplish.

for what it's worth I've found that I learn more if I'm pausing and mimicking the video as I go along, rather than going through the whole thing in one sitting then trying to remember all the stuff while I'm doing it. ><;

lastly I'll note that SOPHIE has gone on record saying she actually uses Wavetable synthesis quite a bit, which I know next to nothing about, but I've found that FM is  a great place to "level up" as a synthesist. but it's like any instrument, you have to put in time and accumulate skill, it's not any instant gratification kinda deal. but it pays off! you'd be surprised how many possible timbres are out there once you open up the FM floodgates