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- Subtractive Synthesis
- Control Voltage
- Synthesizer Building Blocks
- Key Concept: Gate & Trig
- Ready to Explore Fundamental Synthesis?
Before I go on, I do want to make one point: the type of synthesis we’re dissecting here is subtractive synthesis. Subtractive synthesis is the most commonly used category of synthesis, and it’s defined as a method of sound synthesis in which partials of an audio signal (often one rich in harmonics) are attenuated by a filter to alter the timbre of...
One other term I need to cover before I dive in is control voltage, or CV. Control voltage is, more or less, the internal language of analog synthesizers. This voltage does not represent audio but controls different elements of a synthesizer that create audio. For instance, the keys on an analog synth keyboard send different CV values to the oscill...
Oscillator
If anything is the heart of a synthesizer, then it’s the oscillator. It produces a raw, unfiltered sound wave. In a garden-variety analog synthesizer, an oscillator will generate a saw wave, square wave, sine wave, triangle wave, or noise. In digital synthesizers, the core of the oscillator can be a wavetable or even a recorded sample. The sound sample below is a saw wave — the way you would hear it if you directly tapped the audio output of an analog oscillator. Note that it just keeps going...
Amplifier
Every synthesizer has an amplifier, or, more accurately, a variety of amplifiers. Often seen abbreviated as VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier)and DCA (digitally controlled amplifier), the amplifiers are the components that determine exactly how much signal from the oscillator gets passed on to the next part of the synthesizer. The name “amplifier” is a bit misleading and confusing, though. Technically speaking, an amplifier is part of a circuit that boosts signal, but in synthesizers, the amp...
Filter
In the context of a synthesizer, a filter is a module that removes certain frequencies from the audio signal, much like an equalizer on a stereo or a recording console. The most commonly found filter types on an analog synthesizer are lowpass (LP)filters, which filter out high frequencies and let low frequencies pass (hence the name), and highpass (HP) filters, which filter out low frequencies and allow high frequencies to pass. You may also see bandpass (BP) and all-passfilters on certain sy...
These terms often throw people off. What the heck is a gate? Why do we need it? To oversimplify it a little bit, the gate signal tells the synthesizer when a note starts and when it ends. Here’s an example: a keyboard can generate a gate signal, which begins when the key is pressed and ends when the key is released. A sequencer could generate gate ...
Hopefully, you found some helpful information in this basic rundown of synthesis concepts. To the uninitiated, this may seem like a lot of information, but I promise you that there’s a whole lot more where that came from. The limitless flexibility of synthesizers is one of the things that makes them so appealing, and the huge variety of synthesizer...
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Jan 10, 2024 · A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that is capable of producing and manipulating a wide range of sounds. Unlike traditional musical instruments that produce sound through physical vibration, synthesizers generate sound electronically using various components and techniques.
Jun 12, 2022 · A synthesizer (sometimes spelled "synthesiser") is an electronic keyboard that can generate or copy virtually any kind of sound, making it able to mimic the sound of a traditional instrument, such as a violin or piano, or create brand new, undreamed of sounds—like the crunch of footsteps on the surface of Mars or the noise blood cells make when ...
Aug 22, 2023 · A synthesizer, commonly referred to as a synth, is an electronic musical instrument that produces sound by generating signals. It’s currently a dominant instrument in the production of popular music genres such as pop, hip-hop, and EDM. In this article. 1 What is a synthesizer, and how does it work? 2 How did the synthesizer evolve?
- 20 min
FM Synthesis is short of Frequency Modulation Synthesis. It is a type of synthesis that produces sounds electrically or digitally by altering, (ie. “modulating”) the original generated sound wave produced by an oscillator. As an instrument, they can either be hardware or VSTi plugin variants.
Jul 23, 2021 · 1. Detuning. Here’s a classic sound, the warm beating of oscillators drifting ever so slightly (or not so slightly) against each other. A common approach is to use the same waveforms and have one oscillator tuned to exact pitch, and then set the other oscillator slightly sharp or flat, usually by only a few cents.
