![]() Back in the day, 1970 to be exact (early days of analog synths) this MiniMoog sound captured the ears of every keyboard player - for many, the first time really hearing a synth lead. An obvious tip of the cap to the ELP (Keith Emerson's) "Lucky Man" lead synth sound. Let's begin our listening experiments with the quintessential Square wave synth lead sound, called "Lucky". Without over analyzing this, you will notice a more nasal, thinner tone as you move farther away from the "square", 50 on/50 off ratio. As the width of the pulse narrows the spacing of the missing harmonic will change accordingly. In a Square wave every other harmonic is missing. A Square wave, by contrast has only the odd numbered harmonics. The sawtooth wave family is rich and bright - it contains all harmonics in the series. Briefly, harmonics are overtones - related pitches to the fundamental tone. Think of a clavinet, it has a nasal, pinched tone and is certainly a candidate for the Pulse wave family.Īs we go deeper into the Synth Basic series we'll hear more about the harmonic series. As the ratio between the On/Off time changes the tone has a more pinched, tight or nasal tone. The narrower the pulse the more it approaches the sound of an oboe. An acoustic clarinet has a smooth woody hollowness to its sound. A Square wave sounds closest to a Clarinet. Any pulse wave that is not a 50/50 "square" will sound more and more nasal in nature. You might, for example, have a pulse that is On just 25% of the time (Off the other 75%) or one that is On just 10% of the time, (Off the other 90%) each will have a different tone to our ears.Ī Square wave is described as sounding hollow and woody. All other percentage On to Off create narrower pulse waves. When it's On 50% and Off 50% this relationship being equal is called a "Square" wave. Pulse waves would be like a simple ordinary On/Off switch, what varies is the length of time On versus the length of time Off. Or you can push it to turn it on immediately, then fade the dimmer to darkness, and repeat that's your sawtooth down. ![]() You can fade up the lights to full brightness, then push it to turn it off, and repeat that's your sawtooth up. To gain an understanding of these shapes we'll use the following analogy: If these were lighting fixtures, the Sawtooth wave would be a "dimmer" type switch. Sawtooth waves come in the sawtooth up and sawtooth down variety. We call Pulse waves a 'family' because there are a couple of types of Pulse waves. This time we'll take a look/listen to the Pulse wave family. and we took a quick look at the Envelope Generators (Pitch, Filter, Amplitude). We looked at the types of sounds that lend themselves to this basic wave shape: synth strings and brass sounds, as well as leads, etc. Sawtooth waves we described as bright and buzzy. This time we'll take a look at the other principal analog synth waveform family, the Pulse wave family. In the previous installment we explored the Sawtooth waveform.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |