My goal today is to continue watching and learning
Analog Synthesis in a Digital World by Richard Lainhart. If you're completely broke you can watch 5 episodes a day for nowt. That's not actualy a bad way to learn this stuff, imo.
I want to make my own sounds via sythesiser patches. A synth patch is basically, turn this knob that way, slide that up to 7.5 and you'll get this sound out of it. I have got lots of loops and I can make a tune out of them but I always end up with a sequence of loops and that's it. I have no knowledge of how to take it further. I thought that if I learnt how to program a synth, what that entailed, then I would be in a much better place to continue with a track, rather than wondering if that sample pack contains anything that could finish off my tune.
I guess he's covering this in those vids. But read up on subtractive synthasis. (sp) It's the basis for a lot of analogue and virtual analogue synths.
A typical signal flow. some synths will have more, some less.
First in the signal path. Your noise generators. Oscilators, VCOs, voltage controlled oscilators. Possibly a noise generator for whitenoise, pink noise etc.
Let's say you have 2 oscilators and a noise generator.
You can choose square, sawtooth or triangle for each osc.
You can set the pitch and tuning for each independently.
You can adjust the shape independently.
You might be able to sync the cycle of the waveforms together.
You can turn on some white noise.
Next, the mixer:
You can set the levels for the 2 oscs and noise
Next, a filter:
You might have more than one filter and might be able to change what type. Let's keep it simple. We've just got a lowpass.
You can adjust the resonance and cutoff frequency level.
You might be able to adjust the sloap. Typically 12 or 24db. These have different characteristics.
Finally, amplifier:
Next in the signal path is the amplifier. You can set ADSR characteristics for this. i.e. short stabby sounds, to string swell type sounds to constant noise whilst you keep a key pressed..
Then you probably got 1 or more Low Frequency Oscilators LFOs. You can adjust the cycle rate, depth and target for these. e.g. you might target one at the pitch and set a fast cycle rate for a wabbley sort of sound.
Target the frequency for a wah type effect.
You might set it to the waveshape of the oscilators, to get a sort of phasing in and out type sound.
This is only a relatively simple synth.
With a modular setup you have all those elements in separate units and mix and match them. Prefering a particular filter module, or oascilator.
Then have effects. Never mind changing how the keyboard interacts with everything. Porta mento, key tracking for the filter, microtuning.
