This is a guide to basic sound synthesis which will help you in creating music with software and virtual instruments like Cubase and Fruity Loops.

The basic sound that you hear in the patches is produced by the oscillators, and is then fed through the synthesizers signal path. If you set oscillation to a very low pitch, you’ll end up with gaps because the wave form is unceasingly dependent on the speed pitch of the note. And so the different sounds are produced by the shape of the waveform, which is the product of oscillation.

Here’re the standard wave form.

For a sharp biting type sound, you need the saw wave. Its named as this because its shape is identical to those on a saw blade

To get a soft mild tone then you’ll want the Sine Wave, which’s shaped like a horizontal S; it has a smooth up and down shape to it.

A specified colour of noise will produce noise even though it is not truly a wave-form

To get that sound that simulates a hollow reed you need the square-wave. This’s distinguishable by its near perfect square out-look.

A variance to the square wave is the pulse-wave, although its merely half as wide. It has the interesting ability to have a modulated width. Perhaps you’ve heard this as being related to as the Pulse Width Modulation.

To find a glad medium between the saw wave and sine wave you would need the triangle-wave, which’s the shape of a triangle.

Most often a synthesizer has 2-3 oscillators. Being as that is the case, you can do a couple of fascinating stuff by mixing the waveforms together. Plus you can tune them so they’re different from one another. It can be tuned in semitones, octaves or in cents. A swirling untuned sound is produced by many oscillators which are cents apart from one another. Cents is a hundredth of a semi-tone.

There is an oscillator recognise as a low frequency oscillator. Its frequencies are undetectable unless you physically tune it into a standard hearing range. Its job is to tone the pitch of the oscillator or the filter frequency.

The start and stop of the waveform is quite evident because the LFOs are like the oscillators in that they all the same use regular wave forms. When utilized the right way for instance the sine-wave allows you to hear an increasing or decreasing sound of the wave shape. Animation and moving texture will be the end result for your synthesizer sound if done properly.

You can harness the full power of an actual synth stack using VST plugins and Cubase. Go ahead. Ride volume on multiple tracks simultaneously. Explore sounds and effects with VST plugins. Mute,solo and record tracks with the push of a button. Open and tweak virtual insutrments and effects plugins easily. Music creation can’t get any easier than this.




By: Greg Hoffman