There are a few common ways to generate the sounds that get manipulated, modified, and are eventually sent out of your synthesizer.  In this lesson we’re going to talk about subtractive synthesis.  This is the type of synthesis primarily used by old-school analog synths. The basic idea of subtractive synthesis is to start with a […]

Additive synthesis is based on the theory that any sound can be made by combining a series of sine waves at various frequencies (see the lesson on harmonics for more details).  Start adding waves together and you get new, harmonically-rich waveforms.  Essentially you’re deciding at which frequencies you want your harmonics and adding them yourself. […]

Frequency-Modulation Synthesis, or FM Synthesis for short, works differently than what we’ve talked about so far.  It uses one wave to rapidly increase or decrease (modulate) the frequency of another, which creates entirely new frequencies that aren’t part of the first two. Don’t worry if that’s not very intuitive; I’m going to break it down […]

Most of the synthesis methods we’ve talked about so far produce periodic waves, meaning at some point the repeat.  Simple waves may go up, then down, then back up again.  More complex waves might go up and down a few times, but somewhere there is a repeating pattern. Wavetable synthesis takes advantage of this fact […]