Basic Synthesis: Wavetable/Additive



Modifying a wavetable in max/msp, algorithmic scale generation in RTcmix, employing a bank of wavetable oscillators to recreate a sound spectrum (timbre) using additive synthesis.

Links

There are quite a few links on "additive synthesis" -- here's a few that seem like decent intros: The University of Iowa site with all the instrument samples is here: I won't even attempt to show a few web links about different tuning/scale systems. There's a billion of them -- just google "music tuning scales" and you'll be off on a never-ending quest.

Applications and Examples

Here are the wavetable examples shown in class:


We started the class following up our discussion of wavetable synthesis by creating a more complex max/msp patch that allows the user to write wavetable data into a [buffer~] object (this gets played using the [wave~] object). We used a [multislider] to specify (draw) the waveform data, and the rest of the patch was the annoying stuff you have to do to get the data into the proper form for [peek~].

Next we showed a simple algorithmic-programming example using [rtcmix~]. We extended it slightly by generating (algorithmically) some different scale-tuning experiments.

Then Jason introduced the rollicking world of additive synthesis by analyzing an oboe sound using the spectral-analysis capabilities of the Amadeus sound editor. He created a max/msp patch to duplicate the sound, but then went even further and modified it to "morph" between an oboe spectrum and a bell spectrum. And you can do this too! Along the way he also showed how to build a "max abstraction" so that your patches don't get totally cluttered, and so that you can reuse particular constructions that work well.

Tutorial #7 in the MSP documentation (see week2a for the Max/MSP manuals) is really good for showing a few of the max/msp tricks we employed in our quest for the perfect additive sound.