Additive synthesis is new to a lot of people. So you might wonder how to do things you might do on a more traditional subtractive synthesizer.
Here are a few tips.
Modulating filters
Traditional subtractive dsp filters like lowpass or highpass filter limit what frequencies of an oscillator get output.
People love to automate these filters to creative movement in their sounds, having timbre evolve over time.
For example, let’s say you want your sound to start bright and then darken after 200ms. In a subtractive synthesizer, you might hook up the cutoff knob to an envelope or an LFO so that it starts high and dips down, cutting off the high frequencies after 200ms.
In Sine Machine, we don’t need to route things anywhere. We have direct control over the sound’s frequency components over time. For example, you could just add High to Low decay in the Envelopes section, so that the note starts bright and gets darker after 200ms.
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Another benefit to this is that unlike traditional filters like band/low/highpass which can only make specific types of cuts, we can create any kind of shape, down to individual frequency components, for example only affecting even harmonics over time.
Keyboard tracked filters
On a subtractive synthesizer, you might have a cutoff knob that controls at which frequency the filter starts attenuating.
Many synths then allow you to link the cutoff frequency to the keyboard, so that when you play a higher note, higher frequencies are let through. Play a low note, and the cutoff is lower.
This is a great way of making a sound more musical and “natural” (emulating acoustic instruments) across the range of notes.
In additive synthesis, “keyboard tracking” is just the default. You don’t need to use a filter at all. You just dial in the harmonic volume bars. When you play a higher note, the whole set of volumes moves higher.
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