Synthesis
A synthesizer makes sound from nothing, and from nothing can be done in several very different ways. Which method you use decides which sounds come out easily and which are nearly impossible.
- 5 methods
- frequencies over time
- change is everything
Where you run into this
- Dance
- Film music
- Pop
- Sound design
In short
Every form of synthesis ultimately does the same thing: produce a set of frequencies with strengths, and make that set change over time. The second half is the important one and the most underestimated. A sound that does not change is recognisably artificial within a second, whatever method produced it.
Hearing that a filter sweep is doing the same thing an acoustic instrument does naturally is the moment synthesis stops feeling arbitrary.
How it works
Subtractive starts rich and removes. FM modulates one oscillator with another and produces metallic and bell-like spectra that subtractive struggles to reach. Additive builds from sine waves upward. Wavetable scans through a table of waveforms. Granular chops sound into tiny grains and reassembles them.
Where you run into this
- A pad that is obviously synthetic because nothing moves
- A bell sound that no filter can produce
- One patch that becomes three instruments with envelope changes alone
In practice
Choose the method by what you want. Warm and classic: subtractive. Metallic, glassy, electric piano: FM. Evolving textures: wavetable or granular. Fighting a method to produce a sound it is bad at is the most common waste of an afternoon.